 Good evening. Calling to order this meeting of the Allenten Select Board on Wednesday, September 27th. I am Select Board Chair Eric Helmuth. Tonight's meeting is being conducted in a hybrid format consistent with chapter two of the Acts of 2023, signed until law on March 29th, 2023, which further extends certain COVID-19 measures regarding remote participation in public meetings. Before we begin, please note the following. First, this meeting is being conducted in the Select Board Chambers and over Zoom. It is being recorded and simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Second, persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. People participating by Zoom are reminded that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, we ask you to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. We make the same request for people who are attending in person and who are speaking. Third, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and people watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials found on the town's website, specifically, the Select Board Agendas and Minutes page. So tonight, we will have some opportunities for public comment. There will be an open, do we have an open forum, Ms. Marr? No, not when there's one on open. Yes, so we do have an open forum tonight. So we do, there'll be public comment during the public hearing. So we have the Betterment, item seven. We have, I'm going to invite public comment because it's a major item on item 11, the approval of Mass. 7 Appleton Safety and Accessibility, and then for the warrant article hearing, which is the warrant article, the item 12. So during that time, if you are here in person, it'll be pretty straightforward. You can raise your hand, come to the table, identify yourselves. If you're on Zoom and you want to participate, when I announce the item that you want to do the comment on, raise your hand and Zoom. If you don't know how to raise on your hand and Zoom, now will be an excellent time to Google how to do it. Let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to observe the passing on Monday night of Charlie Lyons. Mr. Lyons was a member of this body with a select board from 1981 to 2005. He served as a school committee member from 1972 to 1979. And he also served on the boards for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the Mass Municipal Association, and as president of the Mass Selectments Association and president of the National League of Cities. I want to just grateful for Mr. Lyons many years of service to the community and our thoughts are with his family during this time of loss. I last, first inviting in my colleagues who wanted to make any comments and after that we'll observe a moment of silence in honor of his life and his public service to the community. Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, and I didn't thank you for those words. It's a big loss, Mr. Lyons passing and he served on the select board as you said from 1981 to 2005. In 2005 he actually developed what was known then as the Lyons Plan and a form of it we still follow as part of our five year plan. It was a huge contribution to the community and when he announced that back in 2005, early that year he had talked about his years of service and it said like anyone I want to leave the community in better shape than when I came into it. And he certainly did, I lived in Huntington in 1981. I also lived in 2005 and Huntington was a much better community in 2005 and since after he got off the board in 2005 he was the superintendent, had been for most of his career of the Shah Sheen technical vocational school district and on my work for the FINCOM I did a lot of work with Minuteman and Charlie was a great resource for any information that I needed understanding vocational education, understanding the budgets and he was a true friend. So my condolences to his family as well. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Corsi. Mr. Hurd. Yep, thank you. Echoing Mr. Corsi's comments. You know I knew Charlie from when I was young and he was serving on the board with my father and I was at onto Catholic with Michael and Lisa and Christine. So I was always very tight with the Lions family. We had a lot of vacations. Charlie was, he definitely had his mark on Arlington. He was a finance guru. He was actually sought out by a lot of other municipalities who would have him come in and either consult with a paid or unpaid. I think sometimes he just liked to go in and help people stay on themselves on the right track. And he was certainly a larger than life personality. If you were in a room with Charlie most of the attention was focused on him. And one thing outside of town government that I always remember about Charlie when we were younger he memorized the entire poem of Casey at the bat. And he used to recite it. The kids would kind of gather around and he could hold the attention of entire group of crazy kids for 10 minutes while he went through it and he's swinging and this and that and all the theatrics. And he certainly was, he was quite a character. And my condolences again to Leanne, his wife, Michael, Lisa and Christine are certainly a huge loss for the history of the town of Arlington. But obviously a huge loss for their family as well. I met Mr. Lyons only once. And it was online at the little event that we had or memory that we had at our select board meeting for Marie. But certainly the sense I got from him was just a really nice guy and very approachable. And I will not meet him. But certainly I get to appreciate the work that he'd done on behalf of the town. And certainly what I hear from what I see certainly did make a big contribution to the town. And so along with everyone else, I give my condolences to his family because this is always hard. Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues. Let's now observe a moment of silence and appreciation and honor of Mr. Lyons' life and his service to the community. Thank you. Let's move to item two of tonight's agenda. This is a required, the select board is required after a complaint made under the open meeting law to address it within a certain number of days. I will note that Town Council has drafted a most informative memo and a suggested response to that. And I think we've all had a chance to read and consider that. I think in lieu of asking Mr. Im to present, I think I'll give the board an opportunity to ask any questions that they may have in response to the memo. I think my summary of that in Mr. Heim, Attorney Heim, sorry, jump in if I get any of this wrong, is that the two big points on this complaint is that it's not really an open meeting law complaint. The complaint was that we didn't put a specific item on the agenda, but that's not relevant to open meeting law. And I think the second point that Attorney Heim suggests that we make in response to this is that we're not, the chair of anybody is not obligated to put an item on the agenda. Is that a fair summary, Attorney Heim? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is, and I just want to note just for the public's understanding that an open meeting law complaint can be addressed in executive session. It can also be addressed in open session. In this case, because of the nature of the complaint, the fact that the person who made it came and spoke at open forum, making a series of allegations about something that has also been sent to the finance committee, to this body, and to the school committee, and state senators, and the FBI, and any number of other places that the board can certainly take this in open session. And yes, you're correct, that this is really not an open meeting law complaint about, or it's not really about something that's covered by the opening law. That board does not have to put any matter whatsoever on its agenda. It does not have to discuss anything whatsoever. It can have an open forum, and when it does so, it's obligated to let people, essentially, say their piece. But it's also having a business meeting, and the purpose is to get through the agenda items that the board wants to attend to. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney Heim. Any questions or comments from the board? Mrs. Mon. First, I'd like to make a motion, and if I can do it all in one motion, I will. And if I need to separate it out, if the chair. Please. I'd like to make a motion to first, approve the town council's office to create and file a response on our behalf. And second, to approve the draft response that the board contained as a select board in total response, subject to any amendments or additions, deletions my colleagues would like to make, and I'd like to make that in one motion if I could. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan. You have a second by Mr. Diggins. Any further discussion? Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Truman. And just a question for Attorney Heim. What's the date that the response needs to be sent? It's 14 business days from September 18th. So I'm sorry, I don't recall that right off the top of my head. I believe it's maybe in my email instead of in the memo, but we have plenty of time because it's 14 business days. So we still have a couple of days to submit the response. Okay, thank you. Okay, seeing no further discussion, we have a motion by Mrs. Mohan, seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. It is unanimous. Thank you, Attorney Heim, for your labor support. Thank you. We'll be seeing more about that later in the meeting. Let's move on to the consent agenda. We have the minutes of the meeting of August 14th. We have two requests for a special one-day beer and wine license. On the same day, different events on October the 14th, both at the Woodmore-Robbins House. One is from Donald Rivkin. The other one is from Elizabeth Dunning. And then we have a vote to authorize the police detail and in-person early voting for the special town election on November 7th from the town clerk. Turn to my board colleagues for any motions or comments. Mr. Diggins. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I do have a comment. I wasn't going to have a question, but I don't see Madam Clerk here. I'll wait for a second and then maybe come back to me. All right, do a second. Seconds. So my comment is congratulations to whomever is having 100th birthday made out. So that's impressive. I hope I'm having a party when I turn 100. And my question, I don't see Madam Clerk here is on, what about the vote? It's just so odd that for what seems to me to be a straightforward vote. We had one abstention on it. It seemed like it was a pretty straightforward vote to have the election in, to have that early voting. And so I was just kind of curious as to what was the rationale for that extension, but I don't see Madam Clerk here. So it's just something I'll take up with her, but I just kind of wanted to flag that because I don't know what it's about. And I hope it's not about early voting, maybe just something technical. That's it, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? So on a motion by Mr. Diggins to approve, seconded by Mr. Hurd. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It is unanimous 5-0 vote. I'm going to take item eight out of order because I think it will be very quick and in recognition of the individual's ability to appear in person with the condition that we get him out of here as quickly as we can. So I appreciate that because I think it's worth doing. So I'll introduce this. This is Select Board Appointee to the Artificial Turf Study Committee. We put out a call for applicants. The Select Board has one appointment to this committee. I believe is we are not a final body to do that and Mr. Towne Manager, if I'm correct, and we should be having the first meeting that meeting of that body next month. So we received one application and it happened to be from someone that, certainly in my view, I thought really fit the bill. The bylaw asked that the Select Board, if possible, appoint someone with a couple of areas of expertise. One of them was environmental protection and we kind of hit the jackpot in that regard. So Mr. D'Tulio, if you would come before the board and summarize your interests and your background and your work, not only professionally in the environmental area, but also in town as an advocate for sustainability. We'd love to hear from you and then have some questions. Thank you Chair Helmuth and thank you for taking me out of order. I really appreciate it because there's a chance I may be able to put my son to bed tonight so I appreciate that. I'm Jim D'Tulio. I think many of you know me from some of my town activism and I'm a member of town meeting. I've been interested in energy and environmental protection issues for many years now and I've expressed that interest through both my personal and professional lives. Professionally, I've practiced law for nearly 20 years now. It's hard to believe. I don't know where the 20 years went but definitely these issues have crossed my desks, my desk in both the public and private sector where I've worked on and off in the last 20 years but also through my activism in town as a member of town meeting and notably as one of the leaders and supporters of the plastic bag band. I think that might have been one of the last times I appeared before you. Actually no, the last time I appeared before you was the other issue I was gonna mention. I was one of the inaugural members of the Clean Energy Future Committee and still am on that committee five years later and I'm very grateful to this board for appointing me to that. So these issues are of great interest to me and I care a lot about them both on a professional and personal level. I will give an amusing anecdote that when a town meeting passed this morning article, I remember, I don't remember who was sitting next to me. I think it was one of my fellow precinct 12 town meeting members when I remember turning to them as soon as the vote was announced. I said, I don't know who they're ever gonna get to serve on this committee. Famous last words. But after some reflection and maybe a few people saying, have you thought about this? I did give it some thought and I think I do come to this committee with fresh eyes, with no biases or prejudices in either direction. This is an issue where, I think we saw in town meeting temperatures run a little hot and there's passions on both sides. I would say legitimately so. But if you were to appoint me to this committee and represent the select board, I would look at these issues, follow the facts, look at things without fear or favor, follow the science, follow the facts and hopefully make recommendations that really could benefit the town to and empower leaders like you to make the decisions on the next steps. So, I appreciate the consideration. I would be honored if you would appoint me to be your representative on the committee. Thank you very much Mr. Dutilio. I'll now turn to the board. Mrs. Mohan. First I would very enthusiastically vote to approve Mr. Attorney Dutilio as our appointee to the artificial turf committee. You certainly have encapsulated very well the discussion at town meeting. And I know some people could say you're getting two things for the price of one. I think this is a forfer in terms of your commitment to Arlington. Your resume curriculum vitae to date as well as not a part or a requirement of this committee but sort of I feel an added benefit as Senate counsel. You're really at the forefront of similar and even more far reaching impactful discussions at the state house. And I think that really is a tremendous asset for this committee to have because I know one of the nebulous questions that was out there is well the state house as the chairman knows, working for Senator Brownsberger, Berger is discussing this, are they gonna give us guidance on this? So again it was not a requirement of the job but I just wanted to highlight that I'm very appreciative and I know you do have to also walk the fine line to say give opinions, you cannot make a statement. A fact in that regard. I don't know where you're finding the time and thrilled that you are. I'm even more thrilled that we might actually get you home if I stop talking to get your child to bed so that that will be it Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mrs. Brown. Mr. Dickinson. I'll second that and I'll add that maybe my vote's contingent on how you feel about Terminus for the select board because I see that 20 years ago you did a paper regarding Terminus, notice what it's a Supreme Court, give us 18 years, you know, so just. They don't, they're not subject to election like you are. Well that's true, that's true. People get to decide on all you good folks every three years, so. Well you know, it's still though of me, people do propose Terminus for elected positions so it's not that that rules it out, you know. Anyways, in Vietnam now you're definitely qualified to see you've been doing some work also at Massport and I'll just add that about two weeks ago I did a tour of the Conley Terminal, you know, by virtue of my position on the advisory council for the MPO, impressive place. Very, very impressive place, you know, very forward-looking and yeah, you know, maybe take and learn some things from the way that they run that place, so yeah, this is easy. Thank you Mr. Dickinson, Mr. Dickinson. Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you Mr. Ditulio for your interest and for your cover letter and your very comprehensive and covered a lot of areas and you really captured it in terms of what's required for the review for artificial fields. I was gonna borrow from Mr. Dickinson so much on the select board context but sometime offline maybe talk to you about the Supreme Court context with your publication as well. I haven't changed my position on that. Thank you. Thank you for your willingness to serve. This will be a very active committee in the next couple of years and you know, I look forward to cooler heads for prevailing at the end. We see what the recommendation is from the committee, so. Thank you. Thank you and I'll just add that I am grateful that you wanted to do this. I think it's a good committee that's been assembled and I have a lot of confidence that you and others will really bring to this impartiality and we'll follow the facts and I think that's all that we can ask and I look forward to the outcome. So on a motion by Mrs. Mahan to appoint Mr. D'Tulio to the artificial turf study committee as the select board's representative seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Congratulations I think. I think so too. Thank you. Go home. Thank you all. All right let's move on back up to item seven. The public hearings, this is the Oldham Road Betterment so this is a return to this. We heard this at a prior meeting and there's been some discussion, some work behind the scenes and I think I'll invite the town manager, Mr. Feeney to update the board and the public on the progress since then and what's before us tonight. Sure thank you Mr. Chair. So following the last meeting I have been in touch on a number of occasions with the proponent Laini Cantor as well as a number of the other abutters on the street and what I will add is that after some discussion Laini and having spoken to a number of the abutters chose to reduce the segment of roadway that would be impacted by the proposed betterment eliminating the section or segment in front of 26 and 27 Oldham Road. So with that in mind Laini reached out to the contractor that may be engaged to potentially perform work and got a revised cost estimate for the reduced scope of work. That was calculated on the new per household basis of 11 abutting properties and that information was disseminated to the 11 impacted parties and it was requested that they commit in writing as to whether or not they were prepared to pay the required sum of money up front to get that project off the ground. So with that in mind I do know I think there I do see Laini and some other abutters here there's other details to provide. Okay sure at this point I'll invite the proponent Ms. Cantor to come and give a brief presentation. I think we've you know certainly brings up to speed I think we all remember the details of the rationale before because of where you're at now. So I'll just just stay your name and where you live for the record please. Laini Cantor 15 Oldham Road. Before I say anything I just want to thank Jim for helping to keep our neighbors informed and for keeping me updated on the funding situation. He's been great. Thank you Jim. Nice job. So I don't you've covered it all. I think all I want to add is that the paving contractor has indicated the paving contractor has indicated that they could probably begin work at the end of October or the beginning of November but we cannot get on this schedule until we obtain approval for the select board of course. We're requesting approval contingent upon sufficient funds being paid upfront by the abutters in addition to the contribution of some money from the private road repairs fund. Therefore along with my neighbors I'm hoping we can secure the board's approval this evening and move along with this long needed project quickly so that we can ensure the safety of those on foot and on bicycles traveling down our street and that we don't have to go through another winter with further damage from the snow plows. Thank you Ms. Cantor. So at this point this is a public hearing so I will invite members of the public who want to comment on the betterment. If you're on Zoom and wish to comment on this item please raise your hand. And if you are in the room of course, do the same. Let's start with the people in the room and the gentleman here in the end. Yep. How you doing? Very well. I'll just come up and wait until we get the microphone here so the people in TV land can hear you. Sean Lyons, 22 Old Ham Road. Good evening, sir. Okay, I was here before, I was here before and I'm against it for a couple of reasons. Number one, I took care of, number one if you do the street over you're gonna make it into a highway. Okay, I lived on a highway before in Winchester. Absolutely awful. It's, they don't understand what they're getting into. If you go up into Belmont Hill and into the most prestigious areas, My Old Ham Road looks like it's brand new compared to what they have up there. They have it up there for a reason. It's nice and slow, it's quiet. The only people that are on it are the ones that go in and out of the road. That's a private way. I don't think this should be done. Now, I did my street over. I fixed the front of my house over. Spent a lot of money. I even, when I built the house I even spent extra money to bring the electrical in underneath the ground. When they fixed the trench that they made, I made sure it was done nice. Down the street, whenever the utilities come in and I believe two were done in the past 12 months, the trenches are terrible. They should be forced to come in and do them over again. Now, as far as doing the street over, if you are gonna do it over and you're gonna do a piece here and a piece there, that's ridiculous. And if I can, I'd like to have the piece in front of my house eliminated from it. And if you don't think that can be done, look no further than Grove Street and Allington. They did half the street and not the other. Now, if you still insist upon doing it, I'd like you to put it off until the spring. Give the people on the street a chance to bring any utilities into their property that they want. No one's had, I haven't had that chance. Okay, there's nothing worse than doing a street over if you insist upon a street and having the cable company or the gas company come up and make a mess, and that's done everywhere and everybody sees it. When you do a street over, you should take care of the underneath first. Give the people a chance to put curb stoats in like I did. So I'm dead against it. I think this is wrong on so many levels. Thank you. I'm Kathy Lyons. Jim, I forwarded you some pictures of the street this morning. Yeah. Yes. Okay, so in front of my house where we've done the work, it's no different than the two houses that are being excluded. So I wanna know why they're being excluded because that makes the pile of money going to a shorter number of homes. If you have a condo and there's a special assessment because there's a root damage, you don't just say the people on the left pay for the special assessment. The whole street pays. So you can't pick and choose who pays. It's either the whole street or it's not. And the pictures show that in front of our house, it's the exact same situation as the other two. So why two are being culled out? I have no idea. And who's making that decision? There's been zero discussion about doing this street over, maybe with sending in an application here, but not to every neighbor. So not sure who's running the show, but it's completely not there. Thank you very much. Thank you. The only reason why I knew about it the last time I was here was because the people next door house had told me about it. Nobody ever came, told me anything. And then I got stuff in the paper. This is wrong at so many levels. And the two that are culled out said no as well. We said no, so I don't know. Anyone else said no, but you can't take two nos out and then say, oh yeah, here's a new pile. We'll shake it up that way. Understood. Thank you very much for your comments. Thank you. Is there anyone on Zoom who's raised their hand for this item that was just to be heard? We'll go back to the room if there's others on this. I saw one earlier, but they've taken their hand down. Yeah, we have Sanjeev. So Ms. Marv, you bring Sanjeev into the meeting. Good evening, Sanjeev. You should be able to unmute your microphone and camera, good evening, sir. Good evening. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I just want to make three comments. I know there is a... Say your name and where you live for the record, please. Yes, thank you. This is Sanjeev, I live on 10 Oldham Road. This is a part of the road where, this is part of the road where there is no road in front of my house. There is a, I measured it with a tape before coming into this meeting. There is a six to seven inch hot holes in one places and eight inch hot holes in other places. I can also send the pictures for the select board if, so everybody gets a perspective idea. And I do understand that the top of the road is drivable and the top of the road is, there are some hot holes and some of them fix themselves. And I tried to fix three times in front of my house and I've only been living here for less than a year. But this is absolutely not drivable. Many of us have like flat tires and car hit, the flooring of the car hits the road and there's a lot of damage. There's a bicyclist who fell in front of the house and I have a small baby and it is not a stroller friendly and it's not a wheelchair accessible today because you just can't go over the hot holes. You will be just stuck here. So this is primarily a safety issue. The second one is, some of us has raised today that the road will be a highway. I have never seen any studies where or there is no way, this is not a cut through road. This does not connect to major intersections. There is no way this can be a highway. The second one is there's a speed limit. People generally go slow in the neighborhoods because children are playing. We all have science outside and there are a lot of spy skills and naturally people in our LinkedIn are anywhere else, you know, drive like slowly. Third one, last time we have confirmed that there is no applications due for any road work that is planned. I think last time one of the town managers have confirmed that there's nothing due that road needs to be dug up. So there's no issues about it. The fourth point I also want to make is on the communication front. I also learned from Jim who has sent us emails about the upfront payment and asking our permission, whether we are able to paint upfront or not and all of us has voted yes. So looking all of this perspective, just to summarize, 11 majority, I think more than 75% of us are in favor of the road because we are all rational to see this road absolutely needs work. And yes, we don't need work, maybe like the very top end of the street, but majority of us agree that this road needs work and it is long overdue. It's only going to get worse in winter and there is going to be no road for us to even drive or get to our home in this beautiful neighborhood. So I asked the board here that agree with majority of the holders who are willing to pay upfront, all of them are upfront and get us a road in this construction here. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anybody else in the room? Who wants to make a comment? I think Ms. Kenner, I think let's go with all the other folks first and then if any board members want to hear further from the proponent, we'll do that. Is there anybody else new in the room here? Okay, we also have Dan and Terry Shine who raised their hands in Zoom and let's go ahead and bring in Richard Kurtz as well, but we'll start with the Shines. See which of the Shines we have. You can unmute yourself and go on camera. In fact, it might be Dan. All right. Good evening. I think we're here. Yeah, we got you. Oh, I got you both. Great, great. Thank you. Thank you very much. And just introduce yourselves and where you live please. All right. Dan Shine and Terry Shine, 23 Oldham Road. We've been on this street since 1991. And with me as well is Frank Roche. Frank is at 19 Oldham Road. He had some difficulties with his computer. So he come over to my house so he could watch and participate. So with that being said, I want to thank Ms. Cantor for all the work she's done because she was the only one that really took the bull by the horns and really moved this in a direction to hopefully be resolved. Couple of things. I have a couple of questions. My first preference is to do the street up to Country Club Lane like we originally proposed. And my understanding was from our last meeting that we had enough votes to do the street up to Country Club Lane, even with the few people that had decided not to support it. So I guess that's one question I have. Why we are not looking forward to doing it up to Country Club Lane and sectioning a piece out that eventually is gonna be a problem? It's eventually gonna end up with potholes and we're gonna have the same problem at the other end of the street. So I'd like to know why we're not, the board is not going to vote on the original proposal. Secondly, do we have a name of the contractor that's going to do the work? And we're exactly in front of my house is the line gonna be drawn to stop with the new surface. Because I don't wanna have to drive over a ridge every day to get into my driveway. So one of the reasons why I think it should be done to Country Club Lane. With that being said, Mr. Chairman, I don't know if it's possible if Mr. Roche can speak or not. Sure. You know? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Shine. Well, since he's very nearby, we'll go to Mr. Roche. Good evening, sir. Just to say your name. Frank Roche, 19 Old Ham Road. I just wanna assure anyone that's thinking about this. I've been here in Old Ham Road for 42 years. I was here in 1990, the last time we voted to do the road. And it was done then and it was brand new and cars went a little faster because right now you can barely drive up the road. But it didn't become a raceway. It didn't become a cutthroat. It doesn't go from any place to any place. You're not avoiding traffic light or anything like that. So if anyone has any fears about it becoming a cutthroat or a raceway or more congestion, it's just gonna be the same people using the road. They'll just be able to get up and down it easier. And I wanna thank Lainey for her hard work because she's done quite a bit and she's really stuck with it and it hasn't been easy. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Mr. Schein, when we're done with public comment, I wrote down your questions and I'll start with the town managers so we can get some answers for you for the board's benefit. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you gentlemen. Do we have anybody else in the room who has not just yet spoken on this or on Zoom who'd like to address the board? Ms. Marr. We do have Richard Quartz. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, we do. Richard, my apologies, please go ahead, sir. Introduce yourself and your address. Richard Quartz, 9 Oldham Road. One of the benefits of going after all of my neighbors who've spoken so eloquently on this topic, I don't have a whole lot to add. I just wanted to let the board know that I'm in favor of paving the road. I concur with my neighbors about the state of the street and it's a very, very dangerous road and I look forward to paving it as soon as possible. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Okay, so seeing no other public comment, I think we'll close the public hearing portion of this. If we needed further information with their proponent, that'll be at the discretion of the board to ask that question or the town manager or Attorney Hyde. So I'll start with the town manager to see if you had any insight into Mr. Stein's questions about the rationale. I suspect some of this might be a financial consideration for the funding issues that you talked about but the proposal of this trimmed down and also if you happen to know the name of the contractor. So thank you, Mr. Chair. As to the second question, and forgive me, I did not communicate directly with the contractor so Laney might be able to fill in any details but I believe it was E.J. paving in as to the first question, believe part of the decision was made, number one, given the opposition to the two directly opposing the butters as it related to that section of road but also because at that upper portion, the condition of the road was in a better condition than the remainder of the stretch but I think any further detail might best come from the proponent. All right, so I'll turn to my colleagues then for discussion if you want further information from the proponent, you can request that I think at this point. So do I have any questions, comments from the board? Question from Mr. Herd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, Ms. Cantrell, I think you've been requested. Yeah, but you need to come up and come up to the table, yeah. And wait and go ahead and come up and then but I think at this point we're doing board questions for the proponent so go ahead and have a seat and see if the board has questions. No, I want to follow the protocol here so it's really fair to everybody. So let's start with Mr. Herd and he'll give you the opportunity if you want to know some information. Thank you, I just wanted to clarify, we touched on this in the last meeting. I think I understand why from last meeting why the top is left off. I think the clear answer to Mr. Shine's question regarding scope is we don't decide scope. We have the ability to change it but the scope is brought to us by the proponents. So we're just looking at what's in front of us. We now have a request for the shorter amount with yeses which Mr. Shine is a yes on this. So this document that we have in front of us so I don't know if there was some communication with that but what was the rationale for last meeting there was some discussion about the bottom old ham road being in tough shape to the extent that the rebuttal to it being highway was well the bottom will slow them down cause it's in bad shape. So was there a reason why that? That wasn't my rebuttal. I know, I know it wasn't. I'm always. Is there a reason why that those neighbors were not approached to do the whole? They were approached with my initial door to door to get the first step I was told that I had to get two thirds of the folks on our street to sign saying that they wanted the street. They weren't signing saying they were going to go ahead and pay for it or that they were going to in the next step approve it but one of the, let's see the out of the one to I think there were four butters involved or five out of them only one two people signed. I was never able to contact one of the one of them is a rental and the owner lives in Boston. Twice I contacted the renter and he tried to get in touch with the owner. He never responded and the others just weren't interested. So it meant at that point that given the two thirds vote required to get the whole state done that if we included those members who were potentially going to say no in the long run who some of whom already said no, we felt that the whole thing would fall apart. That would have been our ideal. I mean, that's what we set out to do. Yeah. And I in the law allows for as attorney I explained at the last meeting for a section of a road to be included. So you are following the protocol. I just, you know, we've had instances where we've done this for say a block but generally not you kind of cut off a little bit of a street here and there. But I mean, again, you follow the protocol not saying that anything nefarious happened. I did speak to the rep from EJ and suggested to them while they were there if they wanted to knock on doors and ask those folks, do you want to buy in on your own? Please feel free. Okay. And I don't know what they're going to do. Okay. That was my only question. Okay. Thank you. Anything else, Mr. Any other questions from the board? Comments? Because at this point. So I think again, everybody's had their say so the only other time we would have someone come back as if a member of this board wants to hear from another member of the public. Otherwise we've finished the protocol. That's the only way we can do this efficiently without having kind of an extended back and forth. So that's the protocol I'm going to stick with. Attorney Haleim. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I did want to note one thing for the board's attention that was raised last time that continues to be the case. Under the revised proposal, the board's vote still needs to be contingent upon receipt of sufficient funds from the butters. My understanding is that 10 of the 11 butters are committed to putting in sufficient funds to get the meet the one third requirement. As Mr. Dr. Corsi pointed out, we don't necessarily have something in our bylaw that perfectly reflects that kind of arrangement. But the reality is the project won't happen unless we receive sufficient funds. So your vote is contingent upon the receipt of sufficient funds in order to proceed with the project. Thank you. So at this point, I welcome you to further discussion or motions from the board. Mr. Diggins. So for me, this is pretty much by the numbers. I mean, we're following the rules. I mean, they've done what they need to do in order to get the betterment funds. So I would have to have some compelling reason to go against me the bylaw as it stands for betterments. I mean, to not be a motion to approve, you know. And that would be contingent upon the receipt of sufficient funds to upper each new home, too. Second. Second by Mr. Herd. Any further discussion by the board? Okay, we have a motion to approve the revised betterment scope with the provision that was noted by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Herd. Well, now I'll take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Is it 5-0? Thank you. So ordered. So now move to item 9 for approval of food vendor license for number one taste at 165 Mass Avenue. And I believe the proponents are here. Please come on up. Good evening. Very well. Thank you. Introduce yourselves and where you live and then explain your application for the board. Good evening. My name is Jack Simon, your current owner for number one taste. Yeah. My name is Han Qingxi, so I'm new owner at number one taste. And what is it they request before the board tonight? They request the transfer ownership over to Ms. Han Qing. And we do have your application materials in the public record, which is available to the board here and to the public. So thank you for doing business in Arlington to both of you. We're very glad to have you here. I'll now turn to my colleagues for any questions or motions. Second. Just. Yep. Mrs. Mohan. I can just do one housekeeping. Yes, please. Obviously, for on the application, it will read Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m., we'll add a.m. to 12 a.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m., we'll add a.m. to 1 a.m. And Sunday, 12 p.m., we'll add p.m. to 9 30 p.m. It's just those first three times didn't have a a.m. or p.m. So I just want to make sure that, you know, I don't want anyone to think that you only wanted to be open for an hour or anything like that and welcome. I'm very happy for you. I know how difficult the restaurant business is and how it's really a family commitment, whether it's your actual family or your work family. And I do appreciate that. I'm very excited for you because I can just tell by you sitting at that table that you're right on the edge, ready to go. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mr. And you're getting a great business, but I live in East Arlington. So I've been to the one place, so it's a it's a very good place. I mean, I didn't know you stayed up until one. It's great, you know, so I'll take advantage of that. You know, so so yeah, thanks for this business, not only in Arlington, but East Arlington, because it's really competitive out there now. You know, so yeah, yeah, we're going to definitely stay. We're going to work closely with Ms. Hanching and, you know, continue to consult and, you know, further the business and kind of keep growing with the town. Thank you for their comments. Thank you again. We're delighted that the business is continuing and we wish you the best of success. So on a motion by Mr. Heard and seconded by Mr. Decorsi. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Those unanimous. Congratulations. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. All right. Moving to item 10, get this in front of me. This is for approval, a no parking sign on West Street. So the reason I'm on to give this is just by happenstance, the residents contacted me and I was able to work with Mr. Alessi and the town manager and the staff to get it. This was a very simple request and you have a memo from Mr. Alessi, a transportation director. He is here tonight if you have questions, board members, so we can happy to call him up if you do. But the basics of it are described in the residents two emails to me that I forwarded on and then Mr. Alessi outlined how he pulled together his working group. He is an informal working group member of the police department and the public works. And they did some very quick research, found that it was an appropriate request, came back to the residents with the specific language that is in his memo and since I was in the conduit, I went ahead and forwarded that to the residents. Each of them emailed to me affirmatively and said that that is exactly right. I want to note that the two residents particularly who abut the no parking zone are both affirmatively in favor of that specific language. So Mr. Town Manager, do you have anything to add on that or Attorney Hyme, you're raising hand. I'm sorry, I just before we go too further Mr. Corsi, did you have something that you wanted to, I'm sorry. No, not on this one. I do have something, but I don't have to leave the room to do it. Mr. Fede. Mr. Chair, nothing substantive to add beyond thanks to Mr. Alessi for addressing this so quickly internally with staff, seemingly simple solution to a pretty significant problem. Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll move approval of the no parking signs and I know we have a bunch of things on the agenda tonight, but I'm going to digress for a moment. I'm very familiar with West Street having grown up on West Street and lived there until 1983 and I was concerned about 237 and 243 Appleton Street, the two houses on the corner with the support of those two owners, happy to support this and I will note it's been gone for a long time. There's one remaining neighbor on West Street from when I lived there, that's Betty Jacovides at five West streets. I'd like to say hello to her. She's the one last remaining neighbor from the 70s and early 80s, so thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that we call that an expert witness. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Second. Write that down before I forget because you know that I will. Mr. Vickens, I was trying to remember what else TAC might have done regarding West Street and Appleton Street, there's something that happened regarding that area, but I can't find it. It's just, I just can't find it. It's not a big deal. It's not relevant to this, although I didn't notice in the letter from Officer Roteau that there was an issue regarding hedges, the hedges of me affecting the tight lines, I mean, and we see that, I mean, we also see it with respect to, I mean, just walking down sidewalks, I mean, in general, I mean, I don't know, I mean, if that's ever been something in the town has tried to tackle, I mean, I know it would be sticky, and I often tell people, I mean, more so lately, it's like we don't want to make bylaws, I mean, that are practically impossible to enforce, you know, and so I don't want to say head down that road, but still, I wish we could come up with some way to try to recommend to people that have hedges, I mean, well, they need to be hedged, you know, I mean, sometimes frequently, because otherwise it's really an obstruction, I mean, to people either trying to drive or more so trying to walk down the street, so I don't, I mean, I still very much in favor of stop signs, and I don't know if the hedges weren't an issue, whether we still want them, but I just wanted to raise that because I did come up in the letter and it is a problem in several places. That's it, thank you. Thank you, sir. Any further discussion? Okay, so we have a motion to approve the no parking sign as out, the language outlined in Mr. Alessi's memo. I also want to add my thanks to Mr. Alessi and his team for the rapid turnaround. I think that this is a really good example of kind of a simpler job that our professionals can handle and turn around quickly and I still greatly value the work that TAC does, but we hand them a lot. We hand them a lot of really complicated projects so the extent that we can kind of help them out by using another track on this, I think is a win for everybody. So we have that motion and Mr. D'Corsi, seconded by Mrs. Mohan. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It is unanimous five, nothing vote. Thank you very much. I'm going to now take an item out of order again and this is just for practical purposes. I really should have ordered this a little differently on the agenda, so I'll own this, but I think that I'm gonna take item 12 now, the article, warrant article hearing, just because I think it's going to be a shorter item than item 11, which I think will deserve some extended discussion and there's a complicated presentation. So I'll invite Ms. Holly Fox to come up and Mr. D'Corsi. Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Just before we start, for item 12 and 11, I'm actually going to recuse myself from both of the discussions. Item 12, fossil fuel consistent with my practice when this has come up in the past because of legal work I do for National Grid. And if I could, if sorry, the attorney, I might want to state the reason for item 11 to Mass Ave, Appleton Safety Project Design, again consistent with my prior practice. My sister-in-law is a business owner on Mass Ave between Forest Street and Appleton Street, and for that reason, that presents a conflict, so I'm gonna recuse myself and return after the next two warrant articles. Thank you, Mr. D'Corsi. Do you want to just do your board and staff announcements? Yeah, we thought the course was to see if I could. Was that board and staff or boring staff? Yeah, that's right. I told Mr. D'Corsi, you know, bring a puzzle. My apologies for jumping the gun, Mr. D'Corsi. We appreciate your diligence, as always, Attorney Heim. Okay, where are we? Ms. Fox, hello, you're on. Please introduce yourself, and I believe your presentation for us. My name is Talia Fox. I'm the sustainability manager for the town of Arlington. And I believe we have Amos Meeks on the line as well, who is a member of our Clean Energy Feature Committee. Yes, Ms. Marv, you could bring Mr. Amos into the meeting so he's, Amos is available. And we also have a presentation to share briefly on warrant article 14. Mr. Chair. Attorney Heim. May I also just remind the board that Deputy Town Council Attorney Cunningham will be serving as the legal advisor on this particular warrant article. Excellent. And is Mr. Cunningham present in the Zoom at this point? I know that he's, okay, you can go ahead and bring him in as well, please. Yes, as well. He's in, okay, great. Oh, there we go, yes. Thank you all. Well, thank you all for your time. Amos is going to start our presentation this evening. Great. Amos, you can unmute yourself. Great. Is there a way for, I don't know if, I don't see the presentation from here. I don't know if it's being projected or not. Screen chairing privileges or would you like me to bring up the presentation? I think Talia will be finishing it off. So probably just bring it up there. That would be great. Sorry for any miscommunication there. Just giving out a second one. Yes, we'll just take a moment, take your time, take your notes, Mark. This is the, happy to take a little extra time to accommodate the additional access to government that hybrid meetings are bringing us. We're still learning. In this time, I can go ahead and introduce myself. Sure, please. My name is Amos Neeks. I live at 25 B. Terrace in Arlington. I'm also a member of the Clean Energy Future Committee as well as a town meeting member for how to be sink-free. Great, so first of all, thank you to the members of the select board for your time this evening and for considering this warrant article. So unfortunately, the chair of the CEFC, Ryan Kavosky, could not attend tonight. Normally he would be the one to give this sort of presentation. But when he presents about this, he would like to talk about the journey that we're all on together towards our net-zero goals. And warrant article 14 is one, we think, important piece of that journey. So warrant article 14 asks the special town meeting to vote to amend title six of the town bylaws to add a new section titled fossil fuel-free demonstration for the purpose of restricting and prohibiting new building construction and major renovation projects that are not fossil fuel-free. So Kali and I will be providing this presentation some more background detail about the warrant article, what we would like to, what we intend to propose to town meeting. Next slide. So for some background, this is all sort of a part of and driven by the town's net-zero action plan. This net-zero action plan that was passed in 2021 provides a roadmap of actions that the town can take to work towards our goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Overall, I think that the main strategy of this is to try to electrify everything as much as we can while simultaneously heating the grid. And so a critical, and I personally think one of the hardest and slowest pieces of this is to electrify our building stock. And hence sort of buildings are a priority measure in the action plan. And I think the first step towards this electrification is to stop making the problem worse. That is to not be building new buildings that will then later on need to be undergo costly renovations to become fossil fuel-free down the line. And so the goal here is to prohibit those fossil fuel using buildings being built in the first place and instead builds fossil fuel-free construction. Next slide. So fortunately, Arlington has already taken clear action on this priority. So in 2020, 92% of town meeting members voted to enact what was then referred to with the clean-heat by-law, which was in the form of a home-world petition to the state legislature, asking them to allow us to pass a by-law that would effectively prohibit fossil fuels in new construction and gut renovation. But without passing that home-world petition, this by-law would be preempted by state laws and regulations in the matter. And the state never actually approved this. Instead, it authorized the creation of a fossil fuel-free building demonstration program, which Talia will now go into. Switch over. Great. Thanks, Amos. So in 2022, as Amos mentioned, then Governor Baker signed into law an act driving clean energy and offshore wind. This act authorizes the Department of Energy Resources, or DOER, to create a municipal fossil fuel-free building demonstration program, enabling up to 10 municipalities to implement fossil fuel-free ordinances or by-laws. Please go to the next slide. The demonstration program is a direct result of the efforts of municipalities like Arlington to pass clean-heat by-laws a few years ago. And the demonstration program is also the only way that these laws can go into effect. Our home-world petition, requesting the authority to pass a clean-heat by-law, was never approved. And so our by-law itself was never approved by the Attorney General and never went into effect. So in order to participate in the demonstration program and prevent the installation of fossil fuel infrastructure, which was the Will of Town meeting, we have to re-adopt our clean-heat by-law. So in addition to developing the regulations for the demonstration program, DOER created a model rule that municipalities are strongly encouraged to adopt. And in fact, in our application for the demonstration program, submitted in September earlier this month, the town was required to explain all of the differences between the proposed by-law and the model rule. Next slide, please. So accordingly, one of the goals of the proposed updates to the 2020 clean-heat by-law is alignment with DOER's model rule. And this model rule includes important references to the specialized stretch energy code which town meeting voted to adopt earlier this year. A second goal of the proposed updates to the 2020 clean-heat by-law is alignment with advances in technology and policy that have occurred in the past three years, which I'll explain further. The next slide summarizes the proposed substantive updates to the 2020 clean-heat by-law. First, the updated by-laws enforcement framework for new construction references the specialized code by eliminating the pathways in the specialized code that allow the use of fossil fuels. Second, the updated by-law redefines major renovation to align square footage thresholds with the specialized code and DOER model rule. These two updates are intended to streamline implementation for the town's Inspectional Services Department and facilitate our acceptance into the demonstration program. They're not expected to change the number of buildings that would fall under the by-laws requirements, which I confirmed this afternoon with our Director of Inspectional Services. Update number three is the removal of the exemption for indoor cooking appliances. This proposed update aligns with the state's model rule and it responds to the growing evidence regarding the negative impacts to human health of gas stoves, including the statistic that gas stoves are responsible for 15.4% of childhood asthma cases in Massachusetts. Where alternatives to gas cooking appliances are financially infeasible or impractical, a waiver process is available. Fourth, the updated by-law contains a new square footage threshold for the exemption for multifamily building domestic hot water that aligns with the threshold for multifamily properties in the stretch code. And it sets a deadline for the sunset of the exemption that aligns with expected market conditions and technology availability. Finally, the effective date of the by-law has been changed from July 2022 or six months following DOER approval to three months following DOER approval in consultation with the Director of Inspectional Services. This updated effective date also acknowledges the time that has passed already since the initial by-law was voted on and the significant advances that have occurred in all electric building technology since then. And additional details on the proposed updates are provided in the memo dated September 22. I'd like to underscore that much of the by-laws content and intent has been retained. The by-law still does not apply to building additions or changes of use. It retains verbatim processes for waivers and appeals and it retains common sense exemptions vetted by the community prior to the passage of the clean heat by-law which are listed on this slide. Next slide please. So how will this by-law impact Arlington? Well, it will prohibit the installation of new fossil fuel piping and appliances and new construction major renovations with major renovation being defined as listed here as a work area greater than 50% of the existing condition floor area with some nuances for residential versus commercial buildings. And to get a sense for roughly how many buildings this might affect on an annual basis, I'm listing here our 2022 development numbers which our Director of Inspectional Services suggested are representative of development occurring in town in recent years. So in 2022 the law would have applied to 24 new homes, 42 major renovations, two new commercial buildings and also two commercial major renovation projects which I also confirmed with the Director this afternoon. And so this program represents a relatively small but not insignificant opportunity to avoid locking in new sources of greenhouse gas emissions in town and avoid costly retrofits down the line all in pursuit of our net zero goals. Thank you and I'm happy to take any questions on this warrant article. Thank you very much Ms. Fox for your work as always. So at this point I will turn to the board for questions. So this is a warrant article hearing. So I'll first see if there's any initial questions or comments that the board members want to make. Then we'll see if there's a public comment and then we'll final round of board motions and comments as usual. Any questions at this stage? Okay, saying none. This is now a public hearing for the warrant article and just for the public's benefit, this is for warrant article for special time meeting which commences next month. The first night of that meeting is October 17th. And so the select board's role in this process is that the select board is responsible for making a recommendation to town meeting about how we suggest that they vote. So if the select board supports this motion then supports this change, then the board would recommend a positive action to town meeting, perhaps with conditions. If the board doesn't we recommend a vote of no action but just to be clear, it's town meeting's decision. So our role at this point is to give advice to town meeting about what we recommend and it's part of the outcome of this hearing. So let's now turn to the public. If there's anybody in the room who wishes to comment on this article. And if you are in Zoom and wish to comment please raise your hand again for this article. People a moment in Zoom land. Okay, I don't see any. Ms. Mardie, you agree? I agree. Okay, very good. So let's go back to the final round here. I feel like a sportscaster. Mr. Heard. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I think the board unanimously supported this back in 2020 when this came ahead. I mean, I think it's a great step towards the town's goals. I did a renovation a couple of years ago before any of these laws were in place and it would have triggered this law and I still would have complied because all the technology that was best suited for my house at the time was electric heating and cooling up the stairs. And we already had electric ranges. You know, I think that's the one issue where people will push back a little bit until that you kind of peel back the onion and see that in the past 50 years there really hasn't been any technological advances in gas ranges, but there's been huge strides on electric ranges because that's just the, you know, where the current technology is pointing us and you know, I think it's better in some instances. And when we had talked, you know, I was a little concerned about certain restaurants that would hinder redevelopment of say under the mixed use law of certain areas that could no longer have a restaurant, but you explain the waiver process to me and make sense. And I think in certain situations where it makes sense for, you know, gas ranges to be in a commercial setting, not necessarily in the residential setting, then we have an avenue that either a landowner or a business owner can kind of go through to get an exemption. So happy to move positive action and look forward to further discussion at town meeting. Thank you, Mr. Hearn. Second. Second. I appreciate, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate, yeah, I appreciate all the time that you spent with me. You and Ryan, I'm forgetting his last name. It was a really pleasant conversation with me, you know, and got to just kind of tease out a lot of my curiosity questions, so I don't have to ask them here, you know, so, so, and yeah, the only thing I have to discuss is in the comments part, you know, of this week. So I think this is what happens when you're in your second term is that you begin to care about like certain firms in the comments, you know, but I would like to say, instead of this like board urges, we, you know, just like board recommends or advises, because when I urge and so like, man, if I urge something, you say, no, it's like I'm having problems, because usually I'm hurting, I really need it, but in this case, you know, we are recommending that we're advising, you know, of town meeting to do something. So that's all, I mean, maybe I'll have like a chance, you know, in our next meeting to talk about that. So that's all, I mean, this is all, this is all good stuff, you know, we need to do it, you know, I mean, power goes out, but gas blows up, I mean, and so I think me, let's just get away from gas as much as we can. I don't top of that, I mean, there's the environmental aspect, which is all good. So we have to change the way we do things, you know, and this is, I would like to do this part. That's it, thank you. I'm in déjà vu. We have the same conversation, Attorney Hamm about the word urge before. I think we talked about this in the spring. We did? We'll have to remember that. It's not going to be a problem for long. I didn't remember that, I'm sorry. No, no, I'm not saying that for you, I think we have to have a board policy to not have the word urge in our recommended votes. I think Attorney Cunningham, have you taken that note? I believe you'll be writing the board comment. No more urges, please. The board will be contained in surges. Thank you, sir. The board yearns for you to... Well, yeah, or bags. Let's get down right, at least a week in here if we don't watch out. Any further discussion from the board? I will add, you know, I think this really, the revisions are really strong and I appreciate that the extent that they reflect the changes in technology and state law. And, you know, I agree with my colleague, Mr. Herd, as somebody who did a major renovation and ended up choosing induction cooking, kind of on faith. And I actually, my husband and I end up preferring it to gas. Like we're sort of a never going back kind of people and the costs are coming down. The efficiency and the speed are phenomenally better than the gas. And, you know, I make my morning tea. I think my induction stove every day, because it's really fast. And I think that I really appreciate also the leadership that Amos and Ryan and all the other members that with whom I am privileged to serve as this board's representative to the Clean Energy Futures Committee. This is an astonishing group of people who have a vast amount of knowledge, far exceeding my own. And I continue to learn so very much and am inspired by their commitment professionally and personally to sustainability. And, you know, I think this committee is one of the best things that the town has created. And, you know, and you add to that, Ms. Ricker's wonderful planning department and especially the sustainability program that's led by you, Ms. Fox. I think Arlington is very fortunate indeed. And I'm very proud that this community prioritizes sustainability and, you know, puts its money where its mouth is. So all I wish to say, I'm happy to support the motion. So on a motion by Mr. Herd, seconded by Mrs. Mohan. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Is unanimous for nothing vote with Mr. Decorsi abstaining. Thank you, Ms. Fox. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right, let's now move back to item 11. This is a requested approval of the Massive Appleton Safety and Accessibility Project Conceptual Design. So I think we have some folks from the aforementioned planning department coming up. Good evening, Mr. Leslie. Introduce yourself and colleagues and consultants that you have available for our awareness, both here or in Zoom. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And good evening, select board members. My name is John Alessi. I'm the senior transportation planner in the Department of Planning and Community Development. I'm joined by the director of our department, Claire Vicker and our two, three consultants from StanTech. We have Elise, Donofrio, Aaron Cameron, and Ralph Dinesco here to speak tonight. So I've also, and this is my fault as well. I think, Mr. Feeney, did you wanna make any earlier comments beforehand? Sure, thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy to offer a brief introduction, but our talented team for planning community development will be leading the discussion. So as you mentioned before, the board again this evening is the proposed Massive and Appleton Street redesign. Tonight we are seeking, not necessarily, urging a vote of support for the updated concept design that will be presented shortly. Just wanna note a few things. Obviously, based on feedback from board members, received at the February 27th meeting, various town staff members and our team of consultants have been analyzing various opportunities to re-institute on-street parking, where possible, as well as taking additional time to directly engage the local business community. Admittedly, perhaps to the chagrin of the team due to the additional number of meetings, I have been insistent that we speak directly with impact to the butters to hear concerns, share ideas, analyze potential alternatives, simply to see what is feasible. So with that in mind, the recommended concept design before you tonight is certainly the result of an iterative process that even included multiple assemblies at the Audison for all of the students. You know, I think by, in summary, I think what we'll learn tonight is that here again, as is the root cause with many of Arlington's challenges, is there's just only so much space to work with. And this necessitates trade-offs and compromises. However, we believe the resulting concept that John's gonna present strikes a balance between the various competing interests for that limited space, while still allowing for safe and efficient movement throughout the corridor for all modes. So with that said, and if approved, what would happen, the next step would be, we sort of turn this over to the engineering team so they can work on producing shovel-ready construction documents that we would submit in spring of 2024 for consideration for Max Works construction funding. So with that, I turn it over to John. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Jim. Could we get the slides up, please? Thank you. Sorry. No worries. Thank you. Great, thank you. So again, thank you, select board members for listening to my presentation tonight. I'm here to speak about the MASS-AV, MASS-AV and Appleton Street Safety and Accessibility Corridor Project. At tonight's meeting, I'm going to be giving a background on the project scope, providing an overview of the study's process, reviewing the design goals. I'll be listing the engagement activities, particularly since the last select board presentation, presenting the final concept and changes that have been made since then, and requesting a vote on the final concept so that the town can use grant funding received in a MASS Works grant to design and engineer the final project. Next slide. So as you know, the need for safety and accessibility improvements at the intersection of MASS-AV and Appleton Street came about following the unfortunate death of Charlie Proctor in 2020. When studying the intersection and engaging with residents, the project team was asked to take a broader look at the corridor, which revealed that the area shown between the two arrows is disjointed from the rest of the MASS-AV corridor. It's one of the narrowest sections of MASS-AV and there are safety and accessibility issues that exist beyond one intersection. So the team, so we wanted to look at the corridor as a whole, connecting from Arlington Heights to the East and MASS-AV, so the project scope therefore expanded to create a consistent MASS-AV experience. Next slide, thank you. So feedback received earlier in the process revealed challenges along the corridor, and these include no crossings along MASS-AV near the foot of the rocks, which limits the ability to move between neighborhoods. The short-term design we see today addresses some, but not all neighborhood concerns, and this is made particularly clear to me when I visited the Audison School and I spoke to the crossing guards and I heard their safety concerns for students at this intersection. And we also heard that poor sight lines along the corridors curves lead to crashes or the risk of them, and that the town needs to take action to prevent any crash from occurring where there are businesses, schools, and a church in the vicinity. The project corridor therefore expanded beyond the MASS-AV and Appleton Street intersection to include the area between Richardson Ave to the west and Quinn Road to the east. This allowed the project team to take into consideration the greater context of the area, including businesses, future housing and developments, the church, the Audison School, and more. So this is an overview of the study's process to date, which has led us to the final conceptual design being presented this evening. In spring 2022, the project team analyzed existing conditions, reviewed the area's context, and established goals for the project. In summer 2022 to spring of this year, the team went through several iterations of conceptual designs and engaged with the public further, which culminated in a presentation to the board in February, I believe. This past summer, the team engaged further with stakeholders and continued to refine the conceptual design. Tonight, I'll be presenting on the changes that have been made. And if the concept design is approved this evening, the town's consultants will advance the design to a more granular level that would allow us to apply for another MassWorks grant in the spring to fund construction of the project. So these are the design goals developed earlier in the project that were informed by the town's existing planning documents, resident feedback, and stakeholder engagement. I won't go through all this text, but I'll explain what you'll see in the final design that aligns with these goals. Protecting all roadway users, we would like to construct new traffic signals crosswalks, separated bike lanes, and overall increase visibility for all roadway users to improve safety. Integrating the corridor with local amenities, we'd like to expand the foot of the rock site into a new plaza on Lowell Street, create new space in front of the church, and make a safer connection to one of the town's most cherished resources, the Miniman Bikeway. Supporting the corridor's activity and growth, we'd like to preserve parking where it is most needed to support businesses and allow residents to access this area safely, regardless of whether or not they own a vehicle. And finally, be resilient. We would like to reduce the risk of potential crashes between modes while enhancing the landscape around the project to increase trees and gardens along the corridor, which is identified now as an urban heat island. This is an overview of the engagement performed between March and October, 2022. This included 10 design review committee meetings held between March 22 and 23, a neighborhood listening session, two open houses, stakeholder interviews with schools in the church, and two student assemblies at the Audison School to make sure the design increases safety for Arlington students. All this engagement culminated in the development of a draft conceptual design presented at the October, 2022 Open House. At this meeting, we heard support for traffic lights with left turn lanes, protected bike lanes, new crosswalks, and retaining parking where needed. We also heard that we needed more information regarding signal operations, bicycle navigation, crosswalk locations, and parking reductions. All these requests required trade-offs. With limited right-of-way, the project team had to balance the needs of key stakeholders while keeping in mind the design goals I mentioned before. The project team worked to make sure that we are not outweighing one request over another, but rather integrating them together. This is why we tried to repurpose as much curb space as possible to create a separated bike lane or retain parking on the north side of Massa for local businesses, creating left turn lanes, and retaining street trees where possible. So in February, a conceptual design was presented to this board, and I believe I have it incorrectly marked on the presentation, so please excuse that. But since then, the project team has updated the concept design based on comments received from board members, residents, businesses, and local stakeholders. And the engagement included a third open house, a meeting with the developer for the 1165R Massa of Housing Development, an update to the Audison School in the Arlington School District, an update meeting for all businesses along the corridor, which was advertised through email and by walking down the entire corridor and providing a postcard invitation. And we also presented at TAC and ABAC meetings. So the town worked with our consultants to analyze every design request, including adding more parking, making adjustments to traffic signals, improving access to side streets, moving crosswalks, and adjusting sidewalk designs. So with that, I'd like to go over the final conceptual design through the corridor. So this is the western portion of the corridor at Richardson's Ave in the Duncan Donuts, and I'll move my way down eastward. I'll talk about the project's key design features, as well as the changes we have made since the last select board presentation. So the key design features are marked with pins, and they relate to the design goals that I explained before. So new to this design here, we've added nine additional parking spaces to the left of the image, and we did so by narrowing the sidewalk to fit in the spaces. But from the previous design, we carried over the realign Lowell Street so we could include a plaza that will be used to extend the foot of the rocks, and a new crosswalk at Clark and Richardson to connect parking and businesses on the northern curb. So new to this portion of the design, and this is an additional parking space for the businesses between Appleton Place and Forest Street, and we did so by shortening the curb extension at the intersection. And we've also reopened Appleton Place to one-way traffic. This was originally proposed to be only open to emergency access in the previous design. So opening up this street will allow for additional parking opportunities on Appleton Place and Burden Street. Carried over from the previous design is the redesign of the MBT bus stops, a new traffic signal with a dedicated left turn lane, protected bike lanes, a new plaza space in front of the church, and four enhanced crosswalks that increase safety for pedestrians, particularly, Audison School students. Next slide. So new to this design is the modification of the new traffic signal at Massav, Forest, and Burden. So the project team engaged directly with the 1165R Massav housing development and its engineering team. Based on those conversations, we have incorporated the driveway, which is marked with the red pen, into the traffic signal. And we did this because, we did this by moving the stop bar back, and then this ensures continuous access to the driveway for the future residents of the housing development, but also the businesses there. And it also ensures that there's a dedicated phase for the businesses that use that driveway as an egress to the site. And from the previous design, we carried over the improved connection to the Miniment Bikeway, bump outs to shortened pedestrian crossings to insular vehicles, and we've also increased visibility along the corridor. Next slide. So this is the eastern most part of the project ending at Quinn Road. So new to this design is the Quinn Road crosswalk you can see at the bottom there. That has been moved from the western side to the eastern side of the intersection, and this allowed us to include one final parking space. And carried over from this design is that we've preserved parking where it's needed the most on the north side of Mass Ave. So in summary, since the previous Select Board presentation, the project team has integrated the following changes. We've added 11 parking spaces throughout the corridor, which is the maximum we can fit without sacrificing safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. We've incorporated the driveway to the 1165R Mass Ave housing development and other businesses into the Mass Ave forest burden traffic signal, providing a dedicated signal phase for site egress. We've reopened Appleton Place to one way traffic to preserve access to the church and provide additional parking on side streets. We've moved the crosswalk and curb extension at Quinn Road here to the east side of the intersection to maintain one parking space directly outside of DeVito's funeral home. And finally, we've incorporated the driveway design of the approved Hotel Lexington Hospitality Project at the corner of Clark Street in Mass Ave. So with the final conceptual design presented, I'd like to request that this board vote on the final conceptual design. And if approved, the town's consultants will advance the design to a more granular level that would allow us to apply for another Mass Works grant next spring to fund construction of the project in the future. So with that, the project team and I, our consultants from StandTech would be happy to enter. Any questions you have about the design? And I'd like to thank you for your time this evening. Thank you very much. Any closing comments from the town manager or any other members of the team for the board? Okay, so we will conduct this with public comment period. So similar to a public hearing, what I'll do is first invite any initial comments or questions or statements from the board. Then we'll invite the public to make comments. There'll be a time limit of three minutes for each member of the public to make their comments. Then we'll final board discussion in any potential motions. So Mrs. Mahun. Just two questions and thank you Mr. Alessi and gotten some good reports on Ms. DeNafrio from a former colleague who sings your praises. And thank you to our planning director, Ms. Rickery and the rest of the team for doing this. And I do appreciate, I know it's really hard to take all these moving pieces that we have. First, the initial need, the area and then the different players, the mass work grants, the town of Allington, the consultants and then throw on top of that 20 to 30 public hearings and various venues. And I do appreciate, especially with St. Athanasia's outreach in the Otteson Middle School. And I think going to the traffic supervisors, they told me about it afterwards. That they're really, they see everything and I don't wanna make light of it, but they're out there all the time. So just two points and I apologize for not availing myself before this meeting tonight for that. On the Appleton Place Street area, and I understand you've gone back so that it will be not just emergency vehicles, it also will be for all kinds of modes of travel, including vehicular and parking. Am I correct that I know that St. Athanasia's, the church on their own initiative put up signs across four or five different residents' driveways because people were parking there making it impossible for people to get out of those driveways? Am I correct that those signs will survive the design and or if they have to come down, they'll go back up? I think it's my understanding. I believe that's outside of the scope of this project and that's the first I've heard of this. I don't know the issue. I haven't had any background on it so I don't feel comfortable speaking to it. That's fine. If you could just know that those are there. I don't see that they're there to be taken down, but I know that originally it was just emergency access only. It's gone back to what it is. You've incorporated parking in there, but with those signs up there, that was a solution that we worked on. And then my, why did I just blank out? Oh, in terms, one of the other things that I've heard from everybody out there, whether you're on foot, on pedal, whether it's a bicycle, scooter, or vehicle, is especially at the Odyssey Middle School and on the weekends, Greek church and Greek school activities is the solar glare issue of which you have no control over, but in terms of anything that's up there with traffic signals and or signage, et cetera, obviously that has been taken into account. Absolutely. So one of the key tenants of the project was making sure that there are clear turning movements for vehicles that do not conflict with any vulnerable road users in response to the unfortunate death of Charlie Proctor. So within that specific area, there's a left turn lane from Mass Ave onto either Appleton Street or Appleton Place that will have a dedicated light and the crosswalks will not be on at the same time, nor will the bicycle signals to ensure that there are no potential conflicts to make sure we are avoiding any risks of crashes with the solar glare in that area. And I know initially when I met with you, Mr. Alessi, we were talking about during the week, Odyssey Middle School students crossing by Mass and Forest, as well as on the weekend, pedestrians crossing when they have to hit the laundromat or anything else. And I know that you took in those initial comments and I think I see them incorporated in here in terms of going forward because just like anyone, young or old, but I do know sometimes the younger you are, you just think you're indestructible and I've seen so many near misses there and not just kids, sometimes adults too, wrong place to play chicken, but I do appreciate the fact that there have, that has been taken into consideration and everything's being done in this plan that it can. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This phase for the, okay. So let's now turn to the public. So is anybody here on Zoom and wish to make comment on this? Go ahead and raise your hand. We'll put you in the queue and let's start with someone in the room. Raise your hand if you wanna make a three minute comment. Let's start the gentleman in the green sweatshirt here. And I'll have my iPhone timer on. I hope it doesn't chime rudely, but we'll see what we can do here. So just introduce yourself where you live. My name is Barry Jaspin. I live at 11 Campbell Road. I'm a recent convert to high school commuting, but I'm also a driver. I go to bike to work today and I drove to this meeting tonight. I detest traffic as much as anyone else. I love finding a parking spot as much as anyone else, but I can just tell you that bike lanes make a huge difference. I bike into Kendall Square and the bike lanes that Cambridge recently put in, I guess maybe during the pandemic along Beacon and then just recently like just last month on Hampshire Street heading into one Kendall Square are a huge improvement. I don't know, I have no idea whether the final design is net positive or negative. I assume it's not net positive on parking, but how much it's net negative on parking. But I can say that as someone who started bike commuting mostly along through Arlington, I go mostly on the bike path. I now prioritize going to businesses that I can get to on my bike as I'm going to and from work. Any person on a bike that now can ride along this section of Mass Ave is going to have the option of going to those businesses without bringing their car and every customer that doesn't need a car is one more parking spot that's available for anyone else and one more customer for that business that didn't take up 300 something square feet to park a car. So I mean, it should be obvious. I'm strongly in favor of bike infrastructure. I think it's a great idea. And please vote to support it. Thank you. Sir. So I'm going to rotate, alternate between the room and zoom so we can have some as much equity as possible. So let's first turn to bring in Jennifer Lutowski from zoom. Good evening, Ms. Lutowski. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I'm Jennifer Lutowski. I live at 76 Oxford Street. I strongly support this proposed plan for safety improvements along the Mass Ave Appleton corridor. I think the planning department has done a remarkable job of really trying to balance the different needs for different users or the same user at different times of day or days the week. It's, I think it's particularly important to keep the protected bike lanes and the and the improvements to crosswalks and signals there. It is, it's urgent for safety. We all know about the Charlie, the fellow who was killed and about the other serious accidents that have happened there. The way it is now, it's only a matter of time before that happens again. It's urgent for our climate crisis giving people a realistic attractive option aside from driving everywhere is one of the key factors and one of the key ingredients we need to do to really address this historic crisis that we're all facing. So I'll echo the previous speaker's comments that having protected bike lanes makes a world of difference. I rode to my bike to Kendall Square to work just today and the difference between now and a month ago when they started putting in the protected bike lanes. It's night and day. The project isn't even finished yet and it's already makes a huge difference in comfort and safety. The stretches where they have just put the paint but they have not yet placed any of the cones or the bollards instantly there. There were three, four vehicles parked in the bike lane ignoring the new parking spots. Even that simple plastic cone made a world of difference to driver behavior. We will see that one other part on Mass Avenue as well. So with that, I again want to give kudos to the planning department and strongly, strongly urge the select board to approve this plan and let it move ahead for applying for funding and for construction. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Latowski. Let's now go back to the room but Ms. Mara, let's go ahead and bring in our next Zoom person to have on deck. I believe that would be Petru. So who's the next up for the room for comments? Come on up. Name and address for the record, please. And my name is Steve Petrocker. I live on Mystic Street and I just want to echo the comments of the previous people that I'm fully in support of these bike lane improvements and the safety for all our road users, whether it be pedestrians, people on bikes and now we see scooters in the lanes as well and in cars, of course, that intersection at Appleton is kind of narrow. I do pick up my daughter. She goes to Arlington Heights Nursery School and I'm more than happy to not take that left onto Appleton and go around a little bit longer to make it safe for other people. And I'm just, I just want to urge the members of the board to approve it as well. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We'll go back to Zoom now and we have Mr. Saphil. You can unmute yourself, sir. Good evening. Good evening, Arlington Select Board. My name is Petro Sofio and I live at 8 Elmore Street in Arlington. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I am in strong support of this project. 8 Elmore Street is very fairly close to the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Appleton Street and I travel through it several times a day while I'm running or biking or driving. And I've also been involved in this process for a very long time. It's clear that this intersection while it's been improved could still use several many improvements. And I would love Arlington to get the chance to develop and see the power of protected bike lanes and how that could transform this corridor into a place like Stantec has noted. It's a very dangerous corridor, even still today, while the near-term improvements have improved safety. And as a former autism student, I remember just being really scared crossing the street there and I still feel that way today. I go out of my way to avoid it and I don't want to do that because it's right in my neighborhood. I want it to be a place that I'm proud of. So I'm very excited about the work that's been done on this project and I look forward to hopefully its implementation with your support tonight. So thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Let's go back to the room. We have another member of the public. And let's bring in Mr. Thomas Proctor to be on deck for Zoom next. Good evening, sir. Your name and address, please. My name is Daniel Fulop. I live on 55 Mount Vernon Street. I'd like to urge you to vote in favor of this proposal. It seems like a great compromise. I would urge you to keep the protected bike lanes. They're really essential. We actually should have protected bike lanes all along Mass Ave in our town. You know, I was initially coming in here somewhat upset about the additional parking space, but it seems like the team really did an incredible job and balancing the different needs. One of my daughters goes to Audison and that whole area is really, really dangerous and really makes me worry about her safety, walking around there after school, et cetera. So yeah, I would urge you to approve this proposal and really this should have already been done, frankly. Like this has moved incredibly slowly. And but I'm glad that we're here and the town seems to be moving forward with safety improvements. And I would like to see a lot more of this in the future. Thank you, sir. Let's now move to Thomas Proctor. You can unmute yourself and appear in camera, sir. Good evening. Hey there. My name is Thomas Proctor. I live in New York City here today because my brother, Charlie, was killed at this intersection in 2020. He was my inspiration. He was my favorite companion. He was my best friend. I miss him every day. If these proposed changes had been in place three years ago, my brother would be alive today. I hope that you can support these critical safety improvements, both to the applicant intersection and the poorest and low all. I remember I came here with my brother and we noted that there was almost got hooked on Lowell and the improvements as is obviously will help with that. My brother has died. This is not the only process that I've been a part of. And I have been really impressed with the work of the, it's down to Farling and John, the work that Stan Tech has done. It's frankly better than a lot of what other towns are doing. And I hope you can continue that great work. Thank you. Thank you, sir. As we have said before, we're deeply sorry for the loss of your brother and appreciate your continued involvement as Arlington works on these issues. Thank you. Let's turn back to the room. Are there members of the public in the room who would like to comment? Sir, just state your name and address, please. My name is Rataka Wellanki. I live in 21 Adams Street in East Arlington. One of the reasons I love and we as my son, we love living in Arlington is because it's not car dependent. I work in Boston and I commute to work. I bike to work in Boston. I support this plan. I just like to quote some statistics, right? And just explained to everyone why this is so important, why this is such a beginning, right? This is from the National Household Transportation Survey from the federal government. 11 and a half percent of all the trips taken in the United States are by walk or bike, but 20% of all fatalities happen to pedestrians and bikers, right? So just 11 and a half percent walker bike, but 20% of the fatalities are bikers and walkers. So there's a very high chance as a biker or walker, you go outside in this country, you're gonna die compared to being in a car. Now, the reasons are numerous, but one of the biggest reason is poor road design that's gate more towards automobiles. And such proposals are a great start to put people first and save their lives. From this perspective, at this intersection and question today, I myself have had two bad experiences over the last year and a half. I was almost doored around that intersection. A gentleman, a person just opened their pickup trucks door. I had to break all of a sudden, luckily. Another occasion, I was walking with my four-year-old son and the crosswalk, the walks I never appeared there, the crosswalk, despite me pushing the button several times and abandoned walking, because it's just such a complex intersection, didn't want to take a chance with my four-year-olds son, especially after the fatality there. So I hope that this is a first step towards pedestrian and biker safety in the town of Arlington. And we go beyond this just to give an example. I think we can do better than carrying flags to cross the cross streets in this town, especially with no visibility, especially in the evenings and in winter. It's especially hard when vehicles are going on Mass Ave at 25 to 30 miles an hour in these large, big SUVs, right? I think we can do better than that in this town. And I hope this is first step. If you don't do that, I think it's a question of when before we see more fatalities, especially on Mass Ave and Broadway. And not to forget, the Minuteman bikeway, not to be forgotten, it's such a heavily used bikeway, but it's in several places. It's in a state of disrepair. The heaves and the big bumps, they have seen people fall, right? So again, thank you for a lot of work that was done. No, thank you for a lot of volunteers who worked on this and I request the board to take this first small step and also in the future, consider pedestrian and biker safety in this town. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's go back to Zoom. And we have, did you bring someone in already? Oh, good. So we have Sandra Ross. Yeah, they can keep doing that. Yeah, thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you so much to the select board for the opportunity to speak. My name is Sandra Ross and I'm the sister-in-law of Charlie Proctor, Mary Titton. And I did already send an email to the select board so I don't want to repeat myself, but I just want to reiterate my support for this design and thank you so much to Mr. Leslie and the team for what really is an amazing design. And I share some of Tom's thoughts, Tom's thoughts, you know, looking at this design tonight, seeing all the details in the presentation was really quite emotional, looking at it and imagining Charlie, you know, taking his bike ride through that design and that it's very likely that he wouldn't have been killed that day. So, you know, that is obviously very hard to think about on the flip side. It makes me think about how many deaths and serious injuries would be prevented by this design. That's something that's a little hard to wrap your head around. You know, we, for the most part, except for near-misses, we won't ever be aware of the particular deaths and serious injuries that don't happen, you know, because of this design, but just to think about the idea that people, people who are walking around the community today, biking through the community today, people who will be there in the future, will be around, you know, who otherwise might not be because of this design and that's a really powerful thing. So I just want to urge the select board to approve this design and thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Let's go back to the room. Is anybody in the room who would like to come in? In the back. State your name and address for the record. Sure. Len Greenberg, I live at 106 Wildwood, have been there for about 35 years now. And I wanted to be here in person just to tell you how important it is to me that you do something about this intersection. I was in that intersection a month after Charlie Parker and almost shared his fate and it's, I'm still affected by it today. I don't want it to happen to anybody else. I think it's important that you do things to make this a safer intersection than it is even now and certainly more than it was then. I think this is a good design. I hope you will approve of it and that I don't have to worry about things happening to other people in this intersection. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yeah, let's go back to Zoom and who do we have lined up here? Vince. Good evening, Mr. Benin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the select board. My name is Vincent Bedouin. I live at 56 Silk Street in East Arlington but I come to this area of town often for work. And I would like to ask the select board to support this proposal for two reasons. First of all, it's very simple. I think if we make a place safe, then people will want to be there. And if people are there, then it is more customers for businesses. It will benefit the community as a whole. Secondly, I think there's urgency to the safety issue. Every year that goes by that students are using this unsafe crossing is a lost opportunity and we're putting our children at risk and our residents at risk. This fall and this winter, there will be residents moving into 124 new apartments at the housing development. Many of these people will be walking in the neighborhood, riding bicycles and let's be welcoming and let's create a welcoming environment for our new neighbors. And finally, very selfishly in five or six years, my children will be attending Audison and I'd like them to be able to get there safely. And so I would ask again that you support this proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Riddling. And let's go back to the room. Do we have anybody in the room who would like to speak next? Okay, we'll go back to Zoom land here and who's next, Ms. Maher? Can we just unmute? Yeah, Mr. Holland, you can unmute yourself and appear. Good evening, sir. Hi, good evening. My name is Roderick Holland. I'm a town meeting member and an ABAC member at large and somebody who rides a bicycle a good deal through the town, including the center section. I've been following the evolution of the design for the fixes to this ever since the Charlie Proctor Proctor incident and I'm quite impressed with the progress made in this version. It answers all my questions. I hope it answers all of yours. And that's really it. Thank you, Mr. Holland. Let's go next to Laura Swan. You can unmute yourself and appear. Good evening. Good evening. I'm speaking tonight as an autism parent in support of fully protected bike lanes. I've had the privilege of witnessing safe routes to school professionals do about three or four different arrival and dismissal evaluations for the different Arlington schools. And a design principle they are consistently recommending is separating the different modes of transportation as much as possible for the safety of students. A large number of autism students are biking to school independently but they're typically smaller than full grown adults at harder for motor vehicles to see on the road. Separating the bike traffic from motor vehicle traffic would increase their visibility and their safety. So I would encourage you to support this option. And thank you for your careful consideration of this issue. Thank you and thank you for your work and another aspect of town as a chair of the tack. We appreciate you very much. Okay, we have next up is it on, I can't see much green very well. Mr. Ferdarff. Yes, hello, my name is Andrey Ferdarff. I live at 14 Farmer Road in Arlington. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I lived in Arlington for two years now and before that I lived in Cambridge over 10 years. And during most of this time I've been commuting by bicycle to work. While in Cambridge I commuted to Brigham Ames Hospital where I work. And right now I commute every week to assembly row from Arlington. So I wanted to maybe tell you about my experience to give you a better idea of why people buy. Because sometimes those who are opposed by claims think that it's only for those who buy to relax or those fit men on the bicycles. But sometimes we don't have a choice other than buy because there is no time to commute by public transportation. It's very slow. There is no money to buy a car. And even if you have car, it's too slow to do it by car. I had to commute from Boston to pick up my son from preschool in Cambridge. And only I could do it because my wife would not be able to make it because she does not buy it. So, and this means also commuting in any weather, commuting at night, commuting in rain, commuting on a slippery. So I experienced a lot of close calls and I want you to appreciate that many people don't have a choice. Maybe when you ride in a car sometimes you will see someone with a kid in the back of the bicycle riding on the pouring rain. So I can definitely appreciate those feelings. So that's my first point. My second point is that we really should understand and look at the science. It's not just the anecdotal evidence that improved infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians actually helps local businesses. There are studies that were done about this. So local businesses are there to win along with everyone else. All studies also show that improved infrastructure saves lives and reduces number of injuries. We don't, there is clear evidence about this and we need to appreciate that evidence. So that's my second point. And the third point, I want to share just personal experience. I didn't know about this incident on this intersection and I lived just steps away from this intersection in Palmer Road. So the way I learned about it is when I went out with my son for a walk, one of the first two weeks after we moved to Arlington and we saw the ghost bike and we read the story and it was very personal, you know, because I couldn't be there. It could be my son who would not meet me. So life is priceless and I urge you to support this proposal and as other speakers here, I want you to consider improving bicycle infrastructure along the Massachusetts Avenue and in other places because life is priceless and we do not want these accidents to happen in our town. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right, we all now have Catherine Fleming. Meet yourself please. Hi, name and address for the record. My name is Catherine Fleming. I live at 58 Oxford Street. However, I'm speaking as a former resident at Holton East Wicks Mass Ave. That is that large apartment building next to Dunkin Donuts in this area that's supposed. I am strongly in support of this proposal as it prioritizes the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in this area. I was commuting via bus and by bike while living at 1226. One of the largest team points living in that neighborhood is that there are very few ways to safely cross Mass Ave. I would like to give you the perspective of a pedestrian and as a bus commuter in this area. So a personal anecdote is living there was in order to, if you were to get off the bus going north, going outbound, you have to cross three crosswalks to get from one side of Mass Ave to the other. And on top of that, you have to race the pedestrian signals because they were not long enough for a healthy mobile person to cross the road in that amount of time. Alternatively, you can risk running across the road while you think there is no traffic, which, but however, as mentioned, due to the curve in the road, that is not safe, especially unsafe at night. So I sincerely appreciate the consideration and proposal of the traditional and appropriate crosswalks in this area. And I am looking forward to this proposal moving forward, hopefully, and they approve into this neighborhood for current and future residents. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, was that all? Did you avoid? Thank you very much. I believe we have Allison Pisecki. Good evening. Hi, I'm Allison Pisecki and I currently live in Boulder, Colorado. And I was Charlie Parker's partner and I was with him at the time of the crash. And I want to thank you for putting so much time and care into the proposal for this new intersection in the wider corridor of safety. We've been through this many times and you're right that the wider corridor itself does need a lot of improvement, especially for making it accessible for all modes of transportation. And I think that it's really important, especially a light of all of the inability efforts at the time of putting forward to keep that in mind in regards to having these alternate forms of transportation. And I think I appreciate the difficulty of parking for the businesses, but like other users have said, that I know that I now stop a lot. I have to get places on my bicycle and I stop there on my bicycle net. And if I can't get them by bike, then I simply don't go there. And as someone who has started again to try and bike and I really, more than ever, appreciate a protected bike lane. And I know other people definitely are going to be more likely to bike if it is safer for them and then the bike users will increase. I just want to encourage you to vote yes on this proposal and I thank you for your time. Thank you very much. We next have Scott Lawland. Good evening. Thank you so much. Hey, good evening. Sorry I can't be there in person. I had my flu shot last night and it really kicked my tail. Understood. Good for you. I just want to say thank you for getting to this point. I really just have a technical question. I fully support this plan and I hope it moves forward to final design and application for the funding that we expect to get from the state to build this thing. We talk a lot about parking. I didn't see any bicycle parking in this plan but my understanding, I've attended a bunch of the meetings. I just want, John, unless you could confirm that the placement of bicycle parking will come further in the design process or I just don't want to miss that. As one of the earlier speakers had mentioned, like now we get to access this when we're on our bikes and we feel safe doing so. I did a canvas as part of this process of the entire stretch between forest and Trader Joe's on both sides and that's that. There's four bike racks. It's incredibly difficult to park a bicycle and I'm hoping that as part of this process we will be able to make sure that we can do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think Mr. Alessi is poised to give a question but we might also be at the end of our speakers list so let me see if there's anybody else. I don't see anyone else on Zoom, is there Mara? Anybody else in the room? Mr. Alessi, do you want to go ahead and answer that? We can move into our next phase here. The quick answer is yes. That bicycle parking will be a part of this project that will be incorporated into the design work that takes place if the select board votes to approve the conceptual design. So that's something that we'll be working on this winter into the spring if approved. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mullen. All right, so one last chance for public comment. I think we're done with that. Thank you to everybody who took the time to be here, either in person or in Zoom. I think it's a credit to our civic process. It's a sign of your faith in this board that we will lessen and consider your views very carefully and so I'm very glad to hear people take the time to offer their well-considered remarks. It is not easy to do, but we appreciate it. You may as well stay there. Mr. Alessi, I think the board can go ahead and stay at the table and the board may have some additional questions or comments. Okay, so at this phase we've had a public comment and I'll turn to the board, Mrs. Mahan. I would first like to make a motion to approve the Mass Ave and Appleton Street Safety and Accessibility Card or Projects Final Conceptual Design. I wanna thank everyone for their time and really blood, sweat, and tears going into this project. And I also, since we have Ms. Ricker here, wanna send my personal thanks to Mr. Alessi for making himself available and taking the time and letting me kind of go off stream. Some when we came in to talk about two things, being able to talk about five and one of the things that I did raise with Mr. Alessi and I started doing it when it happened with the former town manager, Mr. Chaptaling. We had an Allenton resident, Bill Dotson, long time town meeting member, member of East Allenton, good neighbor committee. When he was in his 60s, he said, I'm gonna get killed someday walking in that crosswalk down by CVS in East Allenton. It's the longest crosswalk ever. And he did. And it happened about probably eight or nine years ago now. And we've had everything redesigned down there. And I know lots of people in East Allenton that don't even, especially if you're disabled or elderly, he was in his mid to late 70s when he was killed. So I always bring it up and I brought it up, Mr. Alessi, because that area has been looked at and we did take care of bike lanes and bus lanes. But the pedestrians down there still, a lot of people are even more so after Mr. Dotson's death avoided it. So since I have a captured audience and I did raise this with Mr. Alessi, just to keep that at the forefront. And that's why I feel just as passionate about this particular project here. Because you wanna make people feel safe and you also wanna take into account all the different competing interests which I understand. I live near there, I live on Howard Street, which is sort of behind the Odyssey. And I have disabled individuals in my home. And I know how difficult, just in terms of the topography, especially in the winter time, and then add in all the other factors of pedestrians, bikes, cars, snow, ice, hill. It's really a crazy intersection and you've done so much to really remediate, mitigate a lot of those issues out there. So I'll stop there and I thank you everyone for letting me sort of digress on Bill Dotson. I just have to keep bringing him up when I can. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. I think Mr. Herjitz, can we go first? Yeah, go ahead, sir. I feel like this is the movie Groundhog Day where we keep talking about the same thing over and over again. I mean, I think everyone knows where I feel on aspects of this plan. I'm in favor of 90% of this plan, the actual safety improvements that would have prevented the death of Charlie Proctor, the light at Appleton, the left turn lane at Appleton, that's fine. But there are competing interests here and there, I think this plan, there seems to be some special interests of forces in town that from three years ago, I've wanted to take the parking out there and have an intent upon it and they seem to have the air of town staff more than this board does. But the, I mean, we had talked a couple weeks ago about the possibility of taking out the left turn at Forrest which I don't think I take that left turn every day on the Hockey Rink and the possibility of putting, you said three, four, whatever amount of parking space is back in. I would have liked to see that. And then it came to me on Monday and said, oh, you know, we, the design staff or whoever the powers are to be decided we weren't going to go that route as opposed to creating this plan and creating a second plan. We could see those two plans, what they would look like. I think, you know, like I said, I take that left turn all the time. I don't, during peak hours, I don't see a lot of queuing on that left turn. I think that could have been resolved with the delayed green light going westbound. But we didn't get to see that plan. This has been a frustrating process for me. I don't think in the six years I've been on the board that I felt more disregarded by town staff with my comments that I made, but it is what it is. It sounds like you got the votes tonight. But I think that we could have addressed all the major safety issues created, the pedestrian safety issue, the issues with the Odyssey children, and mainly the issues that were created, prevented the death of Charlie Proctor and still kept some parking on the other side of the street that's always been important to me. The businesses are important to me. That's why every time I run for reelection I talk about the businesses, I own a local business. And I think it's a little overstated to say, oh, you know, people will ride their bikes to some of the businesses, you have to know, I mean, there's a cleaners there. Is that feasible? There's, you know, a law office there. So, I mean, there's a vet. The major business there is a veterinarian. So, I mean, I just, I think we could have done it in a better way. I would have liked to seen the second, the first time this came up, we got two conceptual designs and we kind of fused, took the best of both and fused one together. I would have liked to seen that second conceptual design, but we didn't have an opportunity to see that, whereas if that could have came in and so it could have been a good compromise. It keeps, a few people talked about compromise. I mean, I don't think all the sides compromise here. And it could have been that people reviewed it and said, wow, that does, that plan does address the major safety concerns in this area and still address some of the concerns of the multiple businesses that are in this area. So, again, I would have liked to be heard a little more, but I wasn't and it looks like, I mean, I said the last vote, last meeting you get to count to three and it looks like you're able to count to three here. So, I'm happy to see safety, I'm happy to see the major safety improvements. It's always, we've said from the beginning that we need to get the light at Appleton and that's the left turn there is the major safety issue presented by this area. But then there's a whole bunch of, revisions beyond that area that I don't think align with major safety concerns. And then, you know, this board has to, when it's not, again, a major safety concern, we have to look at the competing interest. And I'm just disappointed in that I didn't get to see what that second plan would look like because I think for a business, like I go to master pies, I park on the right side, I go down on east side on Mount staff. If I don't have the ability to park there, then, you know, I move on to another piece of place because it gets too crazy to have to turn around and find parking and that's a legitimate concern for the businesses that are there. So, again, I'm happy that we're gonna move forward with safety improvements. I just think there was a better way that we could have done it to address the needs of everybody in that area. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Diggins. Well, I mean, I'll afford this to me, so I don't want anyone, like one that was, what mine's gonna do. Yeah, I was just thinking about what Mr. Hurd said. It could be, I was thinking, like if the left turn lane wasn't there, I was gonna ask me, well, my question was like, what's it gonna be like? How much efficiency do we lose in the process? I mean, of not having that dedicated lane there. And I'm kind of curious to be, and other, because I was thinking that it was, that there was gonna be another proposal being, and my question then would be, if it looked like it was a bad idea, could we reconfigure it, I mean, so as to get rid of it, you know, and let me rephrase that. Could we reconfigure, let's say we didn't have the left turn dedicated lane there, and we realized it was a problem, we could be added, and I would imagine it'd just be a matter of striping, so that we could just kind of move forward with the project proposal, and then if we needed to strike later on, after we get the funding, then we could restripe it. So I think, like I said, I'm fine with it as it is, and I think there's the potential for more discussion to go on, I mean, if not for this particular situation, then for other situations, I mean, so that there isn't a feeling of not being heard, although a lot of times what I will tell residents, when they say that the board isn't listening to them, it's like, well, we heard you, but we decided to do things differently, and so that's what happened here, but what's it mean, I hear you, Mr. Heard, and let's see what we can do going forward with me, so that there's more sense of consideration of your feelings, many thoughts, your ideas. So that's where I am in terms of the board, in terms of the plan, I'm fine with it, it was never really to me about, it wasn't about the number of parking spaces, it was really a matter of utility, the study to me made me comfortable, being about the usage of spaces on the left side, I mean, I felt that I could go to the chamber, although I didn't, and make a case for why we could do, certainly what we're doing now, but even what we could have done in the original plan, so I'm gonna stop now because it's 9.34. Did you want to second Mrs. Mons-Mushen? I guess I do, yes, I'll second Mrs. Mons-Mushen. You guess. Mr. Heard, did you want to add anything? Any clarification? I mean, I think it was clear from what I said, I just wanted, when you just said left turn, I just wanted to be sure, I'm not second guessing the left turn onto Appleton Street. No, it's a forest street. I mean forest street, yeah. Yeah, sorry, if that wasn't clear, yeah, it's a forest. Thank you. I'll just briefly add my own comments. I really appreciate the complexity of this problem. It is a really narrow space. I'm a driver, I drive there, I pick up my dry cleaning at that very business. I'm a cyclist, I visited a business on my bike, that in search for bike parking, so I'm glad to hear that that's coming. I would have ridden my bike tonight, but it's in the shop, and you know, I'm not what most people think I was a biker, I'm a, to be generous, late fifties, pretty average person who has kind of rediscovered the fun, but also in just the cost savings, sticking to one car because I can use my e-bike, and the contribution to the environment even better. And what I see around me in Arlington and in other communities is change. And I think that I see an evolution of the communities who are prioritizing infrastructure that provides more equality for different modes of transportation. There's still parking for cars. I go to North Cambridge. I had to drive the other day because of the weather to pick up my glasses. And you know, it takes a little bit longer to get there. And you know, I had to park a block away further than I used to because of the bike infrastructure. But a week earlier, I rode my bike to Cambridge because the weather was good and I could save a car trip that way and I think my husband was using the car. And as a previous speaker said, having separated bike lanes made all the difference in my own personal safety and my incentive to keep doing that. And that's what's happening is that people of all shapes and sizes and ages are starting to realize that walking and cycling is a much more viable alternative than we might have thought because we were all brought up to think of the car first. And I'm still making that transition. But what I like about this plan is that it considers that. I was also really struck by how many autism parents and even a teacher that we heard from and wrote to us that talked about the number of kids who are biking to school. And for me, that really seals the deal that above all else, I want those kids who are going to bike to school because that's the way of the world and that's what people are doing or they might need to. I want them to be as safe as possible. And I do appreciate that the plan has put more parking in, that there's gonna be more options. I think it's clearly a question of trade-off and that's the hard decision that we have to make but I'm very happy to support this because I like the trade-offs. So thank you for your work. Any further discussion for the board? Mr. Heard. Yeah, I just want to reiterate that because we keep, that's been the safety issues that keep talking. I envision that the plan that takes out the left-turn lane on Forest could, you're still gonna have separated bike lanes and so it's not, like all of a sudden that's gonna cause the separated bike lanes to, there's room for that if you take out the left-turn lane. Okay, I should. Did you want any explanation or response about why the decision was made? Nope. Okay. I would like to see it. Okay, understood. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so I think we are ready for a vote. We have a motion to approve the conceptual design by Mrs. Mohan and seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. So we have a three, one vote in favor. Thank you very much. Thank you for your work. Thank you. I think if you're still awake, we can bring back Mr. D'Corsi. Yeah. Our colleague, a moment to reappear. He lives. That was the novel. Writing it, right? Writing it. All right. I think we are left before our announcements period with correspondence received item 13, removal of speed limits, 30 signs on Broadway and Warren Street from the Broadway neighbor's coalition. The tree removal hearing that I missed. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So we're not done with the tree removal hearing. So Mr. D'Corsi, we have to kick him out again. I'm very sorry. I missed the second part of item 14. Because we did a positive vote. Okay. Work on another chapter. Sure. Of the, you just wanted to see you again. All right. You can leave. Bye. See you. I don't think. Mr. D'Corsi, do you need to recuse yourself for a tree? I don't think you need to recuse yourself for a tree here. Do you need to recuse yourself for a tree? Yeah, we're having some discussion about whether Mr. D'Corsi doesn't need to recuse himself. Give that a moment to the lawyers to talk to each other. I'm here on the side of caution. Good. Okay. Okay. And we're back. Everybody can talk about it now. All right. So now we have the tree removal hearing. Mr. Afini, do we have a presenter on that or is someone going to walk us through? I believe we do. Okay. Well, hello again. Yeah. And this was contingent. And we wouldn't have done this had there not been a positive on the previous part. So, all right. You're out again. Hello again. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. I also forgot that I was doing this too. Well, it makes two of us. So I'll just wait for the presentation to come up. Thank you, Ms. Maher. Once again, to save this and others. And Mrs. Mahan. All right. So, again, my name is John Alessi, the senior transportation planner and the Department of Planning and Community Development. So the purpose of this presentation is to request approval for tree removals associated with work proposed as part of the Mass Ave and Appleton Street Safety and Accessibility Corridor Project. This hearing is being presented to the board as the trees in question are part of a public construction project in Massachusetts state law allows the select board to vote directly in such instances. So this, that's good. So this slide gives an overview of the Mass Ave and Appleton Street Safety and Accessibility Project's existing trees noted with green circles. And the trees proposed to be removed or transplanted are in pink dots. And I know they're small to see, but you can just advance to the next slide. So there are a total of 30 existing trees. There are 21 to remain and nine trees are proposed for removal. And please note that one of these nine trees is planned to be removed as part of the Hotel Lexington project. So, but will be included in the overall counts presented tonight. Next slide. So this slide shows the existing trees to remain in green circles. The existing trees to be removed or transplanted in pink dots. And the proposed new trees are in the blue circles here. Next slide. So after construction, the project corridor will include 45 total trees with 21 existing trees to remain and 24 proposed new trees. And then four of which include transplanted trees from the nine to be removed that I just mentioned. And those again are indicated with the pink dots. Next slide. So this slide provides a tree inventory for the project corridor. So the top box, which is the tree caliber calculation, this measures the diameter at breast height deferred as DBH of all the trees measured at about 4 to 0.5 feet above the ground. If the project's implemented, the number of trees along the corridor will increase by 15. And the diameter at breast height will stay nearly the same with one inch over existing conditions. So this value will increase over the years as the breast height of the new trees grow. So the bottom left box shows the DBH of the trees that will be removed and transplanted. So we're moving 69 DBH inches and transplanting 11 DBH inches. And the bottom right box shows the DBH of the new trees, the transplanted ones and the overall total when including the existing trees. So this shows that 24 new trees will be planted with a total DBH of 81. So to summarize everything I just explained right now, the total number of trees along the corridor will increase by 15 from 30 to 45. And the diameter at breast height grand total will stay nearly the same at the beginning and grow from year to year, resulting in an increased tree canopy along the corridor in the future. Next slide. So these are the potential tree species that we will plant as part of the project. These examples were provided by Arlington's Tree Warden. So as we advance in design, we will work with the Tree Warden and DPW to select appropriate trees for the corridor. So we're also adding green infrastructure as part of the landscaping portion of the project. So when I say green infrastructure, we're talking about building things that support tree health, create new gardens and help manage stormwater and extreme heat. So two things that we are added to the project are here on the left. These are silva cells. These are a type of suspended pavement that prevents soil from getting compacted around tree roots. So it allows them to grow freely without buckling sidewalks. They will also allow trees to get the oxygen and nutrients they need to grow larger and live longer. So we're proposing 17 of these silva cells for the new trees. And then second on the right, we're also proposing bio retention basins or known as rain gardens. These slightly sunken gardens are planted with native species and allow collected water to be taken up by plants or slowly infiltrated through the ground, reducing the amount of water runoff on the streets. So these will be built at the various bump out, bump outs constructed in the project. And we're proposing four of these rain gardens. And I know that there are some of these throughout the town today. So we just be expanding the number we have. So these are the locations of the silva cells for the trees and the bio retention or rain gardens on the western portion of the corridor. We're proposing silva cells for six new trees and two rain gardens at the foot of the rocks in the new extended plaza area. So the silva cells are indicated in the blue rectangles and the bio retention basins rain gardens are the hovels in pink. So in here are the locations on the eastern portion of the corridor starting at the Appleton Street intersection. So we're proposing silva cells for 11 new trees and two bio retention basins rain gardens on Mass Ave at the corners of Appleton Street and Forest Street. So to summarize this presentation, we're requesting approval for tree removals associated with work proposed as part of the Mass Ave, Appleton Street safety and accessibility corridor project. Nine trees are proposed for removal, but the total number of trees along the corridor will increase by 15 compared to the existing conditions and the diameter at breast height will stay nearly the same and grow from year to year resulting in increased tree canopy along the corridor. So there would also be 17 silva cells for new trees and four new bio retention basins and rain gardens. So with that, the project team and I would be happy to answer any questions you have about this request before voting, being voted on. Thank you. Excellent, before, so this will be a public hearing because it's tree hearing. So we will have an opportunity for public comment, but before we do, any questions or comments from the board? Okay, so now we have an opportunity for public comment. If there's anybody on Zoom who wishes to comment on the tree hearing portion of this, on the tree plan that we've just heard, please raise your hand in Zoom. We have, I saw Susan Stamps briefly, are you bringing her in? Okay, yeah, go ahead and bring Susan Stamps in. Good evening, Ms. Stamps. Hi, good evening, thank you. Thank you, you can hear me okay? Yes. Just state your name and address for the record, please. Yes, Susan Stamps, 39 Grafton Street in East Arlington. I am a member of the tree committee, but I'm not speaking for the tree committee. I have participated in the workshops and I'm very impressed with the work the static has done. I always hate to see any trees taken down. I understand the need for it though, safety is preeminent. It is important to understand that the inches lost will not be replaced for many, many years to come, so every tree lost is gonna be missed for a long time. Specifically, I have two questions. One was, I love the idea of the silver cells and I'm wondering why they're not being used for every new tree, number one. And then number two is the select board may recall that they voted for a policy a few years ago that at any town contract, there would be a two year watering plan for all new trees and I wanted to alert the consultant about that into Mr. Alessi and make sure that they see that those requirements are in the contract for the new project. And also, I'm sorry, the other policy which the select board voted for, which also is applicable, is that the tree warden is consulted on all new trees. It does sound like you've been speaking with the tree warden, but it would be great if he could actually sign off on the particular trees that are gonna go in the ground. So those are my three comments. Thank you. I'll make sure that we get an answer to those after you go off. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. So we'll ask for an answer for that after we conclude public comment. Is there any other public comment in the room or in Zoom on the tree rules? Okay. You seeing none, Ms. Marr? Seeing none, yes. Okay, Mr. Alessi, you wanna address Ms. Stamps' three questions? Sure, so the first question I believe was why the DPW is not using them currently and I am not a part of the DPW and I cannot speak to that unfortunately. I think as part of this project, we're trying to enhance the corridor with healthy trees and to create more rain gardens. So as part of the grant, we have probably a little bit more availability for funding for these types of improvements, but I don't wanna speak for the DPW. You know, everything costs money and there need to be priorities with spending. So I can't speak to it, but I'd say that we have the availability of a mass works application that can fund these improvements easily. Mr. Feeney? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would second that. These are a fairly new development. We have not experimented with them in town yet. I do know they carry with them a higher cost than perhaps structural soil, which we had deployed at the Broadway Plaza project, but as a means to incorporate them into the grant, we thought it would be sort of the perfect opportunity to explore their use in the community. To Ms. Stamp's second point, I will note that the tree policies passed by this board, we have incorporated it into a new procurement checklist we have for any projects that come through the manager's office for the public bid process to ensure that that box gets checked, given that trees are a part of really any number of projects we do now. So that is an element to safeguard and ensure that we get that. And third, of course, we will engage the Tree Warden on putting the right species of tree in the right location, and that's usually dictated by the side of the road and where the utility poles and lines are in terms of the height of the tree that's chosen. But the trees depicted earlier are those which were recommendations of the Tree Warden for consideration. Thank you very much. Any motions, comments, questions from the board? Mrs. Mohan? I'd like to make a motion for positive action for the tree removal request associated with the Mass Ave. Appleton project, and just say kudos to working within the board's policies and statements, and I want to thank the town manager for, I didn't realize that the two policy votes that we had taken are included in the request for a proposal, RFP process. So that really takes a lot of the heavy lifting away from all of us. So that's my motion, very wordy, I apologize. Works. Mr. Diggins? I guess I'll second this one. Yeah, but I'll... He keeps guessing he'll do it. But we won't urge you to do it, so yeah. My brother from another mother, come on. So just quickly, maybe you said this to me, but we did talk to the tree warden about this, right? Yes. So we're all fine, you know, so yeah, yeah. Easy second. I had a question regarding the question from the resident. So will the DBHB, when the new trees are put in, will it be immediately equivalent or will it take time for them to grow out? Do you happen to know? I might look to my left. Yes. Oh, you get a moment of the sun, yes. But just to state your name, please. At least in our area with StanTech. So the trees that can be transplanted will remain the same DBH that they are currently. When we did meet with the tree warden, he requested that we look at a few different farms that have larger caliber trees. So our LA landscape architect was doing some calculations to see what we could get in to have as large DBH put in as possible, but there are a couple of larger trees that we will not be able to get back right away. So it will take some time. Yeah, that's fair enough, yeah, thank you. And I'll just comment on the silver cells. Please do. Yes. So I just want to add, there are space requirements to get those installed underground. So at this initial stage, because we haven't taken a deep dive into grading just yet, we looked at the space that we had compared to drainage structures, underground utilities to make sure that we weren't going to conflict with those. So if we can fit more in under some of the other new trees, we will try and do that. But at this point, these were the areas that we know we will likely be in the clear. Excellent, thank you. Yeah. That was the question that I heard from Ms. Damps, too, was like, why not? Because that was the question I had too, and I wasn't quite sure if I heard the question correctly with the way that Mr. Alessi responded. To state, I'm sure you know, it's just that one of the trees that they're taking down, it's like a 20 inch tree. Yeah, right. So even though you could replace it with 21 inch trees, be the amount of canopy, so that it's not effectively, okay, so I won't say anymore, because you know what I'm saying, okay fine. All right, I'm done. Thanks. Thank you. My only comment is again, appreciation for this, and I think it's a good opportunity to thank the entire team, both in the room and on Zoom. This represents an incredible amount of work, and I also hear quite amazing things about the consultant to the table as well from a former and trusted colleague, but you know, I think that Ms. Ricker and Mr. Alessi and the time manager have employed a really terrific team, the best of the best to really help us navigate the difficult compromises we have to make, and I think this stuff is always a lot more complicated than a layperson thinks it is, and the trade-offs are really tough, and you want things to be possible, it just aren't, and it's like Quack-a-Mole, right? Except that we don't act like Quack-a-Moles. But we re-house them. But, so you know, I just want to express my appreciation for that, and I really do believe that this whole plan, including the tree plan, that we have to make some difficult choices, and I hate to see trees go too, but I think that for the long-term benefits. The other thing I will say is I really appreciate the town's leadership, the town manager, and the previous town managers before him, that when we do take out trees increasingly, we're looking to how can we improve their longevity. We did structural soils at Broadway Plaza, which was a real enhancement, and there are times where trees, we're doing that, yes, we're gonna have to wait a while for the new trees to grow, but they have a much better chance of decades more life to be healthy for carbon sequestration, and for canopy, you know, if we are able to take advantage of these new technologies. So I encourage the town managers team to keep doing that, because I think that makes the investment that we have to make when we're taking out trees more worthwhile, so thank you for that. Any further discussion for the board? Okay, we had a motion for approval of the trees. The tree plan by Mrs. Mahon and seconded by Mr. Dighan. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That's a four, nothing in this book, and thank you. And once again, we can invite Mr. Dighorsi to rejoin us. You might not trust us. Hey, I know, I wouldn't blame him for my skeptical. I'm gonna take the blame for sitting about early. That's right. All right, before I move into course on Mr. Dighan, I missed anything else in the agenda. It's all right. Welcome back, sir. Okay, now we have item 13, correspondence received, removal of the speed limit, 30 signs of Broadway and Warren Street sent from the Broadway Neighbors Coalition Steering Committee. I'll move receipt on this and that we send it to the town manager and then get a decision about how to move forward with it. Second, Mr. Dighorsi. Any for the discussion? And a motion by Mr. Dighans to refer the manager to the town manager for further advice to the board. Does that summarize your? Yes. And second by Mr. Dighorsi. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It is unanimous. Okay, thus ends the agenda, except for board and staff announcements. And this is my night to do things irregularly and out of order, and so I'm gonna continue that trend by starting board and staff announcements by expressing, noting that this will be the last select board meeting at which Attorney Doug Hyme will be representing this town council. Doug has been with the town for 10 years, which is hard to believe since 2013. And I just wanna say personally has been an incredibly valuable partner to me and my various work in the town starting with the CPA committee and through my journey here on the select board, I have deeply appreciated the generosity of your time, the fairness and thoughtfulness and thoroughness of your advice, your unfettered love for the community, your unfettered patience with the community and your friendship. I know that your next, and we'll give you a chance to speak after we thoroughly embarrassed you, that your next opportunity is a wonderful one for you and the right one for you, and I can't be angry with you because of that, but I will certainly miss you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hyme. I will now turn to my board colleagues to offer any comments, Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did have a private phone conversation with Attorney Hyme, so I won't totally share all of those remarks because anyone who knows me, you know what I'm like on the phone. But I do wanna say, having served with now three town managers, and I don't even care if this gets me in trouble, you truly are the best town council that I've had the opportunity to work with. I think the chair, when you said his Attorney Hyme's fairness, that's something, your professionalism, your non-partisanship, a-partisanship, whatever you, I mean, I could truly then have, many times, contacted you and had a thoughtful, intellectual, well-rounded discussion around legal issues, and always stood by the advice and opinions that you gave me, and pretty much could take them to the bank after, I'd say, almost three years, it took me. I stopped double-checking, in fact, checking after you and I had the conversations, because that's what I was doing in starting in my tenure in 1999, and you'd be amazed how many times what came out of that, but I realized after three years, I'd been wasting three years of that, that I didn't have to do that, and I'm very appreciative of that. I also appreciate your sense of family and your morals, and honest and goodness, I wish I could keep you here, but I also respect the fact that, and I wanna thank your wife and your children, because they also, through osmosis, have given to the town of Allington by giving us you and taking you away from important events, so I know it is a family commitment and continues to be, and I appreciate your priorities, you definitely have them in line, but I can't talk enough about your intellect and professionalism and the next town that gets you, they owe us a lot, but I know you do well and thrive, and I always try to explain to people when they ask me, what is Town Council? I said, well, you know, I have to do a sports reference, he's kind of a coach of like 12 different sports, you know, you have to be well versed in land court and zoning and town meeting and slip and falls and bylaws and select board policies and conservation committee and don't forget about, you know, open space and that's really hard to find, and it's really hard to have someone that can shine in all those different areas, so I do appreciate working with you, I'm gonna miss it terribly, I'm gonna hang on to your number and if you change it, I'll find out what you change it to, so I wouldn't bother and I wish you nothing but you and your family, good luck, continued good health and I know our paths will cross in the strangest of ways in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Doug, I really do appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Herd. Notwithstanding the fact that you're a Yankees fan, I will say some of the things about you. I am the Eagles fan. Doug called me at about eight o'clock about a month ago, he said, oh, it's something I just gotta tell you. I said, well, you're not leaving, and he said, but I mean, it certainly is a parent who is literally always running from one sport to the next thing, coming in hot here from the baseball field with cleats on sometimes. I certainly understand recovering two hours of your day by taking advantage of an opportunity to work at the town that you live in, which I do. And if I were to take two more hours where I'm sitting in a car, then I just couldn't do the things that I do in my life. And I certainly get that, but I have enjoyed working with you. If everyone in my life was as responsive and accessible as you are, I would be much more productive. And I put myself out there in that category as well. But you're very knowledgeable, like Mrs. Mahan said. My wife joked with me. She said, why don't you apply for the town council position? I'm like, I'm not qualified. I'm not, you have to know so many areas of the law that most lawyers would never come across. And to be able to do that, and I mean, you've navigated some storms in the town of Arlington. It's not, I would imagine just like being the town manager of Arlington, it's not the easiest place to be the town council. And you've done so very respectfully of people that sometimes didn't return the favor to you. And I think that is certainly a great characteristic to have as a town council. That's something that we'll miss and whoever ends up replacing you. And I hope they use your guidance and model as a way to navigate the waters of the legal department. I would say, I mean, we did just get your air conditioned and so it's like, after 12 years of, well, it's in process. It's municipal government, like nothing happens overnight. But I did do enjoy working with you and wish you the best and hope you stay in touch and maybe if we ever get that softball team going, we'll give you a call. Mr. Degorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Doug, I want to wish you all the best. I'm really happy for you. This is a good decision you're making for quality of life with your family. We are really going to miss you. There's no question about that. And I always appreciated our chats since I became a member of the board and even prior to that. And in my years, Chairman, we spoke quite a bit and I enjoyed those conversations. And one thing that Mrs. Mahan said and Mr. Hertz said, sometimes people think, well, you work for the town of Arlington, you only have one client. Well, you've got about 100 clients. And that was the thing that always amazed me is that there were so many people demanding your time and responsiveness. And I don't think there's a person that I've spoken to who I mentioned that you were leaving who didn't say, oh, I'm really going to miss him. He was great to work with. That's across committees. That's across department heads. And I know for myself, I enjoyed the back and forth that we had and we had some good times putting together a letter from Mass Housing and working through things. But you have a great ability to, when you have a client, that you may come up with a draft and the client wants to put something in there, put something in addition, you had a great way of knowing, okay, yes, we can do that and pushing back in the right way. No, I don't think that's a good idea, but working collaboratively, but knowing the limits as to what can be done. And I think that's a trait that in your next position, your client will be well served by that. And the other thing I would say, because we went through this unique time period where we've had three time managers in the past few years, you were involved in all the meetings that we had when we were going through negotiations and discussions. And that was a really hard balance, but you gave us great counsel in terms of what to think about process and where to go. And I look back and I enjoyed for meetings, particularly when I was chair, and sometimes we debrief on certain issues and I enjoyed your counsel on that. I know we'll still stay in touch, and appreciate your friendship as well, and wish you nothing but the best. I'm not good at the goodbyes, I just am not, you know. So it's like, yeah, of course you're great, you know, and I'm happy that I got to be chair, you know, while you were here, because as everyone who has been chair knows me, like you really rely on town council, you never know what's gonna pop up, you know, you're the first person. We go to for help, we bond legal stuff. I mean, town managers usually be for the other stuff. We actually, it's like we're staff, this is the first person we go to, you know, and then town manager and town council. So yeah, I really appreciate all your advice, you know, and all of your assistance, me, and who do I go to to correct something in the bylaws? Are you asking me right now? You can talk to Attorney Cunningham for the time being after October 6th, and then the town clerk, if there are... The simple typos, right? The scrivener's errors, correct. I'll talk to him. They may be correct in the vote, not correct as it's transposed on the website or within the document, but scrivener's errors we can correct, sure. Okay, great, I'll talk to him. Just a little thing I saw when I was looking for something tonight, so that's it. Thank you, Attorney Ham, if you wanna offer anything. Thank you. You may, in fact, not miss me so much, given the fact that I've never been the most concise town council. And we've always had a long discussions about various different things. I just wanna say that I'm full of gratitude tonight as I sit in here in this room looking at all of you who I consider to be wonderful people to work for and people who I consider friends. Good government starts with people who are willing to put themselves on a ballot and then put their ideas and decisions before people in the public. And they do that in conflict and they do that in consensus and they do it with equal measure collaboration and conviction. This board and this government, which is made up of hundreds of people, elected officials, appointed employees and volunteers, is a remarkable collection of people that results in the highest form of local government. And I've been so grateful to be a part of that and to be able to serve all of you and so many others. I'm going to miss hundreds of people, which is a remarkable thing to think about when you leave a job. And so much of it flows from the top, from the five of you and the other people who have been in your seats who aren't here anymore. And the board administrator and her predecessor and the manager and his predecessors. I can't thank all the people by name who I would love to just tell that I'm grateful for the opportunity to have worked with them, to have learned something from them. So many town meeting members and residents and committee and commission folks taught me something. I'm so flattered by so many things you said, but the reality is that I don't know everything and I've been so fortunate to work for people who are so smart. Members of this board who all know something, many, many things that I don't. And it's really just my job to try to represent and advocate for those things that you know and that you bring to the table as best as I can. Or the managers that I've worked for. Or so many talented folks who work for the town. It is an extraordinary place to work and I know that I've been so very lucky to have had the opportunity, the honor to be here. I would be remiss without just specifically thanking each one of you. Jim, Ashley, Mr. Chapter Lane, Mr. Puller, Edmar Lange, who was my right-hand man for so many years, Mike Cunningham, Peter, Renee, and Tara in my office now as well as Joanne and Trish and a whole bunch of other folks who worked there for many years. And of course my predecessors, Julianne Rice and John Marr, who are always so gracious and willing to pick up the phone when I was first starting out this job and being trying to figure out what exactly to do when somebody submitted a warrant article about something I'd never heard of before. I really learned on this job and grew on this job and for that I'm always going to be grateful. But the thing that I'm always going to be most grateful for is the people who make up this town, this community. Thank you for the bottom of my heart. I really do hope that I'll be able to pick up the phone and call or text any of you and so many people here in Arlington. I've truly been blessed to work here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Doug. Cunningham, I've already been walking through your office measuring the jerks. I hear he's excited about air conditioning. He'd take this nameplate. No, no. All right, thank you very much. All right, let's take a pass at our usual board of staff announcements in the usual fashion, Ms. Marr. Just thanks to Doug. Any other announcements, Mr. Attorney? And do you have one piece of this? I just want to make sure I highlight this before I leave. I just want to note the terrific work of the Arlington Police Department, Chief Larrity, Captain Sean Kearney, and Lieutenant Rick Pagrini in a gun licensing appeal. We had a license to carry appeal. It was in the police department's judgment that the individual who was seeking license to carry was not suitable. It was appealed to the district court and it was quite a serious hearing in which both Captain Kearney and Lieutenant Pagrini testified very effectively in terms of helping to make clear for the court that the suitability determination that was made to keep someone from your license scary that the police department didn't think should be having one was going to be upheld. And Mr. Peter Buckley in my office was also instrumental for preparing for that hearing. So it was a successful day, but it was great work by APD and some folks on my staff. Thank you. Mr. Finney. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think for the community's benefit, I would love to invite them to come, say goodbye to Doug and thank him for his many years of wonderful service on Friday, October 6th. Doug's last day between 10 and 1130 a.m. on the ground floor of the Arlington Community Center. While we're on the topic of the Jarvis House, maybe a timely announcement if we were notified today by the Department of Energy Resources receiving another $100,000 in green communities funding, a portion of which is going to go to insulating the Jarvis House and electrifying the HVAC system over there. So there will be finally reliable heat, but also cooling in time for the next town council. Is the change of mind? I think the current air conditioners are run by squirrels. So they may be green energy, but it's not clear. So, you know, that grant is good news, obviously to remain to the warrant article presented tonight that was advanced by the Clean Energy Future Committee with this Fox's help because it will also assist us with the electrification of 85 Park Ave, which is the town building that houses ACMI. So those are important projects and timely in this instance. And then finally, I just want to congratulate, I know I shared with the board before the meeting that Colleen Leger has been appointed the next director of health and human services for the town. So if you have the opportunity, reach out to Colleen. Thank her, but I look forward to having her at a board meeting in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Town Manager. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you. In light of that announcement, I've switched the order of my announcements. The first one is for our new health and human services, Ms. Leger and our town manager, Mr. Finney. I know this is probably, I feel terrible saying a long shot, but one of the things that the town of Ellington did in the early days of pandemic and going forward, thanks to mostly the now deputy town manager, Ms. Bonjourno, was through the Board of Health, those Ellington residents who are homebound because of disabilities or a whole other host of reasons. Ellington was one of the first communities in the state that had a program where the vaccine supplied by the state, the employees of the Board of Health went out to different residents' homes in order to administer those COVID vaccines. And sometimes, flu. This is the first cycle I just found out because I started making calls for people who said, you know, I'd like to be able to do that again, that I don't see as of this moment right now that the town of Ellington is going to be able to do that. And I was provided with a mass.gov website as well as a phone number where you could call to that. So that would be a last resort, but one of the things a lot of residents said to me, especially if you're homebound for many of the reasons that I won't go into, but we're all aware of, having someone from the Ellington Board of Health come into your home was much more amenable and sort of felt safer, not that other program's on. So I just would ask, since we now have Colleen and Mr. Feeney, I probably anticipate that the answer might be back, that's just the way it is and there's not much we can do. If we could look into that and or if there's any other kind of alternative, even if it was a low fee pay structure or something, that instead of directing these residents to the mass.gov website, and you really don't know who's coming into your home or if there's anything else more local whether through the council on IA Jean Minuteman Meals on Wheels, something. And I know, again, it's a big ask and I just figured I'd try. And then the second of the three is I did get a piece of correspondence saying that I originally got a package July 23rd, which it did come to the office, but because of the summer schedule I didn't get it to the end of August. I'm gonna contact the town manager on the next day or two. I don't wanna take the time here doing that. And I will, after talking to the town manager if appropriate, I just got sent this and not the rest of the board. So I'll make sure if it's something, I'll make sure you all get it just so you have it, but it's my name in there. And then the last thing is I can't tell you how many people have razed me. I don't know where I can go for coffee regarding why do I have to take a tutorial to press seven buttons to get the free parking when before I just had to press the green button. And I don't know if it's appropriate, Mr. Chairman. I have had a conversation with the town manager if maybe if he could just briefly respond to that. I understand it's not seven, it's like five, but is that- I think it's not new business the board's gonna act on so that's fine. Mr. Feeney, if you wanna make any comments. Sure, thank you for that. I do think that once everyone has had the opportunity to try it on their own, it will seem a bit more intuitive than in the video we have recently updated the instructions on our website to try to make them a little bit more clear that you can use if you've seen one of the meters that there's blue buttons for either plus or minus that help you toggle between the two options and that you can see which is highlighted. But I think that the part of the additional steps come from the fact that there is now one meter serving two spaces. So anytime you go to activate anything on the meter, the first thing you have to do is choose the right space or the left space and then confirm. So a number of the keystrokes if you will are going to happen whether you're paying for parking or getting free parking. To build on that, I will say we have received some concerns or folks would send me pictures about the visibility of the meters and what may not be intuitive and what I have learned myself and have experienced because I've been testing a number of meters personally is that the first thing you always want to do just like our old meters is press any button because that activates the backlight so that you can actually see the digital screen. Otherwise it goes to sleep almost immediately to save battery life because it won't charge quickly enough. So the visibility is always best triggered once you hit a button so that it activates the screen there. And one other thing we're gonna look at doing with the vendor is perhaps increasing the font size on the screen to see if that might make it easier to read because these are small digital displays. So thank you for raising that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Not, Mr. Heard. Thank you. I just want to thank everybody, town staff, DPW, police fire that worked on town day. I want to thank the vendors for coming in and braving potentially difficult weather and the Tons of Arlington residents that came out. We had a meeting on Thursday before we got a whole bunch of questions about the feasibility of cancelling or rescheduling town day. I think as Ashley will attest, it's not really possible. The amount of planning that goes into town day is months, not a week. So we can't really have a rain date, there's too much coordination. So the question was really, do we move forward and cancel? And I think I came to the meeting about 15 minutes late with a, we're doing it. And we kind of went full steam from there and I let him certainly on board too. And then the day came and I was like all butterflies in the morning if like everyone was gonna be pissed that we had town day and it was all rained out and everyone got screwed. So I'm glad that the rain held off. I actually had to go to Connecticut for a hockey game which such as the life I live, but I did come back around 2.30 and spent some time at the beer garden having a couple of spy PAs, which were pretty good. And I mean, I think the rain really held off for the most part until about four o'clock. So we're very impressed by the turnout and hopefully the businesses that participated were able to see enough customers that it made it worth it and it was better than canceling. So I do wanna thank everyone from, you know the town staff right through the patrons who are involved in town day for sticking with us. Like I said, you can always bring an umbrella. Thank you, Mr. Hurd, Mr. Dacorsi, thank you. Sorry, I do wanna specifically thank Ashley and Lynn who if it's a seven or eight month job, the other ones that spend the most time in those seven and eight months coordinating town day, I kind of pop in as I can, but my schedule makes it a little difficult but they're the constants on the town day committee that are making sure that the, that's running on time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, a couple of things and I'll try to be brief. I attended the Council on Aging September meeting last week and received a great positive feedback on the senior parking sticker program and the number of seniors who are participating in that is now over 500 and could get up to as much as 1,000 by the time this is done. So that has been very well received, very appreciative and it's as we said, very worthwhile program. Second thing, I haven't done it in a few months but I'm back to a sports update. I want to congratulate Frank Roach who's the new coach of the Arlington High football team at 2015 graduate of Arlington High School. He got his first two wins as the head coach of the football team. Last Friday or last Thursday, Arlington beat Brookline 52 to 21 and Arlington's running back, Caden Mills figured in six touchdowns. He ran for four, he caught one and he threw a pass for one. Six total touchdowns he was involved with the week before it had three touchdowns against Stonem. So he was recognized by the globe and I want to just recognize that that has to be a record for Arlington High. So best of luck to the football team and all sports teams throughout the fall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Even I know that that is impressive. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I'm on town day. I first off really want to thank staff. And so it was Ashley Lauren and Britain. They were just so on the ball. Whenever I would wonder if something was happening, it was already done. So they were critical and the other two people were Jeff Monroe at ACMI and Kathleen Darcy who really pulled together entertainment. And that was the thing we were really struggling with at the Thursday meeting was we were like, we can go to the booths. I mean, what do we do with entertainment? And we were in the process of scaling back on entertainment with Mr. Heard who did come in late said what about moving indoors? I think you've probably thought about that. And we hadn't and then we just removed it indoors. And one thing I do want to emphasize to me as in all endeavors like this and in most relationships it's not that everyone contributes equal amounts. Like if you were to be do like the hours you put in by the amount of money that they make per hour. It's not about that. It's really that everyone contributes being what they can and effectively and everyone on the team did that. And so it was a really great team. You all saw the email that I sent me and I really meant every word of it. We haven't set a date yet. We'll probably do that tomorrow. Yeah, I looked me in and I'm compouring all the Jewish holidays are in October. So we'll probably gravitate towards that third Saturday. But we'll make a decision tomorrow and then let you know for sure we do have the fireworks that outstanding. So we'll make that decision tomorrow also probably lean towards a Saturday or Friday. I say in that order when we are relatively sure it'll be clear. So it may be a matter of saying to folks pay attention to the website and we'll let you know. But once again, we'll come out with that tomorrow. So a couple other announcements. There's gonna be a housing in Arlington, the youth and young adult, not the youth in Arlington. Youth being young adult perspectives. I want to take the the out because I don't want it to sound like it's like that's the end of it. And it's really meant to try and get some understanding how youth and young adults in Arlington feel about the housing situation present and future. And also it's a way to try and let people know that we do have this young Arlington collaborative that we're trying to get off the ground. So Envision Arlington State and Committee is sponsoring it, hosting it, but it's on behalf of the YAC and finally preliminary update is on the, I'm giving on the overnight parking pilot need of the 125 slots we have about 56 or 57 have been taken. So a little less than half, 56 or 57. So a little less than half. And so there are three more months to go folks being as pro-rated and so if you're thinking about be wanting some overnight parking, please sign up. I know it's a little hard when you don't know if it's gonna persist me right now. The pilot is of course scheduled to end me that then the December. So I know that we'll probably get less demand really there, but if you aren't thinking about it, let us know. If that's not enough time, let us know that too because we're just trying to collect data on this. So maybe if we have time in the next meeting maybe we can get a little more of an update from APD to see if there have been any complaints about just the pilot in general and the parking that has resulted as people have utilized it. So that's it, thank you. We might see the time my manager had can reach out and see if there is any information that he can let me know if you wanna speak about that at a future meeting. Sure. Thank you. Everyone has covered everything I was going to announce so I won't duplicate. I think that's it. At this point I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. By Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Herd. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed.