 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington Select Board for Wednesday, February 23, 2022. This is Select Board Chair Steve D'Corsi. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Yes. John Hurd. Yes. Len Diggins. Yes. Eric Helmut. Yes. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapter Lane. Yes. Doug Heim. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with an act signed into law on June 16, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting lot. The Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can fall along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. All participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novus agenda platform. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. We begin our annual war and article hearings tonight. So let's see how much of the town's business we can get done. I will now turn to the next item on the agenda, which is item two approval of sale of $196,000 sore bond dated February 28, 2022 to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority for inflow and infiltration, local financial assistance program and approval sale of $2.6 million water bond to the MWRA for local water assistance program. And presenting that this evening will be our town treasurer Phyllis Marshall. Good evening. Thank you very much. I appreciate being here to talk with you. Thank you. I wanted to provide a little information about these bond issues. As you mentioned there. The first one is for $196,000 sewer bond with the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. It's an interest-free loan and of $196,000 as well as a grant in the amount of $588,000, which would fund the project of $784,000. The project involves a design bid and award for improvements to the sewer system, which is made up of replacement of lining in cement pipe and also some installation of pipe that has a bigger capacity. And the third part of this project scope of services is the generation of a report after the completion of a different project under the same authorization for sewer work that has been completed. The MWRA offers these funding sources to make improvements and then we're required to evaluate the results after the improvements have been made and report those to the MWRA as well. The second project is a $2.6 million interest-free loan. Both of these loans are a 10-year loan and the debt service begins in fiscal year 23. We have submitted a project in the amount of what the scope of services at $2.6 million and there were two different town meeting votes in two different years that get us to this amount of authorization. And so those are the two items before you. Great. Thank you very much. And the votes from town meeting are attached to our agenda materials. So I will turn to the board and I will begin with Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I'm happy to move approval on both of these issues. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. And Mrs. Mahan. Second. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Heard. No questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Chair, you know, so I wasn't going to ask this when you talked about the reporting. I noticed that Phase 12 is dated for like June 22. I mean, in Phase 14, it's seemingly dated before then. I mean, it's just that the sequence kind of threw me off because it seems like they're doing the reporting before they do the construction work. The reporting, Mr. Chair. Sure. The reporting is for a previous project. So the first two phases that are earlier is to design and bid the construction for the next project. So Phase 14 is for an upcoming project for influence and infiltration prevention. And then the second one with the reporting was constructed previously and it's done. And so that's why the reporting is required to get back to the MWRA to show that we bid improvements. At first I thought it was just a typo and then I realized I'm missing something here. So thank you. You know, appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. And I also support this and thank you for the presentation tonight, Ms. Marshall. So in a motion by Mr. Helmuth, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Hunt. Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Corsi? Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you very much for your approval. Thank you very much. Item three has been withdrawn. That was a request for approval of a permit for the battle of monotony at the Jason Russell house because of the construction. Undergoing there. That application has been withdrawn. So I'm going to move on to item number four. Final vote to designate polling locations. I don't know. He is and is willing to join if you'd like for me to. Yeah. And again, just for the public's benefit, we had a contingent vote on the new polling locations at our last meeting. That was subject to the submission of some materials to the state for the Gibbs school and for the relocation of precinct nine to town hall. So with that, Mr. Brazil, if you want to just briefly bring us up to date in terms of what has happened since the last vote and the materials that are before us tonight. Yes, the materials are just the final formal vote. We have a report that summarizes the proposal. So we're going to get it all down and writing which positions, which precincts are going to move into where a little bit about the thought process that went into that just for the public record. Obviously precinct five and seven are, you know, right in the neighborhood for the Gibbs and the space, the theater space should pretty comfortably accommodate to precincts. It definitely passed the site review for accessibility. So I'm working on signage now to, you know, sort of it with a new precinct. I think we'll need extra science to make make it easy for people approaching the building to get to the right door, particularly on a Saturday when doors will be locked, except for the one we want them to come in. And then precinct nine, you know, we've had three precincts at Town Hall for the past couple years. We're just going to change which three, and that should be a very easy move for those. The residents, you know, right across Mass Ave. Great. Thank you very much and thank you for the review and for the work that you did with the Secretary of State's office throughout this process. So I'll turn to the board on Mr. Diggins. I would like to make a motion to prove them change the poll locations. And I do have a quick question, Mr. Chair. Sure. And so I'm sorry, Mr. Brazil that didn't have a chance to get to you today because I wanted to prepare you for this and if you don't have the answer now maybe you can provide it and letter to the board in the second to last paragraph. And also about the evaluation of disparate adverse impact. I'm always interested in these impact studies because the TV does them. And so, so any sense of how that was done how that conclusion was reached. It's just, you know, there aren't enough, there aren't, you know, the demographic information just that we looked at from the re precincting process. Moving things across town. Yeah, a lot of, I mean, their language is in there just because COVID in particular prompted some pretty drastic shifts consolidating all of the polling locations into one high school in one corner of town. You know, it's, you really want to think about that and given that all of these are on transportation corridors and in the neighborhoods. They're not, they're not creating a barrier since their neighborhood polling places. Gotcha. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I'm happy to second that. Thank you also for your work. Thank you. Mrs. Mahan. No questions. Thank you. Mr. Hurd. And thank you to our wonderful clerk for all your work on this. I'm sure you're happy to get this vote underway. Move on from polling locations. So thank you. Great. Thank you. And I'm happy to support this as well. And thank you again for all the work that you did on this in this Brazil. So with on a motion by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Helmuth. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Next three items are appointments. I'll go through each one separately. Item five. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. I have two appointments to the council on aging terms to expire January 31st, 2025, Mahendra Desai and Nancy Feeney. Mr. Chairman, would you like me to bring both member, both appointees up at the same time or? Yes. Yeah. I think that would be fine. And then we'll do six and seven separately after that. Okay. Thank you. Applicants with I see Miss Feeney here. Good evening, Miss Feeney. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you. I'll see if with the, the video is working. For the other applicant. If you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're interested in serving on the council on aging. Absolutely. So thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Mr. Chair to Corsi. And all the members of the select committee. My name is Nancy Feeney. I'm a resident of Rowlandton. I've been living here for over 12 years. I, I've been in healthcare for 29 years. I've been in healthcare for a long time. I've been in healthcare for a long time. I've worked in 2020 from the pandemic. I became a certified patient advocate. And I was able to help out senior citizens in Arlington. The first two years. Receiving access to vaccines. Signing them up for the vaccines because most of them didn't have computers. And working really closely with the council on agent. And when I found out there was an opening, I applied. And I was able to get access to the vaccines. And provide. Provide the knowledge that I've gained over the last. Almost three decades of working in healthcare. Great. Thank you very much. I see Mr. The site is with us now as well. So I. I'm sorry if I have the name wrong, but if you could introduce yourself and just tell us why you're interested in serving on the council on aging. Just need you to unmute your microphone. Fortunately, we still can't hear you, but take, take your time. This is working now. Yes, it is. I was brought up. Born and brought up in, in, in India. I was educated. In India, Japan and the US. I have a vertical work experience. Different kinds of the work. I'm basically the engineer. So I have worked on engineering projects. I also from the social side of the work is I was a member of the Lions international. And the club Arlington Lions club was closed about the two years back. So at present I am not the member, but I am a life member to the international club, but there is no local club. As a Lions club, we have done a lot of different projects, including the blood bank, ice creaming, hearing aids. We also have a fundraising and when the food master was there, we were allowed to stand there. But now the whole food doesn't allow that. I believe that was a, it was a one or two years. We did stand at the stop and shop. But after that, either the manager change or something, we, you know, but that's what we're going to collect a lot of funds there. And they were used for supporting the different, different projects at different places, including the high school. I have desired to join here is one simple thing. We all are doing projects, services and all those things for the seniors. And I believe that all these things we are doing because those people, those seniors has done for us something when they were young and they were working. Now it is our time to return that favor to them. How the main thing behind this is how easy. And what we call with a smile, we can give this services to them is more important rather than how much and what, how we do it. So that is my, my main goal in joining this. Great. And thank you both for your interest and your willingness to serve. I'll now turn to the board for questions or motions and start with Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move approval of both appointments. And just thank you both for your willingness to step up and serve. And it sounds like Arlington where housing costs are skyrocketing. Our seniors take the brunt of the burden. So the console on an Asian does really important work to try to alleviate that pain for some of our seniors and support our seniors. So it is certainly one of the committees that we rely on most. It is time consuming. And so I do really thank both of you for being willing to step up and serve on this committee. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins. I am happy to second that, Mr. Chair. And I'd also like to commend Ms. Feeney on, on your resilience. It's, it's difficult being getting laid off being in a pandemic but you made a lot out of it. And we appreciate the work that you did. I mean helping everyone during the pandemic mean and to Mr. Diggins. I mean, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. But I think that's the fact that you're calling. The folks that you're going to be working with those seniors, you know, I don't know whether I'm going to embrace it or, or, or kind of saying that's them when, when I'm in the same situation, but, but. I certainly intend to work. Until I can't work anymore as a volunteer or whatever. And you're a good example of that. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you both for being willing to serve. It's, it's, you know, Arlington is a great place to live. And one of the biggest reasons for that is it's volunteers who serve in important town roles. And this is really, as Mr. Hurd said, a very important role. I appreciate the lived experience that you both bring to this. And your passion for helping other people. And I'm very happy to support the motion. Thank you, Mr. Helmeth. Mrs. Mahan. I don't know. I see that she's still with us. I don't know if there's a video issue with. I think we just lost her. We just lost her. Okay. Mr. Chairman. Yes. If this more would please note the time that this one lost her feed. And we should note it again when we, when we get her back. Thank you. Okay. All right. And, and I also want to echo the comments of my colleagues. I'm, I'm the liaison to the council on aging. So I look forward to attending the meetings with you and, and working with you as you go forward. And. So before I turn it to a vote, I see the Mrs. Okay. Yeah, Mrs. Mahan is back now. Mrs. Mahan. Do you have any comments or questions? I have no questions, but if anybody of you have a question, I am here to answer. Yeah. Thank you. I'm just asking Mrs. Mahan at this point, if she has any, because we weren't able to connect with her earlier. No question. My internet keeps going out. But if it does again, I'll try to switch to another computer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Good. Thank you. Okay. All right. So on a motion by Mr. Heard seconded by Mr. Diggins. Should we have two votes or can one vote for both appointees? Will that suffice this evening? So Mr. Heard made a motion to approve both. Unless somebody amends that motion and asked to break it out. Right now it's, this is a motion to approve both candidates. You certainly can do that. Or if somebody doesn't want to vote on a slate, they can say. I'm not comfortable with voting on a slate. Okay. Since we went to everybody, I think we're all comfortable voting on the slate. So on the motion by Mr. Heard seconded by Mr. Diggins. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmach. Yes. Mrs. Yes. Mr. DeCourson. Yes. Congratulations to you both. And thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay. Item six. Invision Arlington committee turned to expire 131. The DPCD department of planning and community development. Staff liaison. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. So we're by virtue of joining the town. You will not be the liaison to the committee. And I believe this is a select board appointment. That's why you're here before us tonight. And I don't know if you want to have anything you want to say about the committee or the work that you've been doing so far, but I'll give you the floor if you'd like to add anything. Oh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I've been working for the town for about two months now. And I just want to say that I'm excited about serving as the staff liaison to envision Arlington. I have a few meetings under my belt already and ask me any questions you'd like. Okay, great. And yeah, welcome to the town. We had the opportunity to look at your resume as part of the package. And it's to put it mildly, it's very, very impressive. So we're really fortunate to have you here and looking, looking forward to the, to the work that you'll be doing within the planning and community development department. Thank you. I'll now turn to the board. Mrs. Mahan. Okay. I think, yeah, I think she, she froze again. So I'll move down the line and then return. Mr. Hurd. Thank you. And it's to share and welcome. And we've had a couple of meetings together already, but officially on camera. Welcome to the town. And I've had a great time working with you so far. I look forward to working with you in the future. So I'm overproval. Thank you. Mr. I'll be happy to go along with that approval. And I've met as well also in at a number of meetings. And I'm sure she agrees with me that the vision early standing committee. It's like one of the best. We're happy to have you as a part of that one. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Thank you. I can't say any better than my colleagues already have. So I won't. Thank you for your service. Welcome to town. And I'll. Give a moment. I, we may have to do this one as a four to zero vote. Maybe have a confirmatory vote afterwards because. Well, I see Mrs. Mahan has. Returned. Any comments, Mrs. Mahan or. Other than. No. My. Sorry. My apologies. I was just trying to check to see if I can switch to the other computer. If this keeps happening. I'll try to do that, but no questions. Thank you. Okay. So on a motion by Mr. Herb, seconded by Mr. Diggins, attorney. Mr. Herb. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helen. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Looks like Mrs. Mahans frozen. So Mr. Chrissy, if you don't mind. Mr. Chairman, I'll go to you and then we can either. Obtain this mom's vote when she returns or we can give it a minute. Yeah. Take the vote and we can. We can revoke when she, when she comes back. It's a yes for me as well. Okay. So we'll mark it currently as a. Four zero. Vote with a Mrs. Mahans feed. Being disrupted. And if she comes back and. Wants to assent to join that vote, we can. Record it that way. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Looking forward to working with you. Great. Okay. Next item seven. Agenda item seven. Human rights commission. Term to expire January 31st. 2025. Crystal Bolshevik. And while we're waiting for her if she's with us tonight. Before we do that, this is behind. We had left the vote open. If. So right now it stands at four to zero for Ms. Law. But if you'd like to cast your vote attorney hind tells us we can, we can amend the vote to reflect everybody. And. I think. We may have to wait a little longer on that. Okay. Good evening, Miss Bolshevik. I'm sorry for that delay. We're having a little bit of technical difficulty and. I thank you for joining us tonight. And maybe she could tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're interested in serving on the human rights commission. Absolutely. Thank you. My name is Crystal Bochman. You pronounced that right. That's impressive from the start. I'm a newer resident to Arlington. We moved here early in the pandemic, but I already had a chance to get involved in many ways. Working at the polls and supporting the arts and getting acquainted with a lot of the local businesses. I'd been following the work of the human rights commission for a while when I saw it in the news platform. And I was like, oh, thank you. I was following the work of the human rights commission for a while when I saw it in the newsletter that there was bill will see. So I jumped on it. I do have a background in diversity, equity and inclusion, training and equity arbitration and discrimination and a master's in public administration. And I volunteered in many capacities with food banks, veterans and senior citizens. So I was just looking forward to bringing the perspective of a newer resident to the commission and hopefully helping to benefit the residents of the area. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for your willingness to serve. I will start with Mr. Helmeth on this one. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bushman for, for, for doing that. It's extraordinary when a newer resident steps up. And this is a really important body. And, you know, I think that you will find a lot of like minded colleagues with really interesting life experiences, lived experiences who really care deeply about acknowledging, hearing and protecting the human rights of all residents. So I appreciate your being here. That's all. And I, oh, sorry, move approval. Thank you, Mr. Helmeth. This is my second. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy to support the motion. And again, thank you for your willingness to step up and serve. It's not easy to serve on a town committee. It's time consuming. And it's somewhat of a thankless job sometimes, but I mean, this is another committee that we really, really rely on. And it doesn't really important work in town. So, and you have very relevant background that I think can bring a nice new perspective to the human rights commission. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, I have to say you have one of the most dense TVs I've read in a while, you know, it was exciting to read. It was just like line after line after line after line, but each line was, was very, was very informative and really impressed me in a quick question. What made you choose to be moved to a region? Actually, I was living in Somerville, not far, you know, because we're pretty close. So I, you know, I was like, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, and the real estate agent recommended it. And I said, you know, I'd only been through it. I'd never really. So he showed me around. And we kind of fell in love with the town before we moved, but we're definitely in love with it now. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Yeah. And I want to echo the comments of my colleagues. Thank you for your forgetting involved. And for your willingness to serve. And this is a very important commission. So we, we look forward to the work that you're going to be doing with them. So on a motion by Mr. Helmeth seconded by Mrs. Mrs. Mahaan. Mr. Hurt. Yes. Mr Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. Mrs. Mahaan. Yes. Mr. Dacourso. Yes. She's unanimous vote. Congratulations. Thank you. Okay. Before I go on to the next item, this is my honey. We had held out the. held open the vote on the appointment of Ms. Lau. So if you want to, right now it's four to zero to you. So if you want to cast a vote, we can amend that final vote. Yes, if you could do that, put me in, also, yes. Okay, great, thank you. So that closes out our appointments this evening. Next item is item eight under traffic rules and orders and other business, parking advisory committee recommendation to modify parking benefits district area, Daniel Amstutz, senior transportation planner. Good evening, Mr. Amstutz. Good evening. Great, thank you for joining us tonight. So we'll do these in order, but we'll start with the recommendation on the parking benefits district area. And I know you have provided us with some materials, but if you could give us an overview of the requests this evening. Certainly. Good evening, Mr. Chair and select board members. I will, yes, as I said, have a brief overview of this, which information is in the memo that I provided. And then I believe there was a map as well that I sent along with it, which is also in the memo. So at the January 19th meeting last month, the parking advisory committee voted to recommend changes to the parking benefit district geographic area. As you may know, this area is essentially where investments or reinvestments of parking benefits district money and parking revenues can be made. And it's primarily, you know, it's in Arlington center, it's most of Arlington center, and it was originally set back in 2017. So again, it defines where these funds can be reinvested. And the point or the goal of expanding this area is to incorporate some areas that have now Broadway specifically now has parking meters that were installed last year. And also there's some areas, a couple of areas where the goals to expand it so that we can actually invest some of these funds into projects, important projects that are critical for Arlington center and for safety. And so the map that shows sort of the orange areas of the map and the memo shows you where it's being expanded, but essentially in words, expanding Mystic Street, the line basically into Mr. Street, both sides of Mystic Street from Mass Ave to Chestnut Street, both sides of Chestnut Street from Mystic Street to Medford Street, Franklin Street from Mass Ave to Broadway, Broadway from Franklin Street to Webster Street, and then including all the intersections that are sort of connecting all these parts of it. And then as part of the, you know, one of the main reasons, as I mentioned is we have a very important safety project, the district safety project for Chestnut Street, and by expanding the scope of the area, we can actually invest some funds from PBD into this project that we have upcoming. And so on the memo, it also included a list of various projects that the committee also voted to recommend to spend funding on. So seasonal planning is in Arlington Center, the Chestnut Street safety improvements, public space improvements in Arlington Center, including the Russell Commonlot and a variety of other of our things related to public space, sidewalk design and upgrades on the sort of old Mystic Street section that's next to Whittemore Park and between Whittemore Park and the block of businesses that are there, and finding or kind of hosting a more permanent location for the Bluebike Station that's at the railroad lot. So the request is, and the recommendation from the committee was to have the board approve the, this expanded scope of the PBD geographic area. So I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Diggins. Thank you Mr. Chair, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. I'm not on the screen, I was on the screen looking at the map, so I wasn't quite sure where the microphone was. I'm gonna try and get myself over to the other screen. But a quick question to Mr. Amstiz. So what is the rationale for extending the zone down Broadway from Franklin to Webster? So that's where the new parking meters have been installed? All right, gotcha. Okay, I got it. Yeah, well, look, I mean, this is great. And I especially like what's going on with Chestnut Street and expansion to Chestnut Street allowing us to spend the money, me know, in that area, because clearly it doesn't need me and all men and we're trying to get as much money as we can, as soon as we can to do as much as we can. So this is, I think, a legitimate way of going about that. So, wonderful, having supported, I will make a motion to approve this change being in the board of the parking benefit system. Great, thank you, Mr. Diggins and Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, I'll second the motion. And, you know, I just want to express my pleasure with the, how well the parking meter program in general has worked out over the last few years. I remember in Tom meeting, there was some understandable concern when meters were first introduced. And I think that I'm really glad that we did it. It's improved, I think all the improvements to local businesses and the people going there have been realized and it's really nice that, and I'm grateful to the town manager for his leadership on this and to his team. Using a, doing a parking benefits district really takes the revenue that we get from those meters and it funnels it right back to benefit the people who are using the meters and the businesses there. And, you know, I think that's a really nice win-win. And I just wanted to take the opportunity especially for those of you people who are watching who are not familiar with the program to point that out. So happy to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmut. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't know how clear I'm gonna be all night, but happy to support this. And also I'm pleased to amongst the $200,000 that PAC recently voted does include approximately 50,000 for Chestnut Street safety improvements, which is not the total cost of what we wanna do down there, but we're picking from, we've split the pie up into four or five different pieces and this is one of it. So Mr. Amstutz could pass along our thanks for their contribution to that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy to support this. We have spoke as the representative of the Park Advisory Committee. We spoke with it about this at our meetings and it makes sense to expand where we can use the funds. It always helps to have a little more leeway as to what we can use the funds for. So I think this will be very beneficial, you know, expanding out to Chestnut Street. Obviously there's a, in Mystic Street, there's a lot of senior buildings right there. The seniors use the businesses in Arlington Center and the safety improvements are directly related to supporting the businesses in Arlington Center and that's a good use of the funds. And like Mr. Helmuth, I kind of laugh and recount before I was on the slide board, I was on the old Parking Implementation Governance Committee when we first talked about the meters and the Parking Benefits District was sort of an off-the-cuff suggestion from the representative for the vendor for the meters. He was just like, oh, you know, there's one way that you can spend the money and it's really been an incredibly successful program that has allowed us to put targeted money back and right into the business districts. So it has been a success and will continue to be a success and I'm happy to support expanding that to other areas that benefit the Broadway Plaza area and the Santa area. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Heard. Yeah, and I support this as well, makes good sense and appreciate you giving us a summary of where the recommended funds are going to be spent and as Ms. Mahon said, happy that 50,000 is allocated to Chestnut Street and let's hope this is the last time that we have to talk about the Bluebike Station at the railroad lot going forward because I know you've, it's been a lot of time so thank you for your patience on that and the town manager's patience and working with people on that as well. So on a motion by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Helmut, Attorney Heim. Chair Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmut. Yes. Mrs. Mahon. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Shanaan, Ms. Pope. Thank you. All right, so Mr. Amstatz is going to stay with us and we have a second item which is a Transportation Advisory Committee update and this came out of some discussions that we had earlier this year to the end of last year where there were a number of requests that we were getting and members, I believe we may have even talked about this at our goal session that from time to time probably makes sense to just hear what's the status of different things are and what tech has been doing. So I appreciate you coming back and I believe Ms. Swan is with us tonight as well to provide information. So if you would like to make that presentation now go right ahead. Thank you for making time for me. My name is Laura Swan and as I was voted the tech chair last summer following in Howard's footsteps as part of that handoff the committee started looking at our outstanding projects and comparing that to the outstanding projects from the select board's referral list. And we saw that some of the items that tech had marked as complete were still on the select board list. And so we've been going back through looking at the original requests and seeing how they were answered so that we can all get on the same page. I think that our goal is to have an update on the status of all the referred items by the end of June. But if there's a specific project that you guys would like to ask about tonight I can do my best to answer. Let's see. I would say that the projects have tended to be either older ones that tech has considered closed because say it was a specific location or a specific request and it became part of like a larger issue or a larger project. And I think that when the memo got back to the select board perhaps it was not matched up with the original request that was sent out. And there's some older requests such as the Lugar property that has sort of changed and evolved throughout the years and the original request doesn't make sense anymore. We have some current projects that some are on hold waiting for construction to happen or other anticipated changes. And we have our ongoing work. So I hope to get back to you guys where all of these requests fall and yeah. If you have any questions for me, please let me know. Great. Thank you very much. I'll turn to the board. Mrs. Mahon. No questions. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Hurd. No questions. I'll move for a seat if appropriate. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. I will, I'll second the receipt of the report, you know. And yeah, I wasn't quite sure what this was going to be. I kept looking for materials on the agenda. So, and then also being the on-tact, which don't tell me this a lot really is the best committee in town. But I feel that I kind of know, have a sense of what's going on. And even though I'm not the official liaison, I think I can work with Mr. Hurd to help to just kind of get us off on the same page a little better. So, yeah, we do, TAC does a lot of work. And reports are often pretty dense. And then a lot of the things we solve, or let me rephrase that, the things that we conclude, we draw conclusions on, sometimes we are not satisfactory to residents. I mean, essentially they don't get what they want. And either they will come back in asking again, or years later, they'll come back. And then it's like, well, we dealt with that. How do we deal with that? So, thanks, I mean, and hopefully, I mean, these kinds of visits will help us all just be more refreshed about what's been done, at least recently. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. I'm Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all the TAC members. It is a really hard working committee and we rely on you a lot. I wonder, and I appreciate that you are really busy. And so, reporting to select board is like more work. And so, I get it. But I think that would be useful to us. We do a lot of referring to TAC. And I think it would be helpful to have some context for that. So that when we make referrals from time to time, we have a sense for what the queue looks like. And so that we kind of can manage our own expectations and manage the expectations of the residents who oftentimes initiate requests to us so that we can just explain that the workflows, the workflow, the resources are the resources. And I think I find that people really appreciate just transparency in that. So as you're able to spin up some kind of a system where a report, a list, a grid, whatever, that would be helpful. And something I would find useful, perhaps in June, maybe this is already in your plan, but if we could get kind of a, not a lot of report, not extensive, but just some kind of a list or a grid or table of kind of what's pending, what's been done, so we can clear the decks. That'll help us as we talk with residents about things that have been brought to us that we've brought to this body that we kicked to the tack. And since you offered to try, I've heard recently some residents who live over near in precinct 16 or thereabouts around Dow Avenue in Watchison and Appleton. That's a longstanding troublesome intersection for pedestrian safety. Do you have a sense for if that one is confirmed that we did, we did, we did vote to refer that to you, but is there any insight into that one at all? It's kind of weird. So are you talking about, let's see, Dow Avenue at Watchison and Appleton? Let's see, I don't think I know off the top of my head. I know that we are looking at trying to sort of link together very similar projects or projects that are close together geographically. And so that's probably under the umbrella of like the larger look at Appleton, which just makes more sense that it's a grid system, it's a traffic system. So you have to, like things together for projects. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense for just for the study to implementation. So yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I know putting it on the spot isn't always the easiest thing to do, so that is no problem. But I think as we look for some kind of a systematic regular report, and maybe Mr. Town Manager, if there's any bandwidth in town staff to assist with that, I think that would help us just kind of have a sense for the impact of when we add something to that list, how many things are coming off of it, what that workload is like, because I think it is, it is important that it just doesn't become a very convenient and very well-trusted black box. But I think so that would be really helpful to me. No, for the comment. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Yeah, and I want to thank you, Ms. Swan, for your willingness to come back to us later this year and maybe provide us with a summary. And I think for us, and I've been on the board for about three years, and we receive a number of requests that we refer out to TAC, and as Mr. Helmuth said, we receive a number of questions. And one piece of feedback that I'd like to hear from TAC is sometimes we will send something to TAC, and maybe it shouldn't go to TAC. Maybe it's something you've looked into and saying, you know what, that's not really, it's something that there are other factors that maybe you want to look into. So I almost view this as feedback to us too, in terms of are there things that we're referring to you that maybe you have a piece of it, but not there are other factors that we should consider. And I think going forward, if we did it once or twice a year, I think it would be helpful for us, certainly helpful for you. And also an opportunity to demonstrate the projects that you're working on, because it has been an awful lot over the years that TAC has done. And I just want to make one comment, and this is another example tonight, we're going to have something in correspondence received about a request for one way on Newland Road by the Pierce School. And I know the Downs School is in here recently, there are some changes made in between the schools and TAC, there was different involvement in the state. So that's something that we may be following up, maybe first through Mr. Amstutz to reach out to the principal at Pierce, but again, just another example, things that come in to us routinely that we're sending to you and we want to make sure that we're not overwhelming you or sending you things that should go elsewhere, but also want to hear from you in terms of what's going on. So look forward to hearing that later in the year and congratulations on being the chair, succeeding Mr. Mute. Oh, thank you so much. Let me just add it as it regards to Newland Road, part of the reason that I think some of these requests sort of get tied together is we actually are starting a safe routes to school audit with Pierce School. And so sometimes we wait for the safe routes to school process and their recommendations and sort of their observations before we make our recommendations. So it all gets tied together, some of these geographic areas. So thank you so much. Sure, no, thank you. And that one, I got ahead, we haven't even read the request yet and I'm asking you about it. So I had to myself there. But Mr. Diggins, did you have your hand up to make a point? Yes. And I wanted to say, I'm looking at the TAC page on the website and there's a lot more information there than since the last time I was there. And so it's a good place to go to see reports and the search engine on the site is pretty good too. So I think if we do have questions that we just want to answer before we have a report, maybe we can just like plug it into the town's website and get some reports. So I think we just might need to do some indexing on the page to make things easier. So I'll be happy to, as a liaison from the Chamber of Commerce I mean, I'll be happy to work with Mr. Herd and to help make this more efficient for all of us. We can still have the interim reports being from you but I think we can also do something more to just make it easier for everyone to find information when they want it. So yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair and Ms. One. Great, thank you, Mr. Diggins. So an emotion or receipt by Mr. Herd seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney High. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmut? Yes. Mrs. Maugham? Yes. Mr. Corsi? Yes. Thank you both for joining us tonight. Okay. Next item or items is, it's item 10, warrant article hearings. There are six warrant articles this evening. Our practice has been when we have warrant article hearings we don't have public comment because each of these are public hearings and the public can comment on any of the articles. So what I'm going to do is we will call them in order and we'll allow the proponents to present to us have questions from board members, see if anybody and members of the public want to comment and then we'll go back for any potential activity motions or any further comments from board members. So the first one this evening is a bylaw amendment updating the human rights commission bylaw. Mr. Chapter, I'm not sure who's presenting. I believe both co-chairs are here so I'll promote them and while I'm doing that I just want to apologize to Mr. Diggins. I accidentally clicked to put him in as an attendee and then brought him right back as a panel. So I'm sorry about that, Mr. Diggins. Oh, thanks. Cause I thought I had done something wrong. And it's like, what did I do? You know, I was trying to figure out what I did and actually I'm not going to figure it out. So I was just moving on. So thank you. One of the greatest stresses of my life is when I'm doing this, the names jump around on the list and sometimes you think you're demoting one person and catches somebody else. No problem. Yeah. I was going to comment, Mr. Chapter Lane, that it's good that you found a way to phrase it if that wasn't demoting. I'm sorry, I just said it. Don't want to do that to a board member. No, just leave that for residents. Right. I believe that new co-chairs or both co-chairs of the human rights commission are with us this evening. So good evening to both of you. And if you want to just introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about the proposed article. Well, I'll start. So I'm Christine Carney, co-chair of the Human Rights Commission and Rajeev Fonster. I just need to, yeah, there you are. Rajeev, we didn't hear you. We're still having some. Can you hear me now? I can hear you now. Yes. Okay. It's, for some reason, it was not allowing me to unmute. Yeah, I'm Rajeev Suneja and one of the new co-chairs along with Christine. Great. Well, welcome to both of you. And I know that these are some administrative changes to your bylaw, but if you could walk us through them and then we'll take any questions. So do you have the edited version that we are proposing with all the edits? We have, well, we've received a package from Attorney Heim and I think that might be what we have. I think something else came through. I don't know if we can screen share that. So I'll start though. So basically what we wanna do is we want to, in section one, which is the preamble, where we would like to get rid of most of that and just make it one sentence. Some of it is just more historical about how the commission was formed, but I think we can just shorten it to one sentence and how we were established. And then a lot of the rest of the, so in section two, we wanna change like the word from equal to equitable, change, that's in section A of section two. In section B, we wanna add the words who live, work, visit and travel within Arlington, not just people who, so it encompasses all the people who are within our town boundaries. We wanna add the word bias throughout the bylaw, just to kind of update the language. I mean, there's a lot of edits. So I mean, it's too bad if you guys don't have the, I can share my screen if that helps. We've seen, if it would it help if I actually share the proposed warrant article that Council Hine recommended because that kind of covers and the rationale for the updates too. So I have it in an email, so I'm just gonna quickly share my email. Yeah, and while we're doing that, Attorney Hine, did you wanna add anything? So are you able to see this? Let me move this. Mr. Chair, when Mr. Sunehai is ready, I can come in to offer, I think it will help clarify the scope of what the commission is discussing. Sure, would you like to go ahead right now or do you wanna? Sure, so the commission is sort of ahead of the game and there's actually a lot of presenters tonight who are in a similar position where they basically not just have their idea for the warrant article hearing ready to discuss the general purposes or outline of what they wanna achieve at town meeting. The Human Rights Commission actually has basically all the edits that they wanna make already sort of locked and loaded. It's just not in a motion form. But as they outlined in my memo and as Rajiv has shared with this warrant article, it's pretty straightforward what they wanna do. They mostly wanna simplify the bylaw a little bit, modernize some of the language. There's nothing to say that there's anything wrong with the language before but there's some phrases that are a little out of date. There's some sort of persons that should be, that we sort of think of automatically as being included discovered by the Human Rights Commission, but we wanna make that a little bit more explicit. And then there's a few things that they'd like to make also a little bit crisper and updated with respect to exactly how their processes work for investigating complaint and how certain things like a position of the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion fits into the Human Rights Commission's operations. I just wanna make sure that we're efficient with the board's time and with these wonderful folks' time. I have a good understanding of what it is they wanna do. And I think my memo sort of summarizes well the scope of the changes, which are some of which are very administrative and some of which are a little bit more meaty. So if the board's inclined to support this general idea, I'd be prepared to take the other piece that they have and put it into a motion form for final votes and comments. Great, thank you, Attorney Hyman. And we had seen your summary about the three areas and appreciate that. And that might be the best use of our time this evening. Mr. Senejo, if you want, I don't know if you wanna add anything to what Attorney Hyman said, but I can turn to board members for any questions or comments now. And as Attorney Hyman said, the final changes will be coming back to us for a final vote, assuming that there are no issues this evening in a general way, what's being proposed. I think Attorney Hyman exactly encapsulated what we propose. The edits are extensive because it's a nine-page article. So I think this should work really well in terms of debating the merits of this article. Okay, thank you. So why don't I turn to board members and then we'll see if there's any members of the public that wanna comment, but start with Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. From what I read of Mr. Hyman's presentation to us, it's pretty straightforward, it makes sense to me. And I am easily gonna vote favorable action on this. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Helman? Thank you. I'm very happy to second that, the favorable action. And I appreciate the co-chairs' brief presentation tonight, just giving us a flavor and examples of some of the language I think it sounds exactly right. I'm really grateful that you are staying ahead of the game and really thinking about keeping the bylaw up to date because it's really an important way to communicate to the public what the commission does in its work. And I think that good language that talks about that's inclusive and is possible and uses the most recent understandings of how to express that is a really good idea. So thank you very much for your work. Thank you, Mr. Helman. Mrs. Mahan. No questions. Thank you to everyone. I know how much time you've all put into this, starting out on the town bylaw recodification committee many, many years ago. So thank you for taking the time to do this and happy to support. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Heard. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to support favorable action on this as well and look forward to seeing both changes in our final votes and comments stage. Great. Thank you. And I'm happy to support this as well and I appreciate you both joining us this evening and for the work and for stepping up to be co-chairs because of the Human Rights Commission and it is a busy committee and commission and we appreciate the work that you're doing. Mr. Chapter-Land, are there any members of the public that wish to be heard on this warrant article? I am not seeing any hands raised, Mr. Chairman. Okay. All right. So on a motion by Mr. Diggins that has been seconded by Mr. Helmuth for favorable action on the bylaw proposed bylaw amendment, Attorney Heim. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCourse. Yes. Shannon's vote and I'll work with the commission to put their changes into a vote and comment format. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Ms. Kearney. Thank you, Mr. Senejo. Thank you. Good night. Good night. All right. Next article is a bylaw amendment civilian police advisory commission. I believe there are members from the study committee that will be presenting this evening. Susan, I promoted both you and Sanjay. Is there anybody else I should allow panelists access to present? Laura Giddelson. Laura, thank you. Yeah. So joining us tonight are the co-chairs of the civilian police advisory board study committee, Laura Giddelson and Susan Ryan-Bulmer and a member of the commission, Sanjay Newton. So good evening to the three of you and I know you have a presentation and you're gonna walk us through the proposed bylaw. So I'll turn the floor over to you for that presentation. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us to this hearing on the proposed bylaw amendment that would create a civilian police advisory commission in Arlington. My name is Laura Giddelson and I am one of the two co-chairs of the civilian police advisory board study committee. I will be presenting to you with my fellow co-chair Susan Ryan-Bulmer and study committee clerk, Sanjay Newton. I speak for the entire study committee when I say that we were enormously gratified when both police chief Julie Flaherty and DEI director, Jill Harvey, endorsed the study committee's full recommendations to town meeting and that they did so without reservation. The study committee is strongly recommending that the town of Arlington establish a permanent civilian police advisory commission for the purpose of providing opportunities to increase trust between residents and police. We know that the goal of increasing trust sounds lofty and quite possibly unachievable, but our proposal outlines methods for building that trust that are both actionable and meaningful. Our proposal is also responsive to the diverse needs of Arlington residents as well as the police officers, command staff and civilian employees of the Arlington police department. The study committee has been working together for 11 months. Throughout that time, we relied extensively on the experience, knowledge and expertise of police chief Flaherty, DEI director, Harvey and town council, Doug Hyme. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the study committee's work would not have been possible without their contributions. We began our work by strictly limiting our focus to the charge given to us by the 2020 town meeting. The charge had three parts. Study the creation of alternative mechanisms for civilians to file complaints regarding police interactions. Consider various models such as a police civilian review board independent from the police department to receive and investigate complaints from residents and to review police services, examine the experience of comparable communities and consider the impact of the GEO Act which is the name of the state's new criminal justice law on any recommendations we propose. I am going to briefly outline the process we took to get the information necessary to complete our charge to town meeting. Then Sanjay is going to talk about our specific recommendations and Susan will briefly share additional information that we learned. First, to learn how the current complaints process works in practice, we requested information from Chief Flaherty and DEI director Harvey. We also interviewed Captain Richard Flynn who long served as the leader of the Arlington Police Department's professional standards unit which investigates complaints and Captain Sean Kearnan who currently leads the professional standards unit. We organized 14 listening sessions with town residents and employees to solicit information about their interactions positive, negative and neutral with Arlington police. We also collected information from residents and town employees through an online survey. We learned the following. First, APD's professional standards unit stands out amongst comparable communities for the thoroughness of its work. Each and every complaint that comes to the department regardless of how it is communicated to the department is thoroughly investigated. Second, some of the complaints and concerns held by residents are never communicated to the police. Third, without exception, each of these instances we learned of by which residents had complaints but did not feel comfortable reporting them to police involved residents who are black, Asian, LGBTQIA plus and or living with a disability. Fourth, although the process for making complaints about Arlington police is very clearly explained on the department's website some residents remain unsure about how the process works. Fifth, there is no option for filing a complaint confidentially. And finally, many residents have enjoyed highly positive interactions with Arlington police and the process for offering official compliments or commendations is just as confusing to some residents as the process for making complaints. To learn about various models of civilian oversight we sought out the expertise of Ryan Korr, executive secretary for Cambridge's police review and advisory board and a member of the leadership of the National Association for civilian oversight of law enforcement. Brian consults with municipalities around the country on how to build trust between residents and law enforcement. We also sought the expertise of Pittsfield police chief Michael Wynn. Chief Wynn is also one of Governor Charlie Baker's three appointees to the Massachusetts peace officer standards and training commission known as the Post Commission which was created as a part of the state's new public safety law. To gather information for the final part of our charge study committee members researched what comparable communities in Massachusetts are doing with regard to civilian police commissions. Director Harvey also shared information with the study committee about what is happening in comparable communities that she learns through her monthly meetings of the Massachusetts DEI coalition which is for DEI professionals working for cities and towns across Massachusetts. We turned to town council Doug Heim to learn about the ways in which the GEO Act will affect policing and police oversight in the Commonwealth. Chief Wynn also shared information with us on how the GEO Act will interact with local civilian police commissions. Okay, I'm gonna turn this over now to Sanjay who's going to walk you through our recommendations. Thank you, Laura. Our first charge from town meeting related to the complaints process. We were recommending that the new civilian police advisory commission serve as a technical resource for anyone who wants to make a complaint or offer a commendation regarding Arlington police. Serving as a technical resource includes broadly educating residents about options for filing complaints and commendations about police conduct, connecting community members with the appropriate town officials and committees, supporting a community member through the complaints and commendation process and following up with community members. As Laura explained earlier, some residents do not feel comfortable bringing their concern directly to the police. They may be concerned about retaliation. They may be unsure what their options are and how their complaint will be treated. And as director Harvey noted in a memo to the study committee about the complaints process, some residents or their loved ones may have had difficult encounters with police that make them uncomfortable approaching police. The new civilian police advisory commission can mitigate these fears and concerns by being a resource outside the police department for community members to ask questions, learn about their options and then make an informed decision about how and whether to proceed. Although the charge from town meeting only specified that we look at the process for filing complaints, it became clear to us that any discussion moving forward should include commendations in addition to complaints. We were struck by how even those residents who shared with us their negative experiences also had positive things to say about Arlington police. Town meeting also charged us with considering various models of civilian oversight and specifically asked that we consider a review board independent from the police department with the authority and resources to receive and investigate complaints. We are recommending that the new civilian police advisory commission work with the Arlington police department to find ways to make its work more transparent to the public by regularly analyzing publishing data that offers insight into the quality and effectiveness of the department. The study committee gave serious consideration to the investigative model laid out in our charge, but ultimately the committee voted unanimously against recommending an investigative model of civilian oversight. In his presentation to us, Brian Kaur described these models of oversight as adjudicatory and adversarial. The study committee agreed and felt that this model would not be a good fit for Arlington. Ultimately, we chose to focus on proactive rather than reactive oversight in an effort to create the type of public safety that Arlington needs and wants. Finally, time meeting directed that we consider how pending legislation would intersect with the work of the civilian police advisory commission. Between the close of the 2020 special time meeting and the study committee's first meeting, the governor signed the geo act into law. We could spend a great deal of time discussing the geo act and in fact, the study committee did so. What's most important this evening though is that we have crafted our recommendations to work in concert with those reforms, even as the work of implementing the law is ongoing at the state level. I'm now gonna turn things over to Susan. Thanks, Sanjay. During the 14 listening sessions that the study committee held with members of the public, we collected a number of stories about community members' interactions with police. Most of them were quite positive but a few can only be described as harrowing. I'm gonna share stories from one resident that reflect both qualities. During a listening session that Sanjay and I facilitated, a resident told us of how when her wife was dying, her wife's medical condition would sometimes cause her to fall to the floor from a standing or seated position. The resident was unable to lift her wife back up on her own. So she would call 911 for assistance. Sometimes police were sent in response, sometime the fire department was and sometimes both departments were sent. One time when an individual police officer responded, he initially refused to help the wife get back up. He instead badgered the woman, asking her why she was refusing to get up and demanding that she get up on her own. The resident who made the 911 call was powerless to intervene on her wife's behalf. She had to humor the officer until he finally agreed to help the wife get back up and get her safely situated on the couch. The resident never considered filing a complaint because she knew she was going to have to keep calling 911 for help with her wife. She did not want to risk retaliation from the officer in question or from other officers. Going forward when she called 911, she told the dispatcher that she was not experiencing an emergency and that she wanted the fire department to respond to the call, even if that meant she would need to wait longer for help to arrive. There's no way to sugarcoat this story. It was a terrible experience for the resident and in listening to her, Sanjay and I were both rattled. Then the resident told another story. When a close family member unexpectedly died in the home, police were dispatched in response to the 911 call. The dispatcher knew that for this situation, there was an officer in particular who would be able to provide support to the shocked and grieving family. The dispatcher tracked him down. He was off duty at the time and he went to the house. In the end, everyone who responded to that call from the Arlington Police Department stayed with the family for hours, providing great support and comfort during the worst day of this family's lives. Some officers followed up with the family in the days following the death. As we contemplate ways as a community to build trust between residents and police, we are not served by making stubborn claims that the Arlington Police Department is beyond reproach and that anyone who expresses the desire for better service is a quote cop hater. Nor are we served by making strident claims that the Arlington Police Department is broken, should be abolished and that all officers are indifferent to the many factors that for some residents can act as barriers to feeling safe in our community. Arlington will be served if we take additional steps to build, create and sustain collaboration and trust between residents and police. The study committee strongly believes that creating a permanent civilian police advisory commission is one way to advance that work. At this point, we're happy to answer any questions you may have. We know that Chief Larrity and Director Harvey are here tonight and of course, Town Council, Doug Hyme is here. Each of them were important partners to the study committee and are deeply familiar with our work. If appropriate, we hope you will ask questions directly of them if it would help you better understand our recommendations. Thank you. Thank you all for the presentation and for the work that you have done and the comprehensive report that you have prepared along with your recommendations for the bylaw. So I'm gonna turn to board members now for any questions, but Mr. Chaplain, they may be questions of Chief Larrity and Director Harvey. So if you wouldn't mind promoting them that I think that would help the discussion here. And I'll start with Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think particularly since I anticipate or hope that the members of the public will comment, I'll reserve my own comments or emotions about this, but I do have a few questions for the team with one exception. I am profoundly grateful for the hard work that went into this. It is clear to me from reading the very detailed memo and for anyone watching, there's a great background memo that's provided to us that's on the Select Board Agendas and Minutes webpage in the town website that really lays out the extraordinary amount of listening and thinking and learning and creativity that this committee undertook on behalf of the residents of this town and of our government. And I am grateful. That said, now to my questions, I'll reserve the rest of my comments and perhaps a motion for after public comment. To the committee, and this is looking at the bylaw language and this might have been, I don't know if this was just an inverted emission or for some purpose and if it's on purpose, that's okay. But I noticed that you and Sanjay particularly, regularly referred to both complaints and commendations. And I wondered if in at the very top of the bylaw in section two where it describes the purpose. Right now the language talks about increasing understanding and trust for running a resource and even if they have complaints or concerns, would you want to also add the commendations there as well so that that's up top? Some nods there. And Mr. Hynes? Yes. Yes. Yes, that is an oversight and thank you for finding it. Much appreciated. Yeah, good, great. So excellent. So that I'll try to remember that Mr. Hynes, you can remind me in my motion to maybe suggest that minor administrative change and you're in the final votes and comments. I'm sure that we have them. My other question and again, this just stems from reading the very detailed and very helpful memo is regarding the composition of the committee and eligibility. I think there's been a lot of thought put into this. I'm really impressed with the job requirements at both in terms of representation of the residents of the town and for the skills and experience that we'd be looking for in such a commission. And one question I have and I would actually with the chair's permission be happy to kind of hear from representative of the committee and also from Chief Flaherty and also from Director Harvey, if I could be so bold, just to kind of get their individual take on the question of the potential participation of like a retired law enforcement professional who lives in Arlington. I think right now the draft by-law suggests that such a person would not be eligible. And I'm just interested in learning more about the thinking that went into that and if there's a difference in thinking amongst the three of you, I'd be happy to hear that just to inform my own thinking and perhaps that of my colleagues. So Mr. Chair, I'll let you be the traffic cop here and amongst those three entities. Okay, well, I'll go in the order that you suggested. We'll start with the members of the committee then to Chief Flaherty and then to Director Harvey and what Mr. Helmuth is referring to in the section, proposed section is 3B, eligibility to serve, subpart 2B, which talks about potential persons who are not eligible. The proposed language says current or former law enforcement officers, whether in Arlington or elsewhere. So with that background, whatever member of the committee would like to answer first and turn to Chief Flaherty. Yeah, the committee actually discussed this quite extensively at our, I believe it was our January meeting and as a result of that, Laura and Susan and I went off and actually spent some time talking to various folks and learning about what other, making sure we knew what happens in other jurisdictions. And there was not, we got very good feedback from other folks that we had things done right in the way that we've spelled things out here. Okay, Chief Flaherty, first of all, good evening. I don't know if you wanna add anything on that point or anything else about the committee because we haven't asked you to speak yet either. Of course. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yes, I just do have a few comments. I've been working alongside with the co-chairs and with Mr. Newton on the committee for the past 11 months. I'm grateful for the work of the committee and I was impressed and appreciate so much the thoughtfulness, the passion and the commitment that went into everything over the past year. I support the recommendations of the committee. I think we in Arlington are very fortunate to have a very professional police department that practices fair and impartial policing and we strive to treat everybody that we encounter with dignity, respect and compassion. With that, there are some things that we can do better and there is room for improvement in things that we do. And I think that the formation of this committee will make the Arlington Police Department a better police department and make the community a stronger community and promote trust. And to Mr. Helmets point, I would like to comment on the commission composition specifically excluding a police officer. I think that we would be missing an opportunity to have a policing expert on the commission. There are many police officers that work in other jurisdictions that live in Arlington that would be very qualified to be on this commission and offer their insight on policing issues. I think that the co-chairs and Mr. Newton would all agree that although I wasn't a voting member of the committee that I brought my knowledge and expertise to the committee and that was very important for me to explain processes and policies and systems and provide background information. So I think it is very important and I would like to see a compromise made in the commission composition. Thank you. Thank you Chief Laird. And Ms. Harvey, I wanna also ask for your input on this and any comments that you wanna make about the committee as well. And I wanna thank you both for the materials that you provided to us, the memorandum and the experiences that you provided. It's really helpful for our background and I know both of your contributions were really important to the committee. So with that, turn it over to you. Thanks. Yeah, I really echo a lot of what Chief Laird just said working with the committee for almost the last year has been, it was better than I expected. It was actually really inspiring to see this group of folks just dive right into the work and the passion and steam was all the way through. So I was glad to be a part of it. Specifically to the question about the makeup of the commission. So right now, I personally feel that the way it's set up should be how it should go to begin with so that there shouldn't be any town employees or no police on the commission to begin with or immediate family members of current or former Allenton police. I think because the purpose of this commission is to really start to foster trust and rebuilding relationships. I believe this commission will work closely with the chief but to begin that it shouldn't be someone on the commission. I think over time as bylaws can be reviewed that there might be an opportunity to change that but right now I don't think for the commission starting out that it would be a good fit to have a member of law enforcement on the commission but in the future, I think it could be up for discussion. Thank you. Mr. Helmuth, you may have more questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair for inviting our chief and director to make their additional comments because it's really important and it was very clear from the committee's report just how valuable they were in generous with their time. I'd actually like to ask a follow-up clarifying question of both Chief Larrant and also Director Harvey. In your mind, is there in what your points of view on this and I think it's healthy that there's a diversity of views here. Is there a distinction in your mind between a currently serving a police officer and a retired police officer and also an officer who served in Arlington versus is retired and served in other communities? And it might start maybe with Chief Larrant and go to Ms. Harvey. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. I would say that a police officer that serve or served in a different community would be most helpful to the committee as opposed to an Arlington officer. To Jill's point, I think that having somebody who's having an employee of the town would really... I think having an outside police officer or a retired police officer would be a better bet. Thank you very much. Ms. Harvey. Yeah, I agree. I don't think at any point a current serving officer either in town or living in town and in another jurisdiction would be a good fit just because I think it's too close to home. Same for even just an employee in general. I just don't think it's appropriate because it's more establishing a civilian in the left in the title, not employee board. But I think that a retired officer who either lives in town or was on the Arlington Police Department would be better, but definitely not someone who's currently serving. Thank you. I appreciate the additional thoughtfulness and nuance. I think I'll stop there and hand the floor to my colleagues for their good questions and then look forward to making some comments after we hear from public. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for all the time and effort everybody's put on into this and will continue to do that. I agree with Chief Larity and I think Director Harvey, I know she also gave her insight on this. A, hearing how helpful the Chief was in the 11 months for this committee to take their charge and their steed and to come out with recommendations was a valuable asset. I think it tests for the fact that I think I feel strongly that there should be someone on whether it's a retired Arlington Police Officer whether it's a retired Arlington resident who wasn't an Arlington Police Officer but served in law enforcement in another community in Massachusetts or perhaps some other area. I wanna be very cautious of my remarks for the committee as well as for the Arlington Police Department which I know I hear a lot of positive things and I wanna thank the members of the committee for highlighting concerns and complaints but also commendations. You've got the three C's in there. I think that's a good thing. I really think that helps us. I can tell you right now being an Arlington Police Officer is a very, very tough job. If you look at what the retirements and laterals and the institutional knowledge that we've lost, I think we've lost seven officers in the past six or seven months and I think only one or two retirement and I know we're actively out there trying to get a wide diverse pool to apply to Arlington but some of the other cities and towns but definitely in Arlington, it's definitely a job to do that. So I do wanna be mindful of the civilian advisory board, the issues facing Arlington, fostering moving forward so that everybody, whether you're a resident of the town with a good or bad experience with the police department or if you're a police officer yourself that you can look to this committee more as a partner than as a punisher. And I think that's the direction we're moving in but I do feel strongly that there should be somebody there, law enforcement expertise that is a voting member. I know I've been put on committees and sometimes when I'm ex-officio, I don't really feel as heard either have the member or not. So I'm hoping that when we come to the end of this that we do have at least one non-active Arlington law enforcement personnel retiree also on this committee as a voting member. Thank you. Thank you Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you Mr. Chair. I wanna thank the study committee for all the tons of work that I know went into this process and I know you heard a lot of different opinions that you had to sort through and there's a lot of information that you had to condense in order to get the recommendation that's before us. I do agree with my colleagues. I think this is a fair and reasonable representation. I think this body that's being created can again be a partner for both residents and the police department and can be a great conduit between the two and in the event that complaints happen it's a way for residents to safely and securely lodge complaints and I do like that the language also calls for accommodations too because we're trying to build trust between the police department and residents and I have and members of this board have on multiple occasions talked about the amazing police department that we have in Arlington we think is the model of community policing for other departments around the country. And like Chief Flaherty said, anybody whether it's a police department, town government, this select board that with anybody there's room for learning there's room for improvement and I think this is a step in the right direction. I am happy to see the recommendation that I had said before when we had talked about this committee that I didn't think that the town of the police department Arlington required an independent investigatory committee and that's not being put before us. We do have a great chief of police we have a great town manager who can handle situations like that but I do think that this board can be productive. I hear and agree with the comments regarding the composition whereas I think the best when I see a motion going towards the end of this I would suggest that the motion be to amend the language just to say that the exclusions are current or former Arlington police officers and that's going to severely limit the amount of potential applicants that are Arlington residents that could serve on this board anyways. But I mean, I do understand obviously the reason that current police officers in Arlington wouldn't be eligible to serve on the board. And I think the concern at least in the initial inception of this board is that if someone retired two years ago and is all of a sudden eligible to serve on the board that could be problematic as they be investigating or they've been discussing complaints about members who they served with but I do think we have some valuable insight from police law enforcement officers who live in town who have never served on Arlington police department. So I think amending that specific language just to make the exclusion current or former Arlington police department I think makes sense. And hopefully that's the direction that we're going into. And I would just say generally just to push back on one of the comments that was made in the presentation I don't think the task of creating trust between residents in the Arlington police department should be insurmountable or an unattainable lofty goal. I think that that's something that this committee can achieve. And I think we're moving in that direction. And I think if residents look at Arlington police department individually both as it's currently comprised but with also the steps that chief Larrity and the ranking officers and all the officers have taken to try to move their department forward and learn from residents and don't see them as a body of this national policing organization. Just look at the community policing unit that we have and work with that community policing unit. I think we can really take some major steps in bridging whatever trust issues that we have with the Arlington police department. And I think we'll see a lot of progress in the next couple of years. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Heard and Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And yes, I agree the committee's done great work. And I think it's the epitome of a good committee whether it's a study committee or just a regular committee just the transparency, recording every meeting making it available is wonderful and the dynamic amongst people were great. And maybe that did have something to do with the way it was selected. I mean, I really liked the way it was selected by other committees and commissions I mean, it kind of diffuses the control of the selection process. And I thought that was really good. And you see, let me get in the way that you are going to compose committee or the commission. So I applaud that wholeheartedly. So to the questions, I'm glad I'm going last on this one. So, but we'll actually first, yeah, I guess it's a question, a tactical question. I'm looking at the report, the memo that you all provided. And I don't know to what extent that is the final version of the main motion. But I noticed a couple of things. There seem to be two section threes and on the first section three, and then I think it's B, hold on, let me go to my notes. Sorry about that. And Mr. Diggins, while you're looking for that, there are some technical or administrative things. You're right about the section threes and the some definitional references or consistency on definitions that I think will work with Attorney Heim when we come back on a final vote if we approve this. But that's, so if there are certain things like that, if you've discovered maybe we're best to talk to Attorney Heim, because I had a few of those myself, but I think we can clean that up as part of a final vote when it comes back to us. Yeah, good. I appreciate that. And I was kind of mentioning that when it's passing as a spaceholder. And so this one is kind of tactical and maybe it'll be cleaned up too, but it's the last one. And it's on, let's see, I had the note and then I lost it. So it's section three, C4. I'm just wondering if before the foregoing, there needs to be a the there. And if not, then I'm just not understanding something. So, and then maybe we can talk about that later on, but to the other more meaningful questions, let me go back to my notes. So the one about the, this is maybe to Ms. Faulner. So on the story about the lesbian couple, that's a very touching story. Was there the sense that there was homophobia in that episode? I don't know. No idea. I don't know. I can't speak to that. OK, all right. So it was presented as a lesbian couple. So I was kind of wondering if that was an element of it that should have been obvious to me or whether it wasn't a part of the incident. OK, thanks. So this one's to Chief Flaherty. When you think suggests that we have a compromise, we didn't have some kind of law and force representation. I mean, right now it has 11 members. How we get there? Would we take one from the select board appointees because the select board has two and replace that one with one? Or how we, or we have a bigger commission? So I think that would be a good question for the town manager. So this is good. So this is all about building trust. And I guess how do we establish trust in the beginning? I mean, what I like about this committee or this commission is that it's going to help people with complaints. And it's not obvious to me that from the name of the commission that people will realize one of the functions of it is to help people file complaints. How do you think we'll deal with that? That could be any of the committee members. Happy to answer that. Like anything, you need to communicate what your purpose and mission is. If I don't mean to be flip, but what's the select board do? What does that mean? So I don't, you know, culturally we all come to adapt and we learn. And so that's what I would say. I really hope that's not the motto because a lot of people don't know. He is also, I mean, oh man, I really hope they get to know the CPAC better than they do the select board. But I hear you. And I guess the other question is kind of related to this, though, is what is it you think that will make it such that this commission will be able to maintain trust? Because trust is really important. And so yeah, how do you think we'll maintain it? What kind of buffers maybe do you put in place to prevent it from being lost? If? And I guess I would say it's not inevitable. Trust is an ongoing process that takes time and it takes work by lots of different people. No one body can create trust on its own. And so this is we're putting in place a system to move that process forward and to allow space for that to happen. But it's going to take work from people on the commission, from people in the Arlington Police Department, from people in the community. And as Director Harvey made mention of before, these kinds of things evolve over time. And perhaps we'll be back in front of the select board in several years saying, oh, hey, by the way, we've figured out this, and this, and this need to change. And this is how we should be evolving with the community and with the situation. Is that? Yeah, I mean, I understand in general, but I guess what I'm hoping for in what goes before town meeting is that we kind of have it defined as to how we are going to be first publicized, we make it known to the public me that this commission exists. And that one of its roles is to help people with complaints, because I think we understand kind of the ambiguity that is in a bylaw amendment like this, you don't want to be too specific me, but I mean, it'll be part of the bootstrapping process for the commission, and I just want to make sure that it's defined how it goes about doing that, that that publicity is like part of its real function, meaning that it doesn't just hope it kind of is an emergent property of the fact that 11 people are together working on this. I think you'll have to go beyond that emergent property and beyond the hope that that happens, meaning and make it well defined that that is part of the role. And so maybe that's something that exists outside of the bylaw and just something that we as a town has to just make sure that we do, but to the extent we can make it part of this process in a formal way, that would be great. I have a couple more things by see Attorney Hyme's hand up. So if it's okay, Mr. Chair, I'll stop and ask you if we can see what Mr. Hyme has to say. Sure, Attorney Hyme, did you want to add something now? Yeah, no, I just wanted to answer Mr. Degen's question. The way to resolve the issue if the board was inclined to make an edit to the language would really be just to remove or alter that one provision of eligibility. You wouldn't need to change the number of members or who their appointing authority is because it could very well be that any one of the, I'm sorry, nominating authorities nominates a retired officer. You don't have to add to the commission necessarily to achieve that goal. It would be up to you if you wanted to, but you wouldn't have to add anything. Thank you. Well, thank you. That's all too logical, Mr. Hyme. Thank you, you know, makes perfect sense. And so just one more, I think. Well, so like I said, I'm all for this, Mead, and there's actually two questions. And so part is like preparing you for the meeting. Mead, so let me ask the more challenging one first. What do you say to the argument that this doesn't go far enough to me, members? I think, you know, we did a lot of research and looked at the experience of other communities and what had worked and what hadn't worked, right? And we spent a lot of time thinking about what was going to work in Arlington, right? And we made choices, you know, we didn't, we made choices about what we thought was going to work in Arlington. And we rejected ideas that we didn't think would work here. And, you know, it wasn't about how far to go, right? It was about choosing the things that were going to make a positive difference for Arlington. I hear you. I hear you, Mead. Like I said, I'm all in favor of Mead, but just be prepared with some details when the questions come at you on that line, Mr. Hyme. And the last is maybe a little complex to me, but I was reading Ms. Harvey's memo and how she dealt with a couple of challenging situations in and they were very nuanced for the two situations being, and I think they both came to good outcomes, Mead. And I guess I'm not sure how this commission would handle it differently than it was handled, Mead. So one of the things you do is like, you get a complaint and then you like discuss it with Ms. Harvey, Mead, or I'm just, I'm trying to understand that how would that situation, either those situations that Ms. Harvey dealt with go work out if it started with the commission, the proposed commission first. Well, I think a lot of this is part of the work, figuring this out as part of the work we envision this committee should town meeting vote for it. The beginning of the work is gonna be a lot of this, developing training and policies and procedures and learning from the experts, Director Harvey, one of them, of course, about the best practices for working with residents in this kind of circumstance. What I took from listening to Ms. Harvey is that a huge part of what she had to do was listen and really get at what someone was looking for and whether they wanted to file a complaint, et cetera. But I think this is really the job of the commission to figure out, unfortunately, we couldn't figure it all out in 11 months. Gotcha. Thank you very much. You know, once again, great work and I'm very favorably inclined towards this as it is me, but we'll have discussions after the hearings about being possible changes. Thanks again. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. Yeah, there we go. That's my one time. Oh, I didn't get it myself. We each have one. I think we have one for Mr. Helm. Yeah, go ahead. I noticed it was a little hard to see. I noticed that Ms. Harvey had her hand up with a may have on her to respond to. Sure, I'm sorry, I didn't see that. Ms. Harvey, did you want to say anything? Yeah, I just wanted to add that I do think that the commission if established would really need to be the group that would establish a different type of process. You know, there is a process in place, but it needs improvements. And I think that having this group of people be able to put that together would be, I think that's the goal of this, that they're going to be there to figure out what might work, what number of alternatives you can have in a different way of also making it, having things go through anonymously because we don't have that right now. And that means to be thought through carefully and definitely take some more time than what we had. But that group, once they come together, will go through training and have that and be able to put their expertise to work to be able to establish a new process. So that's all I was gonna say. Thanks. Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't see you with the handups. I wanted to echo a comment to my colleagues. I certainly support this, but so respect the work that has been done since March of 2021, when you consider that you met 16 times, had 14 listening sessions, reached out to members of the police department, members of the public. And one thing that I also noted that this committee did that I thought was unique. And I think really helpful, maybe a model for other committees is the members from each of the various groups went back to their various committees to provide updates throughout this whole process. So I had heard updates on meetings I attended at the Council on Aging. I know Board of Youth Services, there were regular updates to keep people informed. So that this process was really complete. There was the co-chairs had reached out to us as members of the Slack Board at various times if we had just updates as to where things stood. And I really think that that made for a strong product and a deliberative product that what we see here before us tonight. So I wanna thank you and just the thoughtfulness and the purpose of the commission. It's thorough and with the addition of commendation will be even more thorough there. I did have a question. I think we seem to a number of us have wanna ask about the eligibility question. And one question I have on that is I understand the reluctance especially at the beginning to have a current law enforcement officer. I'm wondering if we passed it out and left former law enforcement officer. But the way law enforcement officer is defined too, I'm wondering if you wouldn't be disqualifying somebody who might meet another criteria. And what I mean by that is if someone worked for the district attorney was an assisted district attorney. Well, that is a law enforcement officer. It's not, there's a different definition of police department employees elsewhere. And a number of people who work in the district attorney's offices go on to become public defenders or do criminal defense work. And that is certainly a category that we'd like to see on the commission. So I wonder for the former category if one thing that may happen here is you may be disqualifying people that meet other criteria that may be able to bring something to the commission based on their experience. And it's more of a comment at this point. I mean, I think it is a concern that I have and I think we can talk about it a little bit more as a board. So just a few other comments that I wanna make on this and to follow up to a question Mr. Diggins had in terms of how the public may know of what's happening. But one of the things here is that the commission is gonna provide a yearly report to town meeting in terms of what happened in the past year, what were the findings and what are the priorities. And that's a good way for this commission to evolve after it's created in terms of reporting back, seeing what's working, seeing what isn't working. But I mean, it's all about building trust as we said. And when we look back to where we were at the special town meeting in 2020, we had supported this as a board, town meeting had supported this. No one really knew what was gonna come out of the committee, the study committee. And I think when you look at the product here and the healthy discussions and the hard work that was done, it's a very impressive product. So I wanna thank you all for that. Before I return to the board, I'd like to ask are there any members of the public that would like to provide comments on the proposed warrant article? Yes, there is a number of hands. Would you like me to just call them out in order, Mr. DeCourson? Yes, we're ready. First hand raised is Susan Stamps. Good evening, Ms. Stamps. Hi, everybody, thank you. Boy, I am so impressed by this group. You guys are, it's very inspiring and I just can't wait till you can get to work. I had a few comments. I know people have been going back and forth about should police officers, former or current Arlington or not be allowed to serve. It seems to me that if it's called a civilian police commission and civilian police review commission or something. And I think civilian in that context means not a police officer. So it seems like it wouldn't be appropriate for a current police officer either in the town of Arlington or in some other town to serve, but maybe it would be okay for a retired police officer to serve, probably from another town. So I think somebody might have suggested that. I think that might be an okay idea. I don't really know how I feel about it, but maybe a retired officer, they could have some very valuable insight. I can see from the list of, very quickly, from the list of the people nominated that basically your target audience, it seems like are people who historically do have run-ins with the police. And so I, you know, for whatever reasons. And so I think it's really great that the makeup is gonna be precisely like let's not mess around here, who really needs help and support in this kind of an endeavor. And so I think it's a great list. I really admire the work you've done. A couple of technical questions as far as where you're looking for someone who... Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You were looking for a person who has, oh, a town will appoint at least one person who has, and then you mentioned three things, criminal defense or civil rights, relative to police service searches, data analysis and working with underserved communities. Is that all supposed to be the same person? Or are you hoping to get one of those other members from one of the other commissions, somebody who's good with data analysis, somebody who's got experience with police service searches and someone who's familiar with working with underserved communities. Cause I think that would be best to have three different people. Cause those... I think as written, it says respectively and it's separated by hands with the last one. I think they were looking for three different individuals on that. Okay, that would be good. They're nodding their heads, yeah. And one more quick thing is the employees of the town of Arlington cannot serve on the commission. And I just mentioned that I know for some purposes, people who are on town boards and committees are considered town employees, I think. For example, for ethics purposes. So I just don't know if you wanna tweak that a little bit what you mean by employees. Okay, thank you. And I think that would only include, well, it will include school committee once are added, select board, finance committee receives an honorarium, but there's a number of them that are just volunteer. Attorney Heim, did you wanna say something on that? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to be brief. Yeah, what's considered an employee for state ethics commission purposes is basically a unique function of that law. Generally speaking, people are considered volunteers, they're not considered employees for most other purposes of the law. So it's a little confusing. Maybe we could just put in a note that makes it clearer. Compensated employees, the town of Arlington, and that nature. Thank you, Attorney Heim. Ms. Stamps, and I didn't say this before you started where I'd like to limit the public comments to three minutes or less. You've done all right. I didn't tell you, so I appreciate your comments, but if there's anything further, you feel free to talk to us. Okay. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, the next speaker is Elizabeth Trey. Good evening, Ms. Trey. Thank you very much, Elizabeth Trey. I'm telling the meeting member in the old eight, hopefully in the new 10. I want to also say how grateful I am for all the work I have attended several meetings and watched you all move through this process and have been so impressed and really grateful for that. I would just sort of like to put out there that as one of the goals is guiding community members through the process that there'd be specific attention paid to multilingual language ability and for that to be professional interpreters and translators and so that you are not relying on family members or friends to be interpreters because often family members tend to be children, perhaps of people and it's really not appropriate. So I would just like to just put that out there that I hope that the town will invest in professional translators and interpreters to help bring this out to the public. And then I want to talk about this idea of police officers retired, active. And I think that the point of this is to establish trust and confidence and that if you put a retired or any police officer on this initial commission that you are sort of handicapping your success right off the bat. I know that there are people who do not make complaints to the Human Rights Commission because there is a police officer at those meetings. And so for you to do the same thing with this commission I just think is a great grave mistake. And I would really encourage you to listen to Director Harvey. This is her area of expertise. This is what she knows. And I would encourage you to listen to the members of the commission who have spent 11 months doing a very deep dive into this and what are best practices and deferred to what they have said. I attended a meeting, I don't, I think it was the last one in February where I believe one of the co-chairs, I'm sorry, I don't remember who went, specifically addresses this topic, right? And went through all the people they had spoken to about this specific topic. And every single person told them, you are correct. Do not put a police officer on this commission. And perhaps you can invite them to speak to that because it was very convincing to me. So I think that is it. Let me look at my notes. And I would also caution, what is a retired police officer? Because here in Arlington, we allow retired police officers to work traffic duty so and carry guns. So, you know, that is something that we passed at town meeting recently. So just to be aware that it's a very retired isn't a clear category. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Mr. Ray. The next speaker is Robin Bergman. Hi, Mr. Bergman. Hi, thanks so much. Thanks very much to the committee for putting this together. As one of the residents who was interested in seeing this established in the beginning, I'm very impressed with the work that's been done on this. Having a little trouble hearing you. I want to second what Elizabeth, I feel that this is a severe event. Oh no, I'm gonna turn off my video. Can you hear me any better? Yes, we can. Can you hear me any better? Yes. All right, let me know if I video. Yeah, we're still having trouble. I agree with Elizabeth. Oh no. I'll try one more thing. Actually on my phone data, can you hear me any better now? No. Why don't we do this? Why don't we have a few more people on the list? Why don't we go through those people and if you want to try to establish a new connection, we'll promote you again and get you back on because we just having trouble hearing you. Okay. Okay. The next hand raised is Lynette Culverhouse. Good evening, Ms. Culverhouse. Hi, Lynette Culverhouse, Strapper Avenue, town meeting member in precinct 11. Yeah, I want to echo what everyone else has said that I really applaud the work of this committee and I'm so impressed with the thoroughness of it and particularly around the collaboration with Chief Flaherty. And I think that they have started the process of building trust with the community, which is so much needed. And I just want to echo what others have said in the interests of building that trust. I feel like it's really important to have it be a civilian review board and have it not have police, any kind of police or law enforcement presence on it. In the interests of transparency, that would have to be clearly out there and we know that there are residents who fear going to the police. And I think that we are trying to build trust with those residents that don't feel it in the someone who personally knows people who will not go to the police but have experienced, you know, discrimination and in some cases violence, but fear going to the police. I think that it's important that we keep this as a civilian review board. So thank you. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Sarah McKinnon. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Sarah McKinnon. I live on Kilseith Road and I'm a town meeting member for precinct 20. I'm speaking first to say thank you to this committee. I'm incredibly grateful for the work. I attended a number of meetings and read some of the documentation that came through and I'm very impressed and really appreciate the time it took to do this so carefully. I'm speaking in particular to support the I directors Harvey's very clear recommendation that no police officers, whether current or retired serve on this committee. I also note that she did say that perhaps at a later date, there might be a place to have law enforcement, whether current or retired participate, serve in this committee, but that this is not really the time. And I think that I can understand people can have very strong feelings in support of the police as well. But I think that what we're trying to do here would in this committee is to give a space and a place, an avenue for marginalized people to be able to share their experiences with Arlington police. And that's not that it is for them and it's also for Arlington police. And if that information isn't coming to the police department at this time, this is part, I think, of what it sounds like this committee is trying to do. It's not, I don't hear an anti-police message coming through. What I hear is, we wanna know. I hear from Chief Flaherty, I heard her speak. At the DTG meeting, she wants to know. She wants this trust. And so if we put in people that already, it's not about the person per se, it's not about the officer per se, it's not about Arlington police per se. This is a long and painful history for a lot of people. And it's an ongoing national issue. And so no matter how stellar a job the Arlington police force does, we still live in this country that is struggling to figure out how police and civilians, and particularly marginalized communities can all work together and feel safe and be safe. And I think that you are hamstringing this community because the very people who don't go to the police now will definitely not come if they know there was a police officer in that room. And to trust that these silent voices deserve to be heard should be the first mandate of this committee, not to uplift people who already have power, which are the people in government. There are people like me who is a town meeting member and there are people in the police force. Thank you for hearing my comments. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Michael Quinn. Good evening, Mr. Quinn. And we have some internet issues there with Mr. Quinn's, good evening, Mr. Quinn. We can't hear you right now. Third track. Michael Quinn, town meeting member precinct 10, board chair of the council on aging. In the proposal for the people to serve on the commission, the language states that one member would be appointed by the council on aging. And I think what is intended by that is that it would be the volunteer advisory board that serves to support the council on aging rather than the council on aging itself, which is headed up by the executive director, which is who is a town employee. And I would like the language to be clearer if possible to state that it's a board member of the council on aging or the board of the council on aging that's making the appointment rather than the town employee. And just to be clear, I'm very supportive of the idea of somebody representing Arlington seniors to serve on this commission because as a previous speaker said, people have run-ins with the Arlington police, but really for Arlington seniors, it's just much more about engagement with the Arlington police in a variety of circumstances. And I think senior representation would be very helpful to the committee. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Mr. Chairman, Robin Bergman has raised her hand as a panelist so her feed might be better if we want to give her another opportunity. Yeah, why don't we try it? Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. I'm actually outside. So I hope this works because there's very high winds. I wanted to thank the commission for the study committee for putting this together as one of the citizens who was urging the proposal in the first place. I just want to stress, I want to agree with people who have spoken before. I feel it's really important not to have police on this commission. It needs to be autonomous. It needs to be... I personally know of people in town who will not come forward if police are there. They just have had a long history of problems. And that is the point of establishing the civilian review board. It's a civilian review board. It would in no way preclude the commission from reaching out to police for advice or input. But I feel that the board itself, the commission itself should not include any kind of professional or previous professional police or their families, et cetera. I have reached out myself to several people that I know who work in the criminal justice field and run the preliminary proposal by them. And that was one of the things they pointed out that they were glad to see actually that there were no police, that police were excluded from serving on the voting commission. So I just want to second and third what people have said about that before. I think it's very important to give marginalized voices more power to speak. Thanks so much for letting me speak. Great, thank you. And thank you for sticking with it tonight to get your comments across. Oh, and I realize I didn't say who I was. Do you need me to do that for the... We identified you from your... I mean, I'm in precinct 12 and hope to soon be a town meeting member. Thank you. Okay, thank you. One final hand raised, Robert McCursey. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Good evening, Mr. McCursey. Yeah, I'm Bob McCursey. I've been in Arlington since 1980, a resident of precinct 10 and I applaud what's happened here. And I just want to make a comment about the different directions that the commission will face. It's clear that they already have a collaborative relationship with the police department. I think that's really terrific. The way they have worked with the chief of police. I think the big challenge is how the commission faces the community and helps the community. And since this has been a major theme tonight, how the community develops trust in the police department. And I just want to call forth something that the town manager organized several years ago when we were having such controversy about Lieutenant Petrini. He organized a forum. It was chaired by Michael Curry, former chair of the Boston NAACP. And I thought that was a really remarkable way in which the town could, people could go to this forum and hear panelists. And I think this is the opportunity, I think for the commission, as it works with the community, how it really helps the community understand the policing department and whether it's around specific complaints and helping them in a sense surface or whether it's through education and forums. So I think we got a great opportunity in this town. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McCursey. There are no additional hands raised, Mr. Chair. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chaplain. All right. So I will now go back in the same order back to board members and believe I started with Mr. Helmut. Been a while. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to everyone who weighed in. I very much appreciate the thoughtful comments from the public. This is why this process is such a good one. I am very pleased to move favorable action on this and I'll go into some detail. I really like where this study committee has landed which is on a solution that is right for Arlington. I think that Mr. Newton said that earlier and that's really central to the work. And I appreciate the work that went into figuring out what that is and not starting with preconceived notions and not starting with other communities need or what the other communities are doing. And again, I just have to say it again, I deeply appreciate the really good faith partnership from Chief Larrity and Ms. Harboury in this work. I am enormously proud of both the residents in the town who are working to build and rebuild trust between the residents and the police who are working for diversity, equity and inclusion. And I'm grateful to Chief Larrity and for the police department that I really feel as the committee itself called out in detail on the printed report is a national leader, certainly a leader in the Commonwealth on 21st century community policing in so many ways. No police department is perfect. But this police department really tries to walk the walk and really does walk the walk. And I think if you read the report you'll find some ways in which Chief Larrity has embodied that. And I think that she and her leadership and her rank and file do in large part so much of the time every day. I feel that you can't ignore the national context of discussion between about policing in America. But I think it is appropriate and good that we have found a solution that works for Arlington. And I think my view about this, anyone who might be concerned is that it is perfectly possible to say that we have a strong police department, not a perfect one, but a strong police department that's committed to doing the right thing and to doing better and to correcting problems when they happen. And to also say that residents in the community particularly marginalized, traditionally marginalized residents have lived experience or their friends or their family or members of the community have lived experience in other places that are not so positive. And that informs their interactions here. That informs the trust that they have here. And I think that's why I'm so pleased that this proposed commission is built around trust about earning it, about building it and not taking that for granted. And I think that we have a police department in a town leadership and our town manager all the way down to the rank and file who genuinely do want to know when there are problems and so that they can correct them. And I'm heartened that the chief and then I hope officers in the department welcome this commission because it is a tool to do that to help them do better. That being said, I think the most important aspect of this commission, I should tell many improvement and I hope very much that they do will be just by its very existence. It will send a message to all residents especially those who are traditionally marginalized that their town and the police department want to earn their trust. They want to build that trust. They wanna repair problems when they have happened and they wanna do better. And I think that knowing that our town, government and our volunteers working on this commission and our police department is willing to do the hard work to get even better at it and to be honest about problems when they happen and to take action is really a strong and positive message. And I'm really happy about that outcome. I think right now I'll just leave my motion as positive favorable action. So I wanna hear from my colleagues. I know we've had some discussions about eligibility. I would say I'm still kind of have an open mind about this. I am really concerned about trust. I think that I would probably not be an open to an amendment that would myself to my amendment or to my motion that would involve an active duty officer in any jurisdiction. I'd probably favor being airing on the side of caution and in perception and relationships and maybe not sort of how I would feel even about a retired Arlington officer who served here. But I'm not sure how I feel about it. I wanna hear from my colleagues. That's kind of where my thinking is. I think at the same time, I do recognize the potential value and a truly inactive retired officer who I would consider a civilian and shouldn't be blamed for what they used to do for a living. If they have the right, it's not a given that they would be appointed, right? There's not a spot, we're not proposing a spot but I think that if they have the right constellation of skills and personality and approach, I wanna hear more from my colleagues about whether that would be a good idea or not. So I'll leave it with positive action and my gratitude and turn to the rest of my colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mahan. I really don't have anything to add. I stand by my previous comments that I hope the language, I would like the language to be changed so that if we do have someone with a non-town employee police officer, if you wanna include family and cousins and second cousins and whatever, that's fine. But I think someone with law enforcement expertise should not be precluded. I understand you say you can, you know, call someone in from the police department as you have done with the chief before, but I think we need to, I think we show more respect by not precluding that. Knowledge-based expertise. So I'm not really sure. I mean, I'll second Mr. Helmuth's motion for discussion, but I haven't changed my mind in terms of my feelings, thanks. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think as far as the article in general, I made all the comments that I'm gonna make at the beginning of the hearing. I'm gonna offer a motion in just on the grounds that this is a multi-faceted committee that we're creating and part of the committee is to advise the police department on policies and procedures. And I think it would have, they'd be a benefit of having someone with law enforcement background, commenting on, especially at the committee discussion level, where if one of the members proposes a change to policing, you have a law enforcement voice, then isn't there necessarily to fight back, but is to explain why law enforcement uses such a tactic. And it certainly doesn't mean that that person is gonna to convince the committee, but I think it's good to have that voice, even in the realm of complaints, where if a complaint comes in and the committee discusses a complaint, a law enforcement person might be able to explain why such an officer took such an action. Again, doesn't that mean that it justifies it or you're gonna convince the committee as a whole, but you do have that voice? Like I said, I definitely understand the prohibition against active Arlington police officers and if the board and the committee and town meetings so chooses, I understand retired Arlington police officers as they have relationships with some of the officers that they be reviewing the conduct of. But I think in, let's all, I mean, mindful of the fact that we're gonna shrink it to a pretty small pool of characters who have law enforcement expertise that live in Arlington that aren't now or have ever been associated with the Arlington Police Department because a lot of law enforcement officers who live in Arlington, even if they're in other jurisdictions likely have passed through the APD at one point or another. So I think if we can, my motion would be to amend language just to exclude and not create a seat at the table, a specific seat at the table for law enforcement, but to amend the exclusion to just current or former members of the Arlington Police Department. And so I think without such, like the chair mentioned, law enforcement is a broad concept, it's the FBI, it's people in the district attorney's office who could have a potential seat at the table and could provide some valuable input, both in the realm of handling complaints from residents, but also as the committee advises the police department on tactics and improvements, it can help clarify some of the suggestions that get made. So I would offer that friendly amendment to my colleague, Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, thank you, just for clarification, you two current or former members of the Arlington Police Department and your amendment take the place of that part B, which is current or former law enforcement officers whether in Arlington or elsewhere. Yes. Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay, so that the amendment has been made and seconded by Mr. Hurd, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Mr. Diggins, any further comments, Mr. Hurd? Okay, Mr. Diggins. I'm muting myself like a cough and you wouldn't hear it. So I want this to go to town meeting. I think it's gonna go to town meeting. I'll do whatever it takes to get to town meeting with this little stress on the board as possible. I certainly support the recommendation of the study committee as it is meaning without any law enforcement or police on the committee, the committee has done a lot of work and they've come to I think a solid conclusion and I'm very much inclined to go with the recommendation. That said, I am willing to predict two things. One is that if we send it to town meeting with an amendment for having the ability to police officers on it, town meeting is gonna take it out. And two is if it should survive, we're still not gonna end up with police officers on the committee in just the nature of the entities that are gonna choose the members aren't gonna do it. So we can argue that I think in the end we're gonna end up with what the committee has recommended. So that's my, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Diggins. Yeah, so when I was looking at this previously, I looked at sort of thought about what would we just wanna strike the word or former, yeah, or former for those persons not eligible. So I would read that not being eligible would be current law enforcement officers whether in Arlington or elsewhere. And I think it's important that there are no current law enforcement officers on the committee whether they work in Arlington or elsewhere. I don't, former law enforcement officers, I felt that they may be able to add something to the committee. Now I respect that the work that the commission did, I almost feel like we need, I think we're there on everything, but this item and perhaps that we need a little further discussion. We could bring it to a vote that both then made and seconded, but my feeling is as amended by Mr. Heard, I'd still like to see current stricken from Part B so that it's any current law enforcement officer would not be a member of the commission, but I wouldn't object to having former law enforcement officers. And just an observation, I think we may wanna parse out what is meant by law enforcement officer here too, because it's used in this instance, but you can make the definition or the definition of law enforcement officer in addition to the example I gave could include people work for the attorney general's office, could include parole officers. There's a whole host of former employees that again unintended we may be striking. So I would almost like to see the amendment further parsed out if we were to go that route, but I also wonder if there is in a way that we can try to build some consensus here. Mr. Helmeth, you had your hand up. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted, I meant to acknowledge the earlier point. I think it's actually important because there are people who, law enforcement is very broad. I've learned this recently at my job that includes people who are working in the criminal justice system who might be advocates even for some of the folks who are trying to help build trust. So especially, we're formerly so. So I think that would be worth, I wonder if just being explicit about police officers might be one solution to that aspect of it. And I think in terms of what I'd be prepared to vote for tonight and I agree with Mr. Diggins, I think that this needs to go to town meeting and I think we need to have a strong support, show of support for it. So like board in the end has an opinion and it's five of us that town meeting makes the decision and I think Mr. Diggins is right that whatever we say about eligibility, it's going to ultimately get decided there and that's how it should be. But I would personally feel better about retaining a prohibition on current former Allington officers and current officers serving elsewhere but maybe leave the door open for retired or former not active former officers that served in other jurisdictions just to kind of leave the door open for that expertise. That's just where I'm at personally. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Attorney Heim, did you want to add something? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to make two quick points. One is that we can certainly shore up the definition of law enforcement of 501 CMR 15, which is basically what identifies active duty law enforcement officer includes things like being licensed to carry a gun on the job, which is not generally true for most district attorneys. We can clean that up pretty easily for the board. The other thing I just want to clarify because there's a lot of sort of questions by some public speak, some members of the public and in the chat, the entities, including the council on aging are nominating entities. Nobody's being appointed from within those bodies unless they nominate one of their own members. So the function of those bodies is to nominate. The town manager has the actual appointment of from whoever those folks nominate. They're not limited to nominating somebody and the members of PCABs that are here can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but they're not limited to nominating somebody from within their own ranks. They can nominate whoever they want as long as they need the eligibility criteria otherwise. So the last thing I just want to say is I just want from members of the public to understand is that both the select board and PIC and the members of the study committee are ahead of the game here. A warrant article hearing isn't the final time that we look at this language. The board will basically instruct me to probably work with these folks to come up with a final vote and comment, which the board will make its final recommendation to the board. Just for the other warrant article hearing tonight, we've got two entities that really came super well-prepared and they're sort of way ahead of the game. The tree committee and these folks who are before you who have a motion. And so we're talking about amendments and things like that, but it's not necessarily typical that every warrant article hearing is this well-fleshed out. I think we're all grateful that this is well-fleshed out. We'll save us a lot of time in the back end, but I just wanted to say that for the purposes of the other games to come after this. Thank you, Mr. Chris. Okay, thank you, Attorney Hyne. Mr. Diggins? I'll just, so for the sake of trying to guess maybe to a consensus on not having police officers of any type in the, on the committee, on the commission, it's like we're dealing with people who are afraid, mean and fearful, mean and so, so we really don't want to put any barriers to me to having them interact with this group. It's really, I mean, this group is more about helping people who have complaints. I mean, I think you'd also make the argument, I mean, if it was more about investigation, but still the fact that we're trying to help people who are afraid is that we really don't want to put any barriers in place there. Furthermore, I mean, with the training that the committee commission members have to go through, I mean, they are going to be interfacing with the police, they're always the police, they may even have to do the police academy and so they're going to build those relationships and they'll be able to bring people in from the police department. I'm sure when they have questions about me, how to approach things. I mean, so they're not going to be isolated from APD at all, I mean, and so I think to put any barrier to having people come to the commission for assistance really does as a service. And the fact that we are wrestling with this as much as we are should be an indicator that is probably not the right thing to do because we're going to have a whole lot of explaining to do about this. And that's usually indicator that you're kind of going against the optics of an overused word, but you get my point. Thanks. Okay, thank you. I'm Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'll take a second crack at my amendment. I still do think there should be amendment because again, there are multi facets of this committee. So I can work with Attorney Heim, as Attorney Heim said, well, this is kind of a rough outline of what the final language can look like, but I'm okay amending my motion to amend for language that would say it is a prohibition against any current members of a police department. However, the wording can specifically state that or former members of the Arlington Police Department. And that way, however we can work in the potential for other law enforcement officers that might have valuable insight or retired police officers from other jurisdictions, as mentioned, that could have valuable insight, can work, can potentially, aren't required, but potentially serve on the board. They're not excluded from. So to amend, well, to reiterate the amendment is again, the exclusion would be for any current members of a police department or any former members of the Arlington Police Department. Thank you, Mr. Heert. And Mrs. Mahan had seconded that earlier. Mrs. Mahan, do you still wish to second that? Yes, thank you, Mr. Jared. I think I'm ready for hold on, I don't know, Mr. Helmholtz gets a last say or you, thank you. Okay, well, anybody who wants it on the board, if they have anything further to add before we vote, but we have a main motion by Mr. Helmholtz and we have a now an amended motion, both of which have been seconded. And as Attorney Heim said, there are some things here that are gonna change in terms of some changes that Attorney Heim's gonna work on, definitional references, some other things. So this will come back before the board again for final vote on all the languages, on all the language rather. So with the two motions before us, is there any further comments from any member of the board? Mr. Heert, did you want to say anything? Okay, Mr. Diggins. I just have a question to understand the implications of voting for me. So if this vote fails, then we are essentially saying no action on this article. No, I think what we're doing is we have Mr. Helmholtz's motion and we have an amendment to, again, it would be sub part B to B, it might come back to us in two sub parts. That's the amendment that Mr. Heert had made. So if Mr. Heert's amendment is successful, then we will vote the rest of the proposed bylaw as amended. If the amendment fails, we will still, we will vote the proposed bylaw as submitted to us by the committee. Got it, thank you. Okay, all right, so I think we are ready for a vote. So I'm going to start with the amendment by Mr. Heert. And again, bear in mind, this is going to be parsed out. It may end up being four sub parts now to those who aren't eligible. So on a motion by Mr. Heert, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, attorney Heim. Mr. Heert. Yes. Mr. Diggins. No. Mr. Helmholtz. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's a four to one vote on the amendment. Okay, so now as amended on a motion by Mr. Helmholtz, that was seconded, I believe by Mrs. Mahan on the bylaw as amended, attorney Heim, proposed bylaw as amended. On the proposed bylaw as amended for positive action, Mr. Heert. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmholtz. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Great, thank you. Thank you members of the committee again. Thank you Chief Flaherty. Thank you Ms. Harvey. And thank you for all your work that you have done just an amazing job. And we appreciate you joining us here this evening. Okay, now if I can find my place here for the next warrant article hearing. The next item is a bylaw amendment for tree preservation and protection. Now it looks like we have Susan Stamps to speak on that article. Okay. Good evening Ms. Stamps. Hi there. And also Mary Ellen Arano should be on the screen if you can also give her access. She's co-chair of the tree committee. Do you see her? Yep, she should be coming in right now. Okay, great. Oh, there she is. Good evening Ms. Arano. Thank you. And thank you for the materials that you sent in. But if you wanna give us an overview of the proposed bylaw amendment. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it very quickly. That last one was a hard act to follow. So basically we're suggesting four changes to the tree bylaw which will make the tree warden's job and the tree department's job a lot easier. And hopefully free the tree warden in particular up for doing a lot more with trees in Arlington instead of arguing with people over what's a demolition and what isn't and did they take trees down or didn't they? So the first one is to, we completely rewrote the definition of demolition in the bylaw because the bylaw applies if either there's completely new construction on an empty lot or there is a renovation that increases the size 50% or more of the original structure or if there's a demolition. And before, as you can see from, I've got a red-lined copy of like, I've got it already for the select board report. That it used to say that demolition was any act of destroying, pulling down, removing or raising a building or commencing the work of total or substantial destruction of a building. Well, that word substantial has been a thorn in the Arport Tree Warden's side ever since he's lived or worked with us. What is substantial destruction? Who knows? So we have lost a lot of trees in town because the builder even sometimes even made that decision that well, what they weren't doing what they were doing was not substantial destruction. So they take the trees down and then later on when they file for the building permit, they're told, well, you know, actually that was a demolition you shouldn't take them down. So there's a lot of instances like that. We worked really hard with the Tree Warden, our wonderful new building inspector Mike Ciampa and also Jim Feeney. So I think everybody feels really good about this very detailed description which I think is going to make it very clear to everyone whether something is a demolition or not. And any questions about that? It's basically removal of the roof. If you remove the roof, that's a demolition. If you remove more than half of the wall area that's a demolition or obviously complete destruction. But we also, the other problem that the Tree Warden has had difficulty with, which really didn't understand this until very recently, that the Tree Warden does meet with the Tree Committee at our monthly meetings. And he's such an upbeat guy, very positive. He doesn't complain to us very often. So sometimes it takes a little digging to find out what's really bothering him. And it wasn't that long ago that we found out that what really was bothering, one of the things bothering him was people would come in with their tree plans and they had just kind of drawn the trees on the plan themselves. And were they the right size of the bylaw applied at the time the bylaw applied to, currently the bylaw applies to eight inch trees or bigger. And they'd come in with a plan that had a couple of trees identified and okay, these are bigger and then Tim would, the Tree Warden would go out to the site and there'd be a whole bunch of trees that qualify for the bylaw. And nobody were not blaming anybody, but now with this amendment, the Tree Plan will be signed by a, somebody who knows what they're doing, by a landscape professional, which would be a registered landscape architect or a certified arborist. So that should take care of that problem. So our Tree Warden is gonna save a lot of time there, not having to go out to the site and do measurements himself. And the third thing that's gonna save him time is that sometimes what happens is that somebody, especially if they haven't done work in town, I mean, not every town has a tree bylaw, more do than when we first had ours, but there's still a lot of towns don't. And they would just go ahead and cut down trees and do stuff on the property and then come in for their building permit and they're like, oh, yeah, oh, tree bylaw? Yeah, no, I don't know. That doesn't, no, I don't know about that or it doesn't apply or whatever. And then again, Tree Warden affects the property and then, you know, if they've taken trees, trees down, they get fined of course under the bylaw, but you really, you know, you can't, no amount of money is really gonna replace those trees that came down. So this is a very simple requirement that as part of the building permit, which Mike Champa said he'd be glad to do this, there's just a little affidavit which says, I the builder certify that the tree bylaw does not apply. And what that does is that it puts them in the position where they really have to be aware of it and really make that decision. And if they've ignored it, then there's, you know, that's not a good situation for them. So I think that's going to save the Tree Warden time also. And then the fourth thing is to simply increase the number of trees that are gonna be saved under the bylaw where we're following our area towns who have tree bylaws who have reduced the size of a protected tree from eight inches or greater to six inches or greater. So we wanna reduce it the two inches to six inches and that will save a lot more trees. That is the two area towns that were just about the only towns in the Commonwealth we could find back in 2015 when we were first writing our bylaw were Wellesley and Lexington. And we used much of their language for our bylaw. And that's where we got, they were at 10 inches and we were at 10 inches, then we reduced to eight and now they're at six. And two new towns since then have new bylaws and they're at six conquered. And is it Somerville, Mary Ellen, I think it is? Yeah, Somerville six inches. So we're a very dense town. We really can't, every single tree is precious and we feel that it is something that the town is gonna want is to save the trees that are down to six inches. Am I forgetting anything Mary Ellen? I think those are the four. Okay, great. Thank you very much for the presentation and also for the written materials that you submitted to us in advance of the hearing tonight. So I'll turn it to board members for any questions. I'll start with Mr. Herd. I don't think I have any questions on this one. I think the tree by, oops. Sorry, I didn't really realize I took my video off. I think the tree bylaw has worked very well in its existence. And I think these are simple changes to make the process easier for our tree warden and to make it more efficient for homeowners and persons that are looking to work on property in any way that we can to increase the awareness in town of the tree, the existence of the tree bylaw. I think it's very important. I have had instances where people have taken down trees, not because I mean, it's a permit process and that's great. I don't know what the solution is but sometimes people do site prep work before they pull a building permit. So to whatever extent we can to disseminate information about the tree bylaw, I think is important. But I think the proposed changes are certainly steps in the right direction and move the tree bylaw forward to where it really needs to be. So I'll move favorable action. Thank you, Mr. Herd, I'm Mr. Diggins. I will second that and the rationale I read was very clear, left no room for questions being I am totally supportive of this. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, yeah, really happy to support this. I think this just makes a lot of sense. And I really appreciate how smart these components work together so that we are adding some additional restrictions to components but we're lighting the load of our staff. So I think that that has a good chance of being effort neutral or even better and protect more trees and get more clarity for the contractors and the homeowners. So it's a win-win-win-win. And thank you so much for your work. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mahat. No questions, thank you. Okay, and I'm happy to support this as well and thank you for the presentation. It is a public hearing, I'm just wondering if there's anybody who wishes to be heard on this warn article here. Kristen Anderson. Okay. Hi, Kristen Anderson, 12 up on the road west I just wanted to thank Susan Stamps for bringing this to a town meeting and express my support. Great, thank you, Ms. Anderson. Before you go, Ms. Anderson, you are the last warn article hearing. The hour's getting late. I wanna give you an option. I'll put you on first from March 7th, if you want. I don't know how much longer we're gonna go, maybe a while longer if you wanna wait. We're gonna try to shut down by 11 but if you wanna go next meeting I will put you on for the first warn article hearing if that works for you. But if you wanna hang in there and come on later, I'm happy to do that as well. I'm happy to do what is best for everybody here. Okay, all right, so let's see where we are in time. If we don't get to you before the end of the meeting I will put you on first next time. All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, so that concludes the public hearing. We have a motion by Mr. Herd, seconded by Mr. Diggins for favorable action. Turning time. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Halman? Yes. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. Dacorsi? Yes. Mr. Anderson, let's vote. Thank you both very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, hearing is a article on a vote to establish a committee on insurance cost and issues with Mr. Indra Fisher is presenting on that. I have a route canal tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. and it hurts. I'm not feeling well and I would ask to postpone. Okay, no, no, that's fine. I will coordinate with you and if you can make it to the next meeting we'll put you on for the next meeting. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, all right, good luck, Mr. Fisher. Thanks very much. Okay, all right. Next article is a resolution for town meeting for support of the Mass Fair Share Constitutional Amendment. I believe Linda Hanson is she presenting? Hi, are you ready for me? Here, here. My name is Hanson, sorry. Good evening, everybody. And thank you for allowing me the chance to speak with you about the Mass Fair Share warrant article and the hour grows late so I will walk you quickly through the big ideas behind this amendment. So this proposed state constitutional amendment has been in the work since 2015. It began as a citizen's petition and then morphed into a legislative proposal. It has passed the requisite to constitutional conventions. So it is now on the ballot for November 8th and if passed this amendment would allow the Commonwealth to impose an additional 4% tax on income over a million dollars. The first million dollars would be taxed at the flat tax rate of 5% and only income above that amount would be subject to the surtax. The Mass State Constitution currently mandates a flat income tax. So in order to make this kind of change a state constitutional amendment is required. The amendment would mandate that the additional revenue be spent on public education and transportation. It would raise an estimated additional $2 billion in revenue every year and the fact that it would be sustained funding is incredibly important. What could this mean for public education? It could help pay for universal pre-K for working families. It could allow the state to fully fund the Student Opportunity Act for K-12 students which increases state funding to municipalities to more accurately reflect the cost of educating students. Finally, it could help the state reinvest in public higher education including community colleges, state colleges and universities and allow young people to graduate without crushing debt. On the transportation front, it would serve to maintain and improve our public transportation system. It could support climate resilient transportation measures and allow us to invest in alternative transportation modes like protected bike lanes. In terms of income inequality, it's really increased dramatically over the past several decades. The top 1% of income earners in Massachusetts now collect 24% of the total income in the state and you need to make well over $500,000 a year to be counted among the top 1% of earners. So this measure would affect less than 1% of mass residents. By asking a little more from those in the best position to support increased state revenue, we can make transformative changes in our state's public education and transportation sectors for our families and workforce for generations to come. This additional revenue would support citizens across the state and importantly it would benefit our municipal budget. I hope you will join me in supporting the resolution in support of the fair share amendment. I did submit draft resolution language and it's linked in the documents for tonight's meeting. I'm not exactly sure what happens next in terms of specific resolution language on a final vote but I'm sure that will be made clear over time. Finally, I wanted to thank Mr. Hyme for answering my questions along the way for this process and thank you again for carrying me out and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Ms. Hanson. And I will turn it over to board members for any questions, start with Mr. Herd. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you Ms. Hanson for the presentation and your work on this. We did have a conversation a week two back where you explained the fair share amendment to me and did so in great detail as you did here tonight. So I'm happy to move favorable action to send a resolution along to Tommy. I'll take it, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Herd. I'm Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to second it and I'll say that this is a good start on the big problem which is poverty. We really need to solve that problem more than anything else because there's so much that's left on the table by having people who just don't have enough to thrive and it would just really increase in the overall GDP so much more if we could get rid of poverty. And as I often say, the wealthiest people's share of the pie would be smaller, but the pie would be bigger, and they would make even more money. So hopefully we'll realize with this, if it passes, that instead of getting fewer millionaires or have to pay a little more in taxes, we'll actually have more because people will get a good education. It'll be easy for them to travel. The GDP will increase, the money will be in the economy, increasing the velocity of money which will make things even better. So I'm all supportive of this and I hope it's just one of the next steps towards us becoming a society that has no poverty. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I was proud to sign Ms. Hanson's original voter petition this summer at the farmers market and I'm happy to support this now. I do think, and I say this as a town meeting member as well as a select member that town meeting would do well to be judicious in its resolutions and think about scope and think about what really affects the town of Arlington and this really does. This is one of those where I think it is well worth some time in town meeting to contemplate and give town meeting an opportunity to weigh in with what I personally hope will be a strong vote of support because of everything Mr. Diggins just said and regarding economic justice and the specific aching needs we have in education and in transportation. So I appreciate Ms. Hanson your work very, very much on this in Arlington and statewide. I know that you're very active in the effort and I urge my colleagues to send this on a town meeting where I hope that you tell me colleagues will endorse this strongly. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Halas and this is Mahat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Hanson, Linda, for your time on the phone where we had a really good discussion about this as well as I've also signed with the Mass AFL CIO and the Greater Boston Labor Council which is also working on this effort. Definitely happy to support not only this resolution hopefully a unanimous passage of town meeting but also Ms. Hanson has informed us all and has I think in the link documents that there are more steps besides just a town meeting vote for this resolution in terms of the statewide effort and the mass fair share as Linda told me has really gotten organized with individual leaders across the state as well as a campaign. So this is a very serious effort. It's not just a feel good vote and nothing happens after that. So first step is hopefully a unanimous vote of town meeting for this resolution but then whatever myself and my colleagues and anyone else in the town or state wants to do to continue on with the effort after that there's an organization out there it's organized and even if you just want to contact to get information that that's a great thing to do too. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan. Yeah, and I have a few comments. I will support this for going before town meeting. I will say I had a little bit of a concern in terms of taking a vote as a board on something that is gonna be on a referendum in November not because of my personal feeling about the merits but just as far as setting a precedent for other resolutions that come before us. I think as we look through this however our legislative delegation voted in two successive constitutional conventions to put this on the ballot in November. The last vote of the entire legislature both House and Senate was believe 159 to 41 in favor of doing it. And this is a change that is required of our constitution as Ms. Hansen said because right now Massachusetts can't have a graduated income tax is that the article 44 is a so-called uniformity requirement and there have been several attempts over the years to create a graduated income tax. They have all failed as recent as 1994. This is a new effort. And I think it makes sense in terms of what is trying to be achieved here what the legislature did. Any reluctance I'm expressing is more institutional on what I feel we should be voting for recommending as a board. I think it's perfectly appropriate that this goes before town meeting and I hope there's widespread supported town meeting. I just had some internal conflict as to whether this is the type of thing that we should be voting as a board. We certainly shouldn't be holding it up from going to town meeting but given the comments of my colleagues I'm gonna support it as well. But I wanted to just get that across and thank you for the information that you provided to us. So on a motion by Mr. Herd. Oh, actually before I do that is there any members of the public that wish to be heard? No, no hands are raised. Okay, so on a motion- I think they went to bed. Yes, yeah, excellent. Well, thank you for staying up with us tonight. So on a motion by Mr. Viggins, did you have another comment? So I just want to say this in support of what you just said now because I don't know if outside the context of this resolution it'd be appropriate for me to address it, but I hear where you're coming from on that. And I'd like for us to maybe explore that later on, maybe a new business item sometime later on because in all honesty, I have some regret about the letter that I asked the board to sign in support of the enabling legislation for the real estate transfer fee because I have concerns that we don't want to become a body that is approving doing letters to me for everything that comes up because there are a lot of good causes, lots of good causes and we do really have to focus on on board business for Arlington. So I hear where you're coming from on that. And so, so thanks for bringing that up. Okay, thank you, Mr. Viggins. Mr. Helmuth, did you want to say something? It just very quickly, just to suggest to Mr. Chair, I agree with your caveat. And I wonder if Mr. Heim might want to, it kind of plays final votes and comments come up with some language, kind of clarifying that at least naming your position and maybe my colleagues would be comfortable with that that we, we have personal support for this. We think how many should do this, but we're respectful of our role with the legislation. Yeah, thank you for that suggestion, Mr. Helmuth. And we will be receiving comments from, or proposed comments from returning Heim. And I think he can work that in and we can see if we can agree on that. Okay, great. So an emotion by Mr. Heard, seconded by Mr. Diggins, attorney Heim. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mohan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you, Ms. Hansen. Thank you. All right. Well, we are to the last war nautical hearing, a resolution that ill life brook is a valuable natural resource. I had given Ms. Anderson an option. So if she chooses to join us this evening, we will go forward. Have to be honest, I didn't think we'd be getting to her at 1027. I'm not sure either. I was hoping it was before 1025, but that's where it goes. Hi, Christian Anderson, 12 up on the road west. And you want me to go really fast, right? I want you to make a presentation that you want to make to us. So don't feel wrong. All right. Well, mainly I'm here just to express gratitude to everyone. Thank you, Mr. Chair DeCorsi and Select Board for considering the ill life brook war nautical. David White from Arlington Conservation Commission and its water bodies working group is here with me this evening. I think maybe he's still here. We are save the ill life brook and we thank you for your concern about climate change and how it will affect the problem with sewage, water discharges and flooding in the ill life brook. We are also grateful for the work that you did in putting together a meeting on Valentine's Day with the executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to discuss the ill life brook CSOs. Thank you, especially to select board member Diane Mahan for her communications. We also greatly appreciate the support that we received from select board member Eric Helmuth and town manager Adam Chapdeline at the MWRA's final CSO report briefing last week. We really appreciate the support. At that meeting we saw a turnout of approximately 90 people almost all were there to support ending sewage pollution in the ill life brook. We made a very strong statement. There were a few takeaways from that Thursday MWRA meeting. The biggest news from that meeting is that the Somerville CSO is not in regulatory compliance. And this is very important. We also have some flood news to share after meeting with senators Friedman and Brownsburger yesterday. A meeting is planned with DCR to determine next steps for hardening the Amelia Earhart Dam downstream in the Mystic River so that it can withstand storms throughout the century, through the end of the century. This is something that's terribly important for Arlington and something that we support. Regarding the warrant article, Town Council Doug Heim helped us to draft the language of the article. Thank you Mr. Heim for that help. It is a non-binding resolution that seeks to collect town-wide political support to clean up the ill life brook so that it is a safe place to live near and a beautiful place to enjoy for area residents. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. I'll turn to the board and start with Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Anderson and Mr. White and everybody else, I could probably be here another 16 minutes. And that would be a very happy 16 minutes because save the owl wife and Chair, Mr. DeCoursey, Town Manager, and my colleagues are definitely tuned in on this issue of the owl life, of getting it to a clean waterway. I think while this is a resolution, it certainly is a good step and is sort of another tool that we can have in our discussions with state officials, with the MWRA. And thank you, Kristen, for pointing out about the summable CSO that's not even in regulatory compliance. But having said that, all these pieces of meetings and boats that we're taking are really to get everybody together for a constructive conversation, not so much to point fingers, but to kind of put everybody's brains together and brainstorm on how we make this better because thankfully versus 15, 18 years ago when we were going through a similar process with the NPDs permit hearing in the cities of Somerville and Cambridge and the MWRA, it was a big strike out on having any, even talk about eliminating CSOs. And I think now here in 2021 and 2022, I don't think you'll find any of the stakeholders who will say, no, we think it's a great idea to continue discharging sewage into the owl life. So the next step is, which at the meeting that the chair and the town manager called with Fred Lasky and I wanna say five or six other officials from the MWRA, once we finally got 45 minutes of the PowerPoint presentation and we got the rest sent to us because individuals wanted to speak to that. I think everybody understands and we need to continue to have the conversation to say, I think we all agree on eliminating CSO discharges. The next step is how would we do that in terms of the technology and waterways and scientists and the like that would say this is what the plan would look like to do that, then look at the cost and then look at how we get to eliminating those CSOs. So while this is a resolution, I think it's very important in all the work that we've been doing, whether it's meetings, resolution at town meeting, moving forward. I did with the chair and the town manager today sent an email to the MWRA just to ask for some backup documentation on three of the specific areas of information that we received at the Valentine's Day meeting to get the backup data. And I know that Ms. Anderson and Mr. White and others are very interested in that information. We did ask for it, but I was sent today. I think 412 asked for the end of week, if not next week. And again, it's just to really get a handle on making sure that as we go through these exercises and talk about eliminating CSOs to make sure we have the correct backup data to actually plug into that so that whatever we do moving forward is as close to perfect as we can get. So sorry to be so wordy on that, but I'm just really excited and thankful for my colleagues, the town manager and saved our wife and the Cambridge groups and Senator Brownsburger and others just getting into the city of some role. So I'm really excited about this and let's keep the momentum going. And thank you to my colleagues for giving me, although you were captive, you had to listen anyways but appreciate you listening, me taking all this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will happily second the motion. Thank you to Ms. Anderson for this warrant article and all the work that you do on this issue. And I can't say it any better than Mrs. Mahan, so I won't. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, I'm happy to be able to favorable action on it too. I've done a lot of reading. I read a hefty part of the draft report that came out like the first four sections. Section four I think was the most relevant to what's going on with, I think it's CSO number six, the one in Somerville. My take from it was that most of the pollution going into the alewife is not coming from the CSO. I mean, sure, the CSO is a problem. I mean, it has to be good to take care of that but from what they say, being most of the pollution that we're seeing in the alewife is coming from other sources. So we're going to need to find some other solutions to get the alewife to the point where we want it to be. And so I hope this resolution, is another step in the process of us figuring out what it'll take me to get the alewife to where we think it should be. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins and Mr. Hela. Thank you. I am quite confident that my colleagues have covered all the bases. I appreciate your work very, very much. As you know, and we've talked about many times. So keep it up and I look forward to a positive vote. I hope it tell me. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmut. Yeah, I'm also happy to support this. And I want to thank Ms. Anderson for all the work that she has done and it certainly has our attention. It has had our attention for a while and Mrs. Mahan has been involved with this for a long time as a member of the board and others are involved now as well. And I think we're in a place where we're going to keep monitoring this, keep advocating and try to find solutions collectively to this. So I'm happy to support the resolution. Just want to confirm, Mrs. Mahan, I had you down for the motion, but if you could reconfirm the motion for favorable action, I have the second by Mr. Herd, just so that we're clear on our minutes. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm in favor of the election. Okay, thank you. So on a motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Herd. Oh, before I do that, are there any members of the public that wish to be heard? No, there is not. Okay, all right. So on a motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Herd, attorney Hine. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. Deans? Yes. Mr. Helman? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. DeCourson? Yes. Mr. Annemar's vote. Great. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Thank you for staying up late night at the select board. Thank you very much for your support. Good night, everybody. Good night. Bye. Okay, well, that ends the warrant article hearings this evening and onto items 11 and 12, correspondence received. I will refer to them both and then we'll take motions. Item 11, traffic concerns on Newland Road during school hours. Item 12, and that's from Laurie Pescatori. Item 12, request for removal double pull at Berman 128, Mount Vernon Street. Mr. DeGuns? I move on receipt of the letters. And I had told Ms. Pescatori that I would ask me that the town manager considers sending her letter to TACC. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so if we could have a referral to TACC on that, that would be great. And then on the second one? Oh, on the second one, I move receipt and I will defer to you, Mr. Chair, as to what we should do with that one. Why don't we refer to the town manager and he and I will work, we're working on some things that you get on the town's website. So maybe we'll refer to the town manager on that one. Okay, so I'll refer to the town manager on the double pull letter. Thank you. Mr. Helen? Second that, thank you. Mrs. Mahan? No questions, thank you. Mr. Hurd? And no questions, but Mr. DeGuns, I do share that sometimes I can get nerve wracking during referrals of these items of new business as to where they're supposed to be because you don't want to say the wrong thing. So when in doubt, refer to the town manager and he can handle it. Okay, all right. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Hurd. Yeah, and I support this as well. So on a motion, motions by Mr. DeGuns, seconded by Mr. Helmut, Attorney Heim. Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. DeGuns? Yes. Mr. Helmut? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Corsi? Yes. Anonymous vote. I know the hour is late. I almost opened up a public comment on the correspondence received. I caught myself. Okay, so that leaves new business, Attorney Heim. No new business, thank you. Okay, Mr. Chapter Lane? No new business. Mr. Helmut? Thank you, I have one item. So we're coming up on an important anniversary of sorts. On March 9th was the day of the first confirmed positive COVID test in Arlington and two days later, the World Health Organization declared the pandemic. And I would like to suggest, and I had a previous conversation with the chair about this today, that perhaps at our next meeting, which will be very close or on that date, that we invite selected members of the Department of Health and Human Services, in particular the Health Department, to come before the board so that we can express our appreciation to them. They have done an incredible amount of work. They are very, very tired. They have taken a lot of difficult input and feedback from the public over various issues. Not all of it fair, but they have done their jobs. They have performed magnificently. They have gone over and above what most other communities in the Commonwealth have done with putting on vaccination, testing, climate clinics, and they have not complained. And I would very much like to have the opportunity for us to just thank them because they don't often get their turn in the spotlight. So that's my new business and I'll leave it to the chair and the town manager to discuss future agenda item on that. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Helmuth. Mr. Diggins. I'll support that, but please have them on the agenda first, since they are tired and we don't want to keep them up late. And I want you, Mr. Helmuth, to do the thanking because no one thanks people as well as you do. So, also, you can do it. Agreed on both points, or agreed on the first and thank you on the second. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Hurd. Yeah, I just want to mention there's been some talk about Town Day, particularly amongst the businesses and at our Economic Development Task Force meetings. So me and Mr. Diggins have been dividing and conquering to try to get it going and there'll be, we're going to start reaching out to people in town, but it isn't on the works. And we've missed it two years in a row because of the pandemic, but there's been an outpouring of requests and support to bring back Town Day. So we're working on trying to make that happen and I'm sure we'll be tapping all of you to help out as well as everyone will be willing to do so. So that is in the process. I just wanted to mention more to hold our own feet to the fire to make sure that we're working on it, but that is going to be a process. And then I did just wanted to, I didn't know, see that the, I don't want to congratulate Coach Missouri and then I was like, boy, is that a 4-0 win in their last regular season game today that a great season. And I don't miss many of the home games, but I'm here with you all tonight. And I just wanted to mention to anyone that's listening that was wondering why I fell down the bleachers on Sunday at the game, which I did in front of the entire Arlington crowd. My six-year-old spilled a blue slushy on the bleachers in front of me and it caused me to lose my footing. There wasn't any nefarious reason why I was falling down the bleachers. So certainly within character for me, but it was, I recovered well. I think I recovered well. So, but I just did want to thank them. They had a great season and look forward to the playoffs. Great. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Maybe next time, just stand along the boards to watch the game. Noted. Mrs. Mahan, we may have lost your feed again. Oh, no, here we go. No new business. Okay, thank you. And I do not have any new businesses. So while I guess briefly, I did speak to Mr. Helmut and we will work on the health and human services recognition for the next meeting and we will do it early in the evening for sure. So with that, I will take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Okay, a motion made by Mr. Herd, seconded by Mr. Diggins, attorney Heim. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmut? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. It's your honor's fault. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. All right, bye-bye. Good meeting.