Court of Selections meeting for Monday, March 18th. Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day to all start meetings like this, but I am gonna start and ask everybody for a moment of silence. We lost a member of our tree committee recently and wonderful, wonderful gentleman by the name of Brian Muzzy Murray. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to ask everybody just for a moment of silence for Brian. Thank you very much. God have mercy on the soul. Now, the other thing is good news. We have a new grandmother in the house. And she's looking tired over there, so you can look up at the board and I bet you can guess which member of the board I'm referencing. That's what I'm talking about. But she didn't actually deliver the baby herself. A young grandson that came in at eight ounces, from what I understand. Well, eight pounds, one ounce. Eight ounces, eight ounces. Actually, I did deliver that. Yeah. See, I came in at eight ounces, so it's, you can tell by my size today, but please, a nice round of applause and congratulations, Brian. Any details up all night? Well, I told you some of them back then, I don't know if I should repeat. No, but everyone came home healthy and happy and wise. And John Anthony is his name and he's a very good baby. He's the perfect baby who's old for St. Patrick's Day with 16 people and he slept through the whole thing. So thank you everybody. I appreciate your good wishes. Thank you, Kevin. They're all perfect at that point. Okay, we'll do the consent agenda and then we have an introduction to make. So first of all, for approval, the consent agenda. First of all, we have reappointments of the Allenton Historic Districts Commission, David Baldwin, Jonathan Nyberg, and Martha Penzenick. Request for the Hardy School PTO, Walkathon on May 3rd. Betsy Crimmins, Walkathon Committee. I request for two one-day alcohol licenses for March 23rd for the Quiznight. Annual fundraiser in 426, a $10,000 drawing at Allenton Catholic High School. And then finally, a request for a one-day all-alcohol license for March 30th. Comedy Music Benefit for the Patriots Day Parade at Robbins Memorial Town Hall Auditorium. Is anybody here wishing to speak on any of those events? Come on, you gotta come forward to the mic. Sorry, David. I'm David Baldwin, and I'd just like to thank you for the honor and the responsibility for being on the commission. We take the stewardship of Allenton's Historic Properties very seriously, and if you have nothing to do on the 4th Thursday of the month, you're welcome to attend one of our marathon meetings at the Whitmore-Robbins House. Thank you, David. Thanks. Thank you for your service to the town. How about anybody else on any of these events want to talk about? Okay, a motion to approve the consent agenda, please. I move approval subject to our conditions as set forth. Is there a second? Second. Further discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. We have Carol Kowalski with us tonight to do an introduction, please. Thank you very much for making time on your agenda tonight. You're well aware that we've embarked on a comprehensive long-range master plan, and we now have our master plan consultant under contract, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to meet Judy Barrett from Community Opportunities Group. Judy? Hi, good evening. Judy Barrett, Community Opportunities Group. I'm really excited to be here. We're just starting the process. Actually, I think you may know, we have our first meeting with the master plan committee tomorrow night, so that's probably gonna be a very exciting time for them as well as for us. Our team consists not only of folks from my firm. We're based in Boston, but we have Howard Stein Hudson and David Gamble, an architect, and Ezra Glenn, who'll be coming in to assist with the public participation process as well. Just a little bit of background about us. My company does municipal planning. That's really what we specialize in. We love to come into communities and talk about planning issues. So we always start out trying to think about what are the things that make this client kind of unique and what will be the unique challenges facing this particular community.  And thinking about that as both a challenge and an opportunity, I think will be kind of an integral part of the process. So we're just excited to be here. Can I ask my question? Yes. You can ask me questions too by the way, which is fine. We're trying to get a sense of what people in the community are anticipating as sort of challenges that will need to be addressed in the plan or that might come up at some point. And I wondered if you'd like to weigh in on that as long as I'm here tonight. Particular challenges that you think might come up in this process. How long do you have? No. Yeah. We'll be concise tonight and there'll be more opportunity later, but I'm just curious. Yeah. I was going to say, like you talked about the fact that we're mature and we're well developed, I think that I would specifically relate that to the density and how it relates to, we have businesses and residences right up against each other and residences and residences and public transport and bike trail. Like everything's like right on top of each other and people end up stepping on each other's toes a lot. And so I find that as a board, we often are dealing with things like trying to allocate or share those really scarce resources. And so I think about things like parking in noise and that type of quality of life issue all the time. Okay. I think if you were, I'd echo a lot of what Dan says. I think if you were to stay here and listen to some of the warrant articles, you hear about that contention for resources and residential nature of the town, but also the very dense nature. We had a large public forum. October 17th. Half an hour, half a year ago or so. And when a lot of people come out, there's a lot of interest. I think folks do feel that the town is in transition, that there is a lot of, on the one hand, development pressure, but there are a lot of natural resources they want to reserve as well. I've heard a lot about Arlington's walkable nature and the need to really develop the commercial real estate base as well. I think that there's a lot of interest in developing the commercial real estate base here so that there are jobs for people who are living here. I actually think that my colleagues covered the top concerns of it. I've been fortunate enough to serve on the master planning committee. So I'm sure that we'll be getting to know each other very well. Right, I'll see you tomorrow night too. And just very briefly, and it's really on the outskirts, but it gets to residential versus commercial tax base and how we could look at things differently. And I know you're working in concert with HED, the Tourism, Economic Development Committee. And one of the driving forces of that, and Clarissa Rowe was on the board at the time, is when we got the federal funding for the national registry with Concord and Lexington. And one of the things that I've said for years and years, and other people have too, is how do we get our visitors into Arlington? And how do we link in the hotel, the new tavern that's going there? We have so much history along the trail. How do we get the buses to pull in? Right. I checked in Lexington because they have a place to pull in, so a couple of times we tried to get the municipal parking lot designed so a bus could pull in right by the visitor center. And that's how you fill up, I mean, we're doing well with restaurants, but that's how you fill up the hotels and get more, everyone quotes different things for every $5, you get $12, whatever the thing is. So that's sort of on the outskirts, but that was one of the driving forces of what can we develop besides the industrial zone and the heights, which I'll talk to you about that. I can go on for 20 minutes about flag companies, but I'll get sometimes one-on-one with you through the manager and Cal. Thank you. Welcome and thank you very much. So you deal with a lot of boards of selectments and... Yes, many. Many. Are you already noticing a sparkling difference in the room tonight? Yes, you were spontaneous and you had great answers and I appreciate it. Do you have questions for me? Well, not really questions, because this is something we're all very committed to and will be a part of as we go along. So, but I certainly hope you're used to communities that like to talk things out and out. And out. And out, yes. What is the end product? As in, will we be sending a master plan, some sort of a book to our Arlington residents? Well, the physical product is a report, but I call it a plan and I try to get people to not think about it as a report and rather to think about it as a plan because if that's what you think of it as, then you're more apt to act on it. The actual structure of the document, the physical product, I think is something we're gonna wanna talk to you about what works best for you. There's different ways you can package this. Some communities have a very big book, some people break it up into a couple. We had a client once that wanted a big map that sort of identified almost like a presentation type map when you, so you walked in the town hall and the key ideas in the plan were annotated on that map so that if you didn't see the book, then you at least had a sense of what the big issues were in the plan. So I think we're gonna be looking to you folks for some guidance on what do you want. Yeah, the key I think to every one of these plans is the implementation element or the implementation program and so we put a lot of effort into that. We actually start with that. I think a lot of people think implementation comes at the end but actually implementation starts at the beginning of a plan. So we're gonna be thinking a lot about working with the committee and the rest of you on what is your capacity to implement and you've got these challenges, then you have these needs and then you have capacity and how do you bring all that together so that you end up with a plan that you can actually carry out. So actions get laid out typically in a plan in sort of tabular form but also in very sometimes baby steps. You wanna get here but you have to do these five things first and how does that look? What resources do you need and so forth and so. I'll send. Okay, thank you very much Carol. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, good luck, we'll see you again. Okay, so now we move to licenses and permits. We have a public hearing. The first one is a request for an all alcohol license and common vitriolers license for Honan Honlin Sonno Restaurant, Inc. God, I hope I'm close. Sonno Asian cuisine. Sorry about that. We were a popular night tonight. Good evening everyone. I'm Chris Coleman on behalf of the applicant. The location of the property we're talking about is 469 Summer Street. It's not familiar with it. I know it's along street right where the forest comes right out into it. It's that building that is being renovated right now. The suite itself for the location of the restaurant has about 1,807 square feet. About 12 of that, 1,200 of it is on the first floor. It's a small basement where there'll be some prepping of food. It's Asian cuisine is what they're proposing. There's 50 seats proposed, 40 will be at the tables, 10 will be at a sushi bar. There will be no lounge bar. The proposed manager is here with me, Wu Chen. He has excellent restaurant experience from 2006 to 2010. He was a liquor server at Saki Japanese Restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From 2010 to 2011, he's been a sushi chef at Feng Shui restaurant, and that's in Chelmsford. And currently, he is a sushi chef at Oy's restaurant, which is located in Redding. He's tips trained. He is a US citizen, plans on spending 40 hours plus at the restaurant. I believe the department heads have weighed in. I'm sure you have copies of those, as well as the floor plan on the menu. I think we'll be ready, or they will be ready, if assuming there's a positive vote, approximately three to four months. I think they'll be ready to open at that time. And we'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Any questions from the board, Mr. Kuro? Yeah, thank you very much. I'm glad to see that some plans to fill that space, I have to say, it's been vacant for a while. It wasn't clear from the plans. Are you looking to take all three of those slots there, or just part of the space? I believe it's only two. It's two. Yeah, I'd say half of the building is what it looks like to me. Half of it, OK. There's a small, small suite on the side for the pizza place, but I think there'll be one other in there. OK. And I gather from some of the plans you gave us that you do plan to provide some direction to the parking that's around back behind the building. Absolutely. We'll be working closely with the building department on that. We've got a little work yet to do. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, just on that, will that be refinished? Do you know? I've been behind there recently. I was just there tonight. I hope it will be. It will be. It'll be asphalted and striped. Hold on, Mary. All right, I'll have to do this session again. Mary, like. Oh, Mary, OK. Mary, please. Mary, when is Stanley O'Connor? Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Mary O'Connor, I represent the owners of this property at 469 Summer Street. The Summer Realty Services. There will be 17 spaces. They have had that parking lot engineered for 17 spaces. They require 13 spaces for 50 seats under the Arlington Zoning By-law. There is the Arlington Cafe there that has two tables that would require one space under the by-law. There is 600 additional square feet that they are trying to tenant. The gentlemen that own this space have spent a lot of money, as you know, redoing the facade. They have owned it since June of 2008. They have marketed this space for the past three years. The only other prospective tenant other than this prospective applicant and tenant is, if you recall in June, the liquor store that came that made application. There has been very little interest in this location. So naturally, my clients are eager to tenant the space and get some livelihood there. I'm sure there are some neighbors here to speak on this, but I would just point out one important facet of this. You were talking about the density of the town. Mass Ave, Warren Street, Broadway, Downing Square. We have commercial storefronts in front of, on all of those streets, and residences behind it. We can take precautions with fencing and the like to address, and the dumpster service would like to address those issues. But my clients are interested and are very interested in putting in this establishment. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, it was Steven. So go ahead, I see both of you, yeah? No, I'd like to echo Joe, Steven, that I'm very happy to see, you know, an applicant for this, for the spaces. It has been 24 while, and I'm glad that you will be utilizing that parking. I know that was a big concern with the tenant of applicants, was that there was nowhere to park, and there is ample parking behind, and I'm glad that it is being redone, because as many of us drove through there when the liquor store was, you know, a tenant of application. So, no, I'm very happy to see that the space will be utilized. Thank you. Ms. Mahana. Thank you, and welcome. And my question sort of centers around the delicate balance between the business. We do want to see somebody there and the neighbors and residences, and this has been accomplished before. But I just wanted to ask, I see that you have Sunday through Monday, so the whole week you're staying open until 1 a.m.? Is that your intention? We just put the hours of the license as what we had put on the application. Right, but what are you, because what I'm thinking of is if, you know, there are budding houses and families and homes, and if you're running, like some people say, I think there's a few businesses that may stay open to 1 a.m., but they stop, they're serving at 11, and they're doing takeout, and it's limited so that it's not, and they have also taken steps to sort of, not soundproof it, but to make the activity so it's not so much in the back. Do you know what I'm talking about? Absolutely. Can you expand on that? Or if you want, if there were neighbors here, if they want to discuss that, is that okay? We'll let the neighbors speak in the left, but a lot of them answer it. I didn't know, I don't want to. I think we can accommodate that. We just had a brief conversation. During the week, probably 10, 10, 30 is when all they'd be open until let's say, maybe Thursday, Friday, Saturday, maybe it'll be open as late as 11.30. But it's not gonna be a one o'clock plant. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Okay, so first of all, I'm very excited to see the plan. I'm very excited to have that space filled. It's walking distance from my house, and I enjoy our LinkedIn cafe, but it's nice to have something else, so I'm really glad to see you coming in. I do have a few things, though, that I think are important that we should talk about. First off, there are a number of conditions in the reports from the various department heads. Like, you don't have the dining plan isn't complete yet, and of course the signage plan isn't complete. And so I'm prepared to make a motion that says approval subject to all conditions. Of course. And so I just want to be really clear that those conditions are still attached. I'd like to talk about attaching a condition that the parking lot be repaved, because I don't think it's usable in the current state. But before I make a statement like that, okay, I'm seeing nodding from Mary. Okay, thank you. And I guess I have two, so having said that, I've got two pieces of advice. One is work with your neighbors early. Your neighbors need to, they need to love you, and they need to support you. And so make yourself really available. What I would suggest is going around with phone numbers and knocking on doors and saying, hi, I'm moving in. If you have any noise complaints, if you have any issues or something like that, here's how you get me.  When it goes to me, then it's a problem. And the second thing I'll say is that, so we did a sting operation last year and we found four restaurants that served underage people. Each one of those was because of a new person who wasn't yet fully trained. And so another thing is, well, I'm delighted that you're here. I don't want to see you here to talk about an alcohol violation, so it's very important you remain vigilant about that training, even after you open and continuing through your operation. And other than that, I wish you immense success and serve me good food, please. So are there any neighbors or anybody here wishing to speak on this matter? Sir, name and address, please, if you would. I'm from Glenbrook. My name is Jim Sickles. And I live directly in back of the restaurant. I have a couple of questions. First of all, is the board aware that the fact that that area is a problem with water? There's three homes and the store that's there. They constantly are having water problems. And if any water gets in the cellar, you got a mole problem. They just put in some kind of a sump pump, but the sump pump just pumps it out onto the land that's available right there. And it also goes on the sidewalks out on Summer Street. I'd just like to bring that to someone's attention because it's a very important thing with food that no mold is available on any food. Yes, sir. Secondly, right now there's one dumpster in the back of the sub shop. And the truck that goes in there to get that dumpster, he has it without any cars in there. He has a hard time making a turn to get that dumpster emptied. I don't know where they're gonna put this one. If they're gonna share the one that's there and if there's any cars in there, they're not gonna be able to get in there to dump it. That's a very important thing. The grease buckets. The sandwich shop has, I think, three grease buckets that he puts against his wall. Where's the grease buckets gonna go for this here restaurant? These are points that I think that someone should address. And then, here they are turning down a few years ago, the liquor store. And it's across the street from a baseball diamond. And when the baseball people are playing ball, they're the kids, they generally come in the air and park anywhere they can find a space. And the place is jammed on Summer Street. And they also come into our complex, which we have a sign up saying that it's private and we'll tow their cars, have their cars towed.  I'm not condemning them, but it's addressing, I think that the board ought to address these thoughts that I'm pointing out to you people. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, okay. So, Mary, you'll bring this in terms of the redesign in the back there and some of these issues that were brought up. And we'll refer to Adam if the Board of Health maybe has to take a look at grease buckets or whatever it is that's also out there in the back. Anybody else who shouldn't speak on this? Yes, please. Hi, I'm Mary Discino. I live at 15 Glenbrook Lane. I have similar concerns as Jim. Primarily the waste is a big concern in the summer. How often do those dumpsters get cleared out? Do they get cleared out once a week, like ours? And if so, I would imagine that's a problem. I'm a teacher. I'm concerned about having alcohol right there with kids across the way. You know, that's a big concern for me. So those are two issues that are very big. And I agree with Jim about the oil. What happens to that? And what about the exhaust fan from the restaurant? We're right behind these guys. And it is all rocks there right now. We built a fence. We just replaced it several months ago. So I'm concerned that it's going to bring down our property values and that children are going to be affected by the liquor. Thank you. And you heard my colleague, they must be tips trained. And if there is any service of alcohol to minors, they will lose that license. We don't fool around on stuff.  They all lost their license for three days. First strike, second time, they will probably lose the license. So we don't fool around on stuff or that. And I'm sure you understand that. And you already referenced that council. Anybody else who should speak on this? Move approval, second, Mr. Dunn. So I apologize. Second, Mr. Dunn's motion, subject to all conditions. So move approval, subject to all conditions is set forth. It is very important to us. The residents are first in this town. And then it's businesses, but we need to encourage businesses. Property values are also affected by empty storefronts as well as they are by vibrant ones. So we've heard these concerns before. We will make sure the Board of Health will inspect. There will be more inspections going on. The owner's council has assured us that they will be repaving in the back there. And I'm sure that they've heard all of these concerns as well. Anything else, sir? Did you want to respond to any of this? All set. Thank you. So well, might you just talk about the exhaust fan? Are you familiar with where it will be? Is that a roof thing? Actually, I'm not familiar with the location, but we'll certainly work with the Board of Health to make sure that that's as much as possible for any of the neighbors. OK, all those in favor of the motion and subject to all conditions are set forth. Please say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Thank you for choosing Arlington. Best of luck with your visit. Thank you very much. Thank you. Another request for a common victuallers license for those of you on the victuallers license is the ability to serve food. This is Anthony Massey of Anthony's Eastside Deli. John, did I say it right? Mr. John Herd, Jr., welcome, sir. Thank you. Good evening, Board. My name is John Herd. I'm here with my client, Anthony Massey, who is looking to open an Italian deli and food service shop in East Arlington. Mr. Massey is a lifetime Arlington resident, also married to another lifetime Arlington resident. And he, previous to his current job, he owned a Italian food specialty shop, similar to the one that he's looking to open in East Arlington on Winter Hill in Somerville. So we believe that this will work really well in East Arlington right now. It's filling a void on Mass Avenue in East Arlington that hasn't been there in a while. And he's got great response from everyone in East Arlington and across the town that we've talked to. There's a lot of expectations, a lot of people looking, asking when it will be open, stopping in the store as the construction goes. And so we think this will do very well in East Arlington and we're open to any questions from the Board. Thank you. Under full disclosure, I would like people to know that John Herd, Jr., is also my campaign manager, but he didn't threaten to quit or anything over there, so we haven't had any discussions. Samples, Mr. Mass? Nothing yet. Maybe next week. Look at me. Can't you tell how to win my vote here? But so it's a real deli, good pastrami, you know, New York deli's being jealous. Boys' head meats, to-go meals, grab-and-goes, sandwiches, button-pull, Italian specialties. Great, Mrs. Mahan. First, I'd like to make a motion, approval. Also, to subject all conditions. My only question is, I see that you list, I just wanna make sure, it's just the court reporter to me. You list on the application Monday through Sunday, 8 through 8, and then in your menu, you list, and this is for either council. In your menu, your catering menu, you list two days starting at 7.30 a.m. Should the application be 7.30, should it be 8 to 8 on the five days? What I'm saying is, where the catering menu starts a half hour before what's in this application, I wanna make sure you have the right permit that covers, and is that the actual? Type-O-R. That's a type-O-R on the catering menu. Okay, I just wanna make sure your catering menu fits with ours, so you're comfortable with the 8A to 8K. Yeah. With that, okay, I just, all right, so then I'll disregard that, thank you. Mr. Kiro? I think I'm good, I just, I noticed one of your, one of your specials there is called the Broadway. You might wanna add a Mass Ave there, too. But I have no questions, I walked past the place yesterday, and it's a hub of activity, so I wish you luck. Are any neighbors there wishing to speak on this issue, on this particular license? On the motion then by Mrs. Mahan. Seconded, I think by Mr. Kiro. What was that, Mr. Dunn? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye, aye all those opposed. Thank you for choosing Arlington. When are you hoping to open, sir? Hope for the end of this week.  Take a check please. Well, wait a minute, I think I wanna table this until I may, no, you're all set, you got it. Thank you, good luck. One more quick, we have some nice perjudo for Easter. The palm, I will have the palm again. Good, thank you. Corn beads. Thank you, board. Thank you, thanks John. And we have one more, a request, Carmen Vichler's license, Anish Bambi for Yummies. I'm Anish Bambi, looking to open Yummies in Arlington Center, the former something extra space. I'm looking to open a self-serve frozen yogurt shop. And just about myself, I've been in Arlington doing business in Arlington for like seven years. I own the Sprint store, which used to be Verizon before. And now we converted into Sprint. We have done businesses like Zenton, Bedford, and then this area. Can you tell me how self-service works for yogurt? Basically where, you know, people just went themselves from the machines directly. Yeah. They put their own toppings on top of the yogurt of their own choice. And then we basically, they wait on the scale and they ask for the weight of it. Okay. Other questions? Was there a motion? I haven't made, not yet. I'd like to move approval, subject all conditions, and just a brief comment. It seems to be the trend, the frozen yogurt shops. I know a lot of Arlington women get to go because I'm trying to have a venture over to Winchester.  So it's sort of like the new trend thing. And it's supposed to be, you know, guiltless, free calories, you know, because of the frozen yogurt. But then you add all those M&M. So it's a real big trend. And I wish you much success. I'll get worried when we have more yogurt than we do banks. I'll second. And I just want to say on a broader scope, we're very lucky to have, you know, three new storefronts taken out that way. It's empty. And I think it speaks volumes of the town. And we're, thank you very much for choosing. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. So on the motion by Miss, oh, anybody wishing here, anybody wishing to speak on Yummies? Yummies for the tummies. All right. On the motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Byrne. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, good luck. Thank you for choosing. Thank you so much. For being in Allenton and now choosing to put it in the new storefront. Thank you. Thank you. Good piece of luck. Thank you. Traffic rules and orders, number five, request residential handicap parking at 120 Varnum Street. My name is Dr. Kuala. I'm in Puti for 26 years. And lately I've been having a tough time walking. And also, I have Valserita ankle on the right leg. So I have to use the crutches to walk up and down the stairs. That's why I came to you people to have the park outside the door. We'll say that I did drive by down there all the time anyways, the residents and everything looked appropriate to me. I don't know if any of my colleagues want to make a motion. Okay, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Curell. I'll move approval. I just want to note that we've got letters from the fire department and the police department with support and that is certainly, and it appears to me the criteria for all those reasons that make the motion. Or make the motion. Excuse me. Okay, Mr. Curell. I just wanted to point out, and I'm sure the police department explained this to you that although the application is for a handicapped parking spot in that location, if there were to be another driver to come when you were not there, it's not actually a dedicated spot, but. I understand. And there are also considerations during snow storms, which we should all be thinking about tonight, I guess. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, we just came. Okay, I'm sorry. Who made the motion? I did it. Mr. Dunn, seconded by? Second. Mr. Curell, for the discussion, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye, all those opposed. Thank you. Good luck to you. Thank you. I'm having my own trouble walking, and I know what you're talking about. Item number six, letter concerning Belmont-Upland Silver Maple Forest, Mr. Curell. Yes, Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask that we table this matter indefinitely. New information has come to light and I believe it may not be timely anymore. Okay. Thank you. Okay, that which we are all tingling with excitement about, we now move into the warrant article hearings. We will start with the special town meeting articles and then go back to the regular because that's the way they will be handled that town meeting as well. So the first one, special town meeting article two, bylaw amendment leaf blowers. I assume we should start with you, Mrs. Mohan, a report from your committee. Yes, very briefly. Committee met many times, had a public hearing. Myself and Mr. Greerly served on the committee. Myself as a voting member, Mr. Greerly's ex officio. The committee met close to half a dozen times, not counting everything that we had to do by email. There was a lot of energy and expertise and people really went out and did their homework and the leaf blower committee were not done yet, but really is to be commended because really got our hands around an issue that set off a lot of strong opinions on both sides. The committee had planned, we had done everything early in case we needed a second public hearing, but we had the first public hearing. Mr. Greerly moderated that. Everyone who came to the microphone had an opportunity to speak. We in fact ended a little bit earlier. I had anticipated we'd go to max and maybe have to consider a second meeting and I really take that as a testament to my colleagues on the leaf blower committee for really working on this.  We have it. I'm sure it'll be discussed and maybe amended, maybe not a town meeting, but what we did was we came up with restrictions, further fine tunings in terms of hours and square feet per leaf blower and decibel levels and really had great expertise on behalf of the landscape contractors who were on the committee, as well as the residents in the town who were really well versed around environmental issues. Not everybody, this was not 100% agreement on this and I don't think we're ever going to get that, but it's a document what this committee was charged to do, hold a public hearing, take what we had, revise it and put that back out for the Board of Select and to present to town meeting who ultimately will have this decision, will have the decision to make. What's before us are restrictions for commercial and municipal uses and commercial doesn't just mean landscape contractors. There are some other crafts that also use leaf blowers and one of the things I really wanna point out that I'm proud of that the committee came up with is that inherent in here is taking the current technology that they have around decibel levels and environmental and as the landscape contractors pointed out, they may replenish their leaf blowers every two to three years, whereas a homeowner may buy one and is using it one Saturday, maybe four or five times a year. So some people may look at this and say, gee, it's awfully ambitious, but it's only applies to municipality, Arlington and commercial uses, which really do use that. And with that, I do know this is a public hearing that Mr. Griller will be holding. I know there are some members of the committee here. Not everyone could make it, because it's a big committee, but I would say a good two-thirds of them are here and I'm gonna leave it to any of them who wanna comment on any facet of this. Right, I mean, as always, the processes, Board speaks input and then the Board will speak to make a decision at the end. I just, I tied a couple of points, just a little bit on the history of this status quo. Last year, town meeting voted to, and people argue over what's the definition here? Is it a restriction or a ban? In my opinion, it's a ban. Complete no use of leaf blowers from May 15th to October 15th, and the professional leaf blowers association, along with others, called for a special election in the middle of the summer, half day election, if you will, and it was not enough of a vote to overturn the town meeting warrant article vote on the ban, but the popular, if you look at what the results were, 70% voted against the ban and there were 30% that supported. So we formed a committee. We believe, or I believe, I should speak for myself. We can either continue the status quo, which is a complete ban or a restriction, no use of leaf blowers from May 15th to October 15th. We can vote that down at this town meeting and just have no restrictions. We felt, in my opinion, that what we wanna do is try and come up with a compromise, not complete no use and not complete use and come up with a series of restrictions and I believe that's what this committee has done at this point in time and what certainly I will support bringing before town meeting at this point. So, that said, any of my other colleagues wish to speak on this at this point? Mr. Kira? I have just a few things that I wanted to point out. I wanna just highlight a couple points here that it's still not quite sitting well with me. First, I wanna thank the committee because I know how much work you put in and I know what a torturous process this has been. Continues to be and probably will continue to be moving into town meeting. I think as we move forward in this, I think we're all striving probably for three things, I would think. The first is simplicity. I mean, this should be as simple as remembering what data puts trash out pretty much. You're cutting line. Yeah. And I think we have to ask ourselves a question whether we've achieved that. Enforceability. I mean, is it realistic? Cause it's something we can realistically enforce. And the third, which is the one that we'll debate for years to come is kind of fidelity to the will of town meeting, to the committee's analysis, to our analysis, to the will of the voters and the referendum, what the referendum meant. That's one that I think we can debate for a long time. I just want to put out just a few things that just I have questions about and maybe as some of the committee members get up, you know, you can address these. Firstly, in terms of enforceability, I actually, I really appreciate the sentiments in 2C, which talks about blowers not being able to be used more than 30 minutes at a time or the downtime of 15 minutes. I think that the spirit there is really well placed in trying to, you know, create some room for peace. I'm not sure that that's really an enforceable provision. So I'd be curious what the thought process was on that. So that's one. Very much appreciate in section five, the provision around using the newer equipment as it rolls into play. I do worry about conflicts if an officer or health department representative is called on a complaint. Is there gonna be a lot of finger pointing like this? Yes, it complies. No, it doesn't. And I did question whether there wasn't a way to just simply identify the equipment either through a seal from the, you know, weights and measures or whatnot so that there's no dispute. Actually to assist the contractors to identify, yes, this is all cleared. I talked a little bit with the health department. I think we have some resource constraints around something like that, but I didn't know if that had been considered. And just a third question concerns the hours and the days which I suspect is gonna be a place where we're gonna hear a lot of back and forth at town meeting. The hours of operation here are through 5.30 pm. And I appreciate that that's an attempt to keep the evenings peaceful. I think most of us were at the hearing, though, and we did hear that there was a concern from some residents when they come home from work, you know, if they're not, if they work on the weekend, for example, and they wanna be able to work on their yards, are they going to be able to do that during the summer with that cutoff? The rest of the noise abatement by-law cuts off at eight. The flip side is we have one day that's really downtime, that's a quiet time here. And I just question the reasoning there. I think we heard from a lot of people at the hearing. Even folks who had voted against the restriction the past town meeting that they were looking for a compromise. And I just question the thought process there whether that was felt that they're really, I see there are really three constituencies that we're looking at. A lot of them overlap too. We have really commercial operators who really need to be able to operate their businesses and their customers as well. We have residents who either work out of the home during the day and are there during the day. And then the third constituency are are other residents who maybe work out of town and need to be able to perform their maintenance. And so those are just questions I put out there that just things that highlight it. I think, overall, I'm really happy with the drafts that's here, but I just question the thought process as to how the enforceability and how the constituencies are balanced. Can I answer those just briefly? The first question, the search for a simple document doesn't exist. The simple document was before, there were no restrictions and now we've defined it. The second regarding enforcement, Jim Feeney from the Board of Health came to several of our meetings. He likened it to the way we enforce like during snowstorms, when the snow plow contract is usually, never has it been Arlington businesses, but from other cities and towns come in and they stop throwing the snow in the street and or sometimes a resident. When they call the non-emergency number, the police car is up there within two, three minutes. I saw it happen on my street during that big, huge storm. One of my neighbors had called me, so I placed a call and they literally were up there two, three minutes. And in the beginning, it's a little bit of a, it's kind of heavily used. I know when the town meeting passed the initial restriction before the vote, they told me 812 AM that Saturday morning, residents were calling. So the residents already knew out there. To the jet, you coming home or my husband coming home after 5.30 at night, this doesn't apply to you. This only applies to commercial and municipal. What applies to you as a resident, a homeowner is the current noise abatement law. And it's, if you want, I'll tell you exactly. I highlighted for you under section two, J, at the very end, it says other than leaf blowers used on private property. And then also in the preamble, it says that these restrictions apply to municipal and commercial uses only. So that gets to your, when you come home, you're not abiding by the 5.30. And then the only other thing I would say is in terms of, can we tweak this a little bit? Yes, we can. But I think it's a good working document. When the special town meeting was called for by the gentleman from precinct 13, town meeting said no, we don't want to take any action. We want this committee to be formed and come back with a working document. So we're bound that we have to come back with something. So I hope that answers your questions. Yeah, and thank you for pointing out D1. I hadn't tied the two together. And I should have presented a better problem. Thank you. I would just add on, you know, enforceability on this is like not allowed to throw snow on the street with a snowblower. Well, how's that enforced? And have we ever seen anybody throwing their snow on the street? So I believe what will happen here is, you know, should this be approved by town meeting? First and foremost, I expect a number of amendments to things you've talked about. I don't want the timing then. I want to allow it here or whatever. But it's got to be up to neighbors, I believe, and it's up to the Board of Health to enforce when they're called by a neighbor or something like that. We obviously don't have the manpower to send, have every street of the 5.5 square miles, you know, have routes taken or the police trained in leaf blower dissemination or lack thereof or whatever the case may be. So wait, anything else from my colleagues first? I'm ready to, oh, okay. Who'd like to speak on this, please? Yes, yep. Well, Carol Band, town meeting member precinct eight. We talk about simplicity and the very nature of simplicity is the partial ban on the seasonal restriction on gas powered leaf blowers, which is in place in Brookline and has been operating to no ill effect for several years now. And town meeting has already voted once to uphold the seasonal ban. The special election, which cost the town money, upheld the seasonal ban. Then there was another special town meeting which upheld the seasonal ban. And now we're bringing it again, we're dragging it again in front of town meeting. We've crafted, we've squeezed out this compromise which is not a compromise to again show it in front of town meeting. And why don't we just see how it works? It's been passed three times. Let it go to the town and see how it works for a year. If it doesn't work, we'll bring it, look at it again. But check it out, it's working in Brookline, it's working in other communities around the state and around the country with no ill effects to landscapers or homeowners. There you had it. I think that we're undermining democracy and we're second guessing town meeting members and not giving them credit. Just to that point, we're bringing it to town meeting for the vote, Carol, so we're not disrespecting it. Well I know we are, but they've already voted on it twice. Thank you, now we're putting a compromise in front of them to vote on. Who else would like to speak on this? Yes, please, whoever, come on. Oh, you're right there, Jimmy, sorry, come forward. No, no, you're right there, please. Hi, I'm Cheryl Miller on Thesda Street. First I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss something in the document, so there's no provision as to how, like the proximity to. Cheryl, please. There's no provision as to the proximity to bystanders that someone can use a leaf blower, is that correct in the document? I went through it, but you know, it was pretty detailed, so. You mean we put in there that, like you can't use one closer to a property line or to a person or something, you can't use one within 25 feet of a playground or something along those lines. No, that's not in there. Okay, a person. In that case, I would like you to vote no action on this because I don't think it's adequate to protect people from other realities of leaf blowers. I certainly understand the desire to have a compromise at this point and to be done with this issue. I'm sure you all wish to be done with this issue, but this doesn't solve all the problems that leaf blowers cause. I think I said in the public hearing that leaf blowers in their own manuals say that bystanders should not be closer than 50 feet to the leaf blower and that operators should be wearing protective equipment. But right now in this compromise, as I understand it, some I could be walking down the street with my kids and I could be on a sidewalk and someone could come up two feet away from me and start of a leaf blower. And in that, I mean, would you not say that we should be wearing protective equipment at that distance? I mean, it seems to me pretty clear that we ought to be. And yet there's no protection. There's nothing to stop people from doing that. And I have been standing in the street with my kids waiting for someone to be finished because I could not go closer. I didn't feel it was safe for me to go closer. And it's absolutely impossible to get the attention of someone who's using leaf blower short of throwing something at them because they can't hear you. So that seems like a very fundamental protection that should be part of this agreement. And since it's not, I would suggest that you please either add it in if you have that ability to do so or to vote no action on this compromise. Thank you. Just quickly, technically it is in, people are not allowed to blow things onto sidewalks or whatever, so in other words, they would have to be blowing it towards the property, but your point is well taken. I mean, there's also the noise of it and the fumes of it, which are, nothing protects us from that if we're that close. But I just want to, they're not allowed to blow it on the sidewalk. Well, are they allowed to stand? Anytime, never mind when you're walking by them. A lot of people stand, the operators stand in the road and blow back toward the house. Is that going to be prohibited as well? Well, no, it is to blow it throughout the house. That's what they have to do. Right, if they're standing in the road, then the road is de facto not useful, or at least part of it, depending on how realistic you think this 50 feet or whatever is, there is a zone in which people should not be without protective equipment. And this does not address that. Okay, thank you. Mr. Tibbets. Hi, I'm Gary Tibbets from Precinct Five and I was a member of the Leaf Blower Committee. And I'd just like to point out to the selectman, the committee was comprised of four people that were definitely against leaf blowers, four contractors that were for it, and four citizens just that volunteered to be on the committee. Our results that we came up with, they weren't unanimous, but they were voted on by the majority of us, and that's how we came up with them. Our results mirrored closely the public comment meeting that we had, the public comments mirrored the results of the special election. We're about three to one. People are either for no ban off of this compromise. And I think that's important to point out. The other thing is, as far as operating them, common sense has to be used.  And us as professionals, not that that's a big profession, but it's what we do all the time, we watch out for that, and we pay attention to it. So I really think this is a compromise, the people spoke in the election, the people that got involved in this committee and in the public comments spoke, and they all said the same thing. We don't want this ban, these tight restrictions. We want this compromise. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tillman, yep. Joe, one second, go ahead. You were coming up, yep, come on. Huh?  Let me run this thing, okay? I saw you next, so you're next. Okay, so I'm a member of the committee also, and I know these things get long-winded and I wanted to be very clear. So I'm gonna read this. It's one page, double spaced. So my name is George Adelman and I'm a member of the committee also. I'm one of the citizen members, so I think it's important to know, I think I represent a lot of people who are sort of tired of this. I joined the committee because I thought the town was spending way too much of its resources on this. I was especially annoyed at the $30,000 spent for the special vote. It's like the town's got more things to do with its money than that. I personally hoped I could contribute to the closure of this issue because I have an engineering background, I have a legal background, and I work in medical equipment for the last 40 years. So I learned six things being on this committee, and I'd like to relate those six things to you. As Mr. Greeley already said, there was a warrant for a complete ban which was changed to a summer ban, which was enacted and upheld in special town vote, and there was a lot of talk about was that vote for or against, even though technically it supported the ban. I don't know, but I know that. It seems to me it's unclear that there are serious medical effects from leaf blow use. There are lots of other things that cause more problems than that, except to the operators, and they have their employers to deal with that. It is clear to me, and I think to most anybody, that leaf blowers are noisy. However, I learned in this committee that the leaf blower industry is working on developing quiet leaf blowers, and in fact they already have, they're available from at least four companies I saw. And with a leaf blower that's 65 DBA at 50 feet, that means that if you and I are talking here, we can hear each other even though the leaf blower is going 65 feet away. So I learned that, and I also learned that during the summer months, leaf blowers are not used to blow leaves. It wasn't obvious at first, but because they're leaf blowers, they're actually used to clean up yards, and people have windows open, and the same leaf blowers, as loud as they are for blowing lots of leaves, are used for this cleanup. And usually in the summer, it takes 30 minutes or less to do this. However, the leaf blowers are still loud, they're the same leaf blowers. Now, I was particularly frustrated at this meeting. The committee overwhelmingly, in my opinion, consists of people who are against the ban. I really believe that. I came in either way. I was willing to say, let's just get rid of this because it's a waste of time, but I wanted to listen to all the input. I went to all the meetings. I went to the hearing. So I believe that this alternative, if you're being proposed, is actually a repeal of the ban. It really doesn't, it's unenforceable. There's no way anybody can complain about it. There's no way to tell. Is this leaf blow around for 15 minutes, 30 minutes? It's just crazy, from my perspective. So I've learned in business, you never say it's bad unless you have an alternative. And I learned something really powerful that the motivation for the lenscapers is financial, that they wanna be able to do their job. And they also believe, and I've learned that in the next three, four years, leaf blowers are gonna be quieter. But right now, we have people worried about the loudness of leaf blowers. So I have a proposal, one, which is already in the rule, as I understand it, that's being proposed, is residents can use leaf blowers. Themselves can use leaf blowers on their own property, anytime, within the realm of the present laws. And the other is that the lenscapers can use a leaf blower anytime during the summer, and frankly, anytime during the year. Whatever hours of legitimate now, before the bin, if the leaf blower is labeled 65 dB or less, they can buy them. That's a real burden on them. They have to buy them now. But they plan on buying them anyway. They really do. That's what I've said, I've heard. This will all go away in three years. But I'll be three years older in three years. And I'd rather be here the quiet now. And just as a point, in order to enforce this, leaf blower manufacturers put on a label that says 65 dB. And in fact, as I said before, if you're 50 feet away and I can talk to you, then it's 65 dB less. If I can talk to you, it's way louder. And I believe that the way you would enforce it is, you can ask, if you think it's too loud, you go ask to see the label. And this is only during the summer. We're not talking about when there's lots of leaves to blow. It's really hard to clean up yards with lots of leaves without a leaf blower. And they can use the quiet ones then too. And if you find someone that has a loud one and they won't show you the label, take the number down in their truck. I learned that trucks have to have pretty big letters with their phone number and address on it. Take it down, call the police. If the police get a couple calls, they go find, they call the number. They help be proactive about it. So I think this is much more manageable, much simpler than certain hours, certain days. It's a little more of a compromise than what's enacted now, but it is doable. And I think it actually gives an out to everybody. That's my two cents. Thank you. Hi, I'm Bill Downing. I was a member of the leaf blower committee. I agree with what George said, a lot of what he said. I came here to tell you that the machines are getting quieter and cleaner, okay? The EPA has put restrictions on them and they met those restrictions 2012. So the new machines that were by and the emissions are much cleaner. The decibels are coming down. A way to check decibels, if the police were to show up or the board of health were to show up. If it's not on the machine, there's an owner's manual that has the decibel level. And maybe you carry that in the glove box of the truck or a copy of it in the glove box of the truck and this machine meets the decibel level. Carol alluded to a Brookline ban, which was voted in a while back, but they haven't enforced it yet. They haven't started it yet, okay? So it's not happening in a Brookline at this point. Or if it has, it was just after the summer, it's possible. It went in September, October. But it hasn't been established in Brookline, although they voted it. What we're asking for is work with us and not hurt us, not put us out of business. I think that local government should work with business to help them go along and get along while we're trying to work with the manufacturers to give us better machines so that we're not bothering people. We're not out to bother people. I think the one was from Chester Street. We talked about this.  And maybe that's part of the training that we can do, and have it available even for other people, homeowners, if they'd like to attend training. That the land scavengers need to train their personnel that if there's somebody, anybody, trying to walk by and you get the attention, you might have to wave.  That's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Yes. Yeah, I was just wondering, Mr. Edelman. Edelman. Yeah, I had mentioned, I talked about 65 DBA and I see that the recommendation here is for 74 DBA target. Can I actually speak to that? The landscape contractors are really turning over their equipment at a rapid rate. So is the town, but the town, the town of Wellington through DPW were also involved in this. And what we said was, we started initially with the 75, give everybody two years. It'll probably take us longer in terms of our capital expense. The town of Wellington to go out right away next month, six months, allow the town, so this was not just the landscape contractors, it was also what's gonna work for the town of Wellington because it would be ill advised for us to say to the town of Wellington unless they said they were prepared and they're not. Everybody agreed that by the beginning of the 2015 cycle the landscape contractors will be at the 64 and the town should be at the 64, but we really have to be cognizant of the budget and what's been put in place. We can't give them the. So that's more for, they're probably by the end of the season, it's summer, fall. It's gonna give us the time so that we can appropriate the monies too. Not that we're not going to replace them, but they replace theirs faster than the town of Wellington does. And I don't know if you wanna add to that, Mr. Dowling. Well, we go through machines in a year or two. So we're constantly upgrading our equipment. So we're buying the latest state of the art that comes out. So when the new machines and they tell me it's two years, I can't tell you it's two years, maybe three. That there's gonna be a commercial unit that we can work with that'll give us the power. It'll meet the emissions of the EPA. That'll be 65 decibels or less. And that's where I think the solution is. I think when those models come out, leaf blowing issue won't exist anymore. Does that answer that question? Yeah, it does. And the first question, and by Mr. Adelman, it is in there for the homeowners. And he acknowledged that also. So I think we've covered that. I just wanna make sure everybody, everything on the table. Also for those homeowner models that don't get replaced, they're talking about a buyback program to get those out of circulation as well, the manufacturers. That would be good to see. So thank you very much. Sorry I called you Joe. Can I make a motion of favorable action if there's nobody else? Yes you can. So it's a motion of favorable action, but we still, no, no, we have others to speak, please. No, we can just tell them. Yes. Oh, I didn't know there was someone else, I'm sorry. Hi, I'm Christian Klein from, I'm a town meeting member precinct 10. I just wanted to just ask a question on the enforcement side of things again. This is all still maintained within the noise abatement as it stands today in the noise abatement article of the town bylaws, is that correct? This will be appended onto it. It's to be a part of it. So the existing enforcement provisions of the noise abatement will remain in effect for this, which is a written notice for first offense and $200 per occurrence thereafter. Okay. When this came up before town meeting, I had spoken with the chief of police and asked him what his department would do if somebody came forward with a complaint about an excess noise. And he's like, well, I would send him to the Board of Health because we don't have the equipment to determine what the noise levels are. And I went to the Board of Health and said, you have the equipment, what would you do? And he said, well, we would send out one of our inspectors, but we typically don't have inspectors available so it might take a couple of days. And we got into this discussion that the noise abatement article, as it's written currently, is very effective if you have a construction site that has somebody running a jackhammer that is back time and time again in a pretty consolidated period of time and it allows them to address things on that sort of a time scale. But when I asked specifically about what do you do with a company that's there for a couple of hours and then has gone for a week or two? And they didn't really have an answer for how they could address those kinds of issues. And so I think it would be very helpful for the discussion as it comes into town meeting if there was a very specific process in mind as to how this is going to be enforced at the town level, as to who's supposed to be contact and who's gonna be controlling it because the sense I've gotten so far talking with the various town boards is it's, well, it's their problem, it's their problem, it's not quite us, it's, you know. So I think it would help the whole argument and the whole discussion in general if we had a set idea as to how we're gonna be handling the enforcement when it comes forward. Yeah, I just want to go on. So I think, and then I just want to make sure I understand where you're concerned. So I agree that enforcement is something we have to talk about and think about, but there's no equipment that you need to enforce this one. No, and I think that originally, I think some of the earlier ones, it was saying we have like a 75 and it's like, how do you, you know, so there's that portion of it, exactly. So I agree enforcement is an issue, but enforcement equipment isn't. Exactly, like we're now where I think it's based mostly on clock time and things like that, I think it's a much easier one to enforce. Okay, thank you. Great, thank you. Can I just speak to that? We had this discussion and it may just be words and I don't want to say semantics, because it's a negative connotation, but when we have the snow shoveling bylaw and can this be enforced? No, and what the question was, can the Board of Health and Arlington Police constantly patrol the streets to make sure and knock on residents' doors and knock on business owners' doors? No, they can't. Similar to noise abatement, when that went in, a lot of people said, well, how are you gonna, Board of Health, can you do this? Chief of Police, can you do this? No, we can't. We can't go out and be proactive, but what we do is we're reactive. So this would be similar to if, when people report a business hasn't shoveled. You know, you give them, what happens is, as those calls come into the non-emergency line, they come through, actually they don't go non-emergency, they go through the town question answer, but some people still do call that non-emergency line. They get dispatched, they get plugged into the system that we have online, and what happens is when an officer is available or if Board of Health is available, they go out, sometimes it may not even be for snow shoveling, for this they would go out and they have a copy of the bylaw, they go to the resident, they go to the business, they go to the person, company plowing in the street. So it's sort of semantic, can we enforce this? No, but can we be reactively enforcing this? Yes. As best we can. But my understanding, the enforcement comes under the Board of Health period on this, is that correct, Mr. Chatelaine? Well, Ms. Baton, the law does with certainly police or Board of Health inspectors could issue a violation. Anybody else hasn't spoken, wish them to speak on this? Okay, you wanted one question or something, you have to come to the mic. Hi, my question was, I've heard that the decibel levels tossed out there, but is that at the machine or is that at 50 feet? At 50 feet. It's at 50 feet, okay. So if someone is using a leaf blower in their backyard and the person next is 10 feet away, then the noise is gonna be considerably louder, like someone's kid, they're playing in the yard next door. So, okay. Just to clear up the enforcement, all of our trucks by law in Massachusetts have to be leaded with our name and our phone number on them. And if there is a plank called in, that man had a good point. The landscape is gone in 10 or 15 minutes. But they can check with the home owner, the home where they were working, see what landscaper was working there. All the person that's calling it in can have the landscaper's name and phone number, and the police can visit their shop later. That's all under the law now, the trucks have to be leaded, so. And all our guys wear jackets with our names on them and everything else. So it's pretty clear who's doing what. Did you wanna ask any questions? No, I don't want to. All right, members of the board. So, Ms. Mohan, move favorable action. Is there a second? Second. Okay, now discussion. Okay, Steven, there's no others. I don't care. Okay, I'll leave it up to them. Thanks, sir. I, a couple of things. One, I like, I very much like George's, I'm sorry, I forget your last name, your ideas. And I think it's promising to see that in a couple of years, this will not be an issue. I think that's, you know, a weight off all our backs. Now for the next, until that time comes, we do have to deal with this issue. And I will support, I will support this compromise. And I do really like Bill's idea of training. I think that, you know, if with further training it will be more educated uses of leaf flowers. And that's, that's better for everyone in town. I think that neighbors will, you know, appreciate that. And with the, you know, it came up earlier that we're in a very dense, dense area. And, you know, we can't be 50 feet away from our neighbor's property at all times. That, and that's just, you know, that's part of living in Ireland. And I think that's something that a lot of people have come to enjoy about living in Ireland. So there, you know, it does come down to a respect factor. And we might not be able to enforce everything, but we will, you know, do our best to. And I think that we do, you know, this, I'm sure our town meeting will be an interesting discussion, but I am comfortable with moving forward with these compromises. And I'm sorry that we cannot keep, you know, everyone happy, but that's, I guess, part of being on the Board of Selectment. And so I'd like to thank the Leafblower Committee for all their work. And thank you for this outcome and bring this to us. So you started this conversation talking about giving us a little history on the issue. And I would actually go back a little bit farther in history and say, a year ago, three of us were on the board, two of us weren't. A year ago, we had two public hearings on the Leafblower issue, on an article. And we had zero attendees. We had not a single person show up for two public hearings about Leafblowers. And I say, what a difference a year makes. So town meeting chose to pass the seasonal ban. And then there was an unprecedented reaction from the people of the town. And I voted against the ban as a selectman. I voted against the ban as a town meeting member. But at the same time, but then what happened after that, made me think about it and reconsider further. So I guess I, what we promised people at that point was that we would create a compromise committee and that committee would investigate and try to come up with a better solution. And we promised that in top, when we before the special vote, we promised that before the special town meeting, I stood up in front of special town meeting and I represented the board of selectmen and I said, this is our, we're asking for a compromise committee and let's wait till that comes back. And we promised that we're gonna talk about this next year. And I look at this work this committee did and I said, we fulfilled that promise and I'm happy with the recommendation as it sees fit. Is would I, if I was like dictator of Arlington, would I take a large red pen and like slice it up in 15 different ways? I absolutely would, but I think that this is the right compromise and I'm happy to support it. Thank you. Mr. Curell. Thank you very much. I think I've been open that, unlike my colleagues at that town meeting, I did support the seasonal restriction. But I would point out that during the special town meeting, although town meeting voted again to uphold the seasonal restriction, they also voted to constitute this committee. And I actually feel we have an obligation to pass this back through to town meeting for them to pass off on it. So I will be supporting the motion. As a town meeting member, depending on what kind of amendments come forward, you know, I will have to reserve my rights to represent my precinct and the interests of the town. But I think that we do have an obligation to pass this back to town meeting and let them pass on it. That was, I think part of what we, as Dan said, part of what we promise and part of what we put forward in the fall. Ask for the vote if I could just say something briefly after. Okay, so on the vote, recommending favorable action on the report by the committee and making those bylaw amendments, all those moved by Mr. Han, seconded by Mr. Dunn, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. unanimous vote, believe, Brian? Yeah. Yes, Mr. Han. And just very briefly, I do want to point out and thank, honestly, sometimes people might think that you say this because you have to, but I want to thank the Board of Selection Office, Mrs. Sullivan, Mary Ann, Mrs. Cropelka-Marie and Mrs. Reedy, friend Reedy. This really became like another job for them and for myself. I lost a client because I wasn't getting working on time. And the reason I put that forth is I see other proposals coming currently and in future years and I began to have a conversation with the town manager and with the town moderator that on these hot ticket items, I'm not talking about this, this really was a job for me.  In the future, if we could sort of set up some process and it really dragged the select and I don't mean that in a negative way, but a lot of stuff went asunder, you know, we have elections and special elections and everything else that we have to do. It really took some wear and tear on us. So as we go forward on this, if we could maybe, and I don't know what that process is, I have some ideas and I'm going to leave it to Mr. Leone and Mr. Chaplain with some of my suggestions maybe in the future, if this type of committee gets formed again, A, I'm not on it, and B, we kind of talk about that because I'm not saying it isn't through the resources of the selectman's office and I'm not exaggerating, I know I get really passionate and over-passionate about some things, but it really was, took a substantial hit to the day-to-day workings of the selectman's office for just a little microcosm of time. So just to my colleagues, but really thank you, they put in so much work, similar to the members of the committee on both sides of the issue. Okay, thank you. This is next will be article four of the special town meeting by law amendment, the sale of drinking water in single-served bottles, please. Hi, my name is Amy Curl, I am from Precinct 13 and I live at Nine Langley Road. Welcome. I would very much like to thank the board of selectmen for hearing me speak about this issue tonight and everyone who came here to support us, we do have quite a few people here. I'm not alone working on this, I've worked on this with Marina Milan and Sonya Zakhar who are standing up here with me, but my birthday happened to fall first on the calendar year so my name is on it and I'm also the president of Arlington High School's environmental club so I've kind of been the leader. So as you know, article number four is the warrant article to ban the sale of non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving PET bottles that are one liter or less in the town of Arlington and we have given packets to the board and so we go over here with some more facts and just a little deeper explanation of what we are trying to accomplish and sorry, some of the research that we've done but I will try to be brief with my comments. So we have been working for a couple of years to educate at least the student body at Arlington High on water bottle use for years and they have been incredibly receptive and we've seen it at the high school. However, it's not enough to just educate our students of Arlington, we are looking to encourage the entire town to be more environmentally friendly and we hope this ban will encourage environmentally conscious behavior and educate the people of this town to make some more informed decisions. A little change goes a long way and I have a couple of facts that we've done from some research that I would just like to point out. So the tap water in Arlington, according to the MWRA through some of their research is actually some of the cleanest water in the country, not just the state and many major bottled water companies such as Aquafina famously simply sell bottled water, bottle tap water and pass it off as their own product so it's not much different than what we get out of the sink. And bottled water is not only harmful for when the bottles end up in landfills and aren't properly recycled, but also the way that they're produced in the first place. The production and transportation of said bottled water releases tons of unnecessary fossil fuels into the environment. These bottles are also stored for months at a time before they're actually consumed and many chemicals from the bottles because the PET is not very strong plastic. Some of the chemicals from the PET will seep into the water and this happens very often over time. They can have some dangerous effects. For example, BPA can mimic the effect of estrogen at a person if it's consumed enough over time. And tap water in Arlington is usually more clean than bottled water because tap water is regulated by the EPA and bottled water is regulated by the FDA and each have their own standards but the FDA allows small levels of certain chemicals to be in approved bottled water and it is better for the environment and individuals health and for each person's wallet to simply buy a reusable water bottle and fill it up time and time again. Many of them last for years and years. With this proposal, we plan to encourage people in the town to use reusable water bottles which saves money and resources. We've also wanted to address some concerns that we've heard from the people. We've read some of the comments and we've had people come up and talk to us and we are very much listening to what people say and we know that there are a lot of things about this issue that are controversial. So we are specifically, we wanted to address first, people keep asking us why we're banning water and not soda and because water comes free from the tap and thus forces an unnecessary expense and they both have effects on a person's health. Soda contains processed sugar but then bottled water can also contain dangerous chemicals that a person will consume. In addition, Arlington students were found to have the least amount of excessive body weight by the Department of Public Health in a study done a couple of years ago this was in the news. And so if our Arlington students are being raised to make smart decisions we have a lot of faith in our Arlington residents that they will be able to make smart decisions when it comes to their beverage consumptions and buying soda should not be the natural alternative to buying bottled water carrying a reusable water bottle should be the natural alternative to buying bottled water and we think that Arlington residents will naturally make this decision, sorry. So we, another concern is that people don't like the idea of the government controlling their day to day choices and this proposal isn't about taking away people's liberties or their freedom to choose but it's really about saving the planet and working towards a bigger future. This removing bottled water, this is a very small task to do but it'll have a big payoff when it comes to the environment and our planet's future. We are hoping that this ban will show Arlington how we can do better and what we can do to help the environment and another, the last concern is fiscally and the Arlington Chamber of Commerce did a study between 59 business owners in Arlington and 53 of them voted that they didn't think this would have an effect on their business so in terms of Arlington business owners, they do not, those 53 are not concerned that this will really have too much of a detrimental impact on their business and the town wouldn't have to spend any money for this maybe except to have someone monitor does an extra portion of their job but they wouldn't be losing any money from having this ban into place so we thank you very much for listening to us. Thank you very much, Amy. I actually think you were in my group last career day or something. I was, yep. I think I judged her in a math, did you do the math fair? A couple of years ago, sophomore year I was so two years ago. They use you as a judge in there? They do.  You were very effective, you're a great speaker. I ended up interning with Sean Garbley that summer for about four weeks so it was a very effective career day. Sean is with us tonight. We certainly always appreciate his presence here in the chamber. I wanna thank you, I think it's outstanding that you're getting involved like this and that you have the courage to do this and that I assume you'll be doing the same thing in front of town meeting. Yes. But without breaking your heart, I don't favor it at this point in time but we're gonna certainly let everybody speak who would like to at this point but you did a spectacular job. I do think this is a choice issue and I honestly feel it's better handled on the state level with the bottle bill expanding to include deposits on such things. However, it's tough to debate against you. You did an excellent job in terms of that case you just invented. But obviously others would like to speak on this issue as well. Okay, Sean as always, select and speak first then we'll take more of the public input and then we'll come back to the select one, Mr. Byrne. Amy must be pretty popular because she's also my neighbor. I feel like, oh, I've seen her at the high school. Can I say that? No, I'm so impressed by you guys for taking this on. Trying to improve the town's environment and trying even more so to implement change to the town's legislative process is much more than I was doing as a senior in high school. I can assure you that. So if there's something to look forward to, as you can see. What word are you doing now? And I hope that you do bring that drive for change to college and further on into your career because I think that you guys will do a lot of good and continue to do a lot of good. That being said, I also, second Kevin's thoughts and I won't be supporting this at this time. I think that we should continue to focus on encouraging recycling and promoting environmentally friendly businesses and individuals and I think that's, and I know that's something that you've been doing in the past and I'm sure something you continue to do and I hope that you continue to do this. I don't want this to be something that stops all of your hard work and I'm sure that it won't be from, knowing you for many years. So thank you so much for coming in front of us and that was a phenomenal presentation. So thank you. Mr. Hanan, I saw next. Ms. Currell, Amy, hats off to you. I did a similar thing when I was your age, down at the high school when I learned about asbestos. I had no idea what that was and asked all the construction workers when I'm class of 80, so I'm ancient, the dark ages. And I remember asking the workers, why are you wearing all those suits and everything and they explained asbestos. I had no idea what it was, investigated it and I was a AB student, always on the honor roll, volunteered in the office, so, you know, always strive to do the right thing. And I remember going to the principal saying, listen, because we were passing through the halls with that. This is dangerous stuff and everybody said, no, no, no, which is what you're probably gonna get here. But I hung onto that and eventually got 30, 40 friends and I told the principal, he said, well, you're gonna get suspended and that meant big time trouble at home with my parents, I couldn't even come home at the sea. And I organized after sixth period after lunch, so we took on all our classes and I had like 30 friends that agreed to walk out with me. By the end of the day, the entire school, including the staff had walked out and one of the workers gave me a megaphone and explained why, because most of them didn't know. So what I'm saying is, if you have what you do, you have a solid group of friends, you have a brilliant presentation. Every time I heard no, I kept going forward. I became like the queen of the year because we got two days off because they had to restructure and get the asbestos work done. So I applaud you on that. What I would love to see before me, and I'm gonna get in so much trouble with so many people would be abandoned all plastic bottles of any kind. I would like water to be the last. And I understand that we can't do that and I agree with Kevin maybe on a statewide level. I can tell you as a coach at the high school, I can tell you when as a student from 76 to 80, I would not drink out of those water fountains. And I can tell you now as a coach, even especially outside on the field, none of my players, I mean, at most they splash the water on themselves. So if I would feel comfortable, if I felt comfortable, I could direct my players and myself to suitable water replenishing because you know, double sessions. And the same thing with Arlington Water. I have a bread of filter because I have some health issues with all my children. Nothing, I'm just saying, I'm very cognizant of that because of my family structure. So I won't be supporting this, but I know you're familiar with the way town meeting works. If it looks like it's no, you present it again. So you're very well versed on that. And who knows what you're gonna do on town meeting floor? Just because someone says no now. But right now I just think in terms of the alternatives, again, I wish we could ban Pepsi and Gatorade and all that. And I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble, but good job to you. May I just respond? We are, I've talked to the class president and we are trying to look into buying a installable water filter in the cafeteria that students then could bring reasonable water bottles and fill up. So we are, we have looked into that in the past too and it hasn't worked out because of the funds that Save Club has and the class funds, but this year it seems like it might be a possibility. So we are looking into that because we do understand that that is something is where, well, where are we gonna fill up our reasonable water bottles? And we are trying to work. And the same thing with the sports. I don't know if you wanna go to Mrs. Bouvier, if you want to, whoever the sports entity is, maybe get them plugged in, that if you can find a suitable inside source, maybe a suitable outside one, especially in the summer. Thank you. All right, thank you. You wanna wait for input or you? Yeah, I'm happy to, yeah. Well, I never had the opportunity to judge you. A few weeks ago I did have the opportunity though to judge a debate contest of high school students for the Northeast United States and I'd say that you could easily go up against the finalists in that. You laid out a great case here this evening. Before I say what I think, I wanted to ask a question though.  Yeah. And you mentioned the filter. What else have you done? I mean, have you tried to take steps at the high school to actually institute an across the board ban of disposable water bottles at the high school? We have looked into it and the school makes, not necessarily, well, I don't wanna call it significant, they do make some money off of having the aquafino machines in the school, they get a portion of it, so they are not necessarily very inclined, especially with the very thin budget that they work with to get rid of them. We have tried, I've tried, the last president has tried, the president before her has tried and it's no go. We have worked on reducing other materials in the high school, so we've instituted Draylist Tuesdays, so we are working on reducing other materials that we think aren't necessary in the high school. So that has been pretty successful, not having the styrofoam trays in on Tuesdays. So we have tried getting rid of the water bottle machines and we are looking into other things as well. We're kind of in all-encompassing group. So let me string this out just a little bit. The reason I ask is, because you mentioned that maybe the solution here would be to educate residents in Arlington around not purchasing water bottles and using reusable bottles. However, so many of the people who pass through Arlington aren't residents, they're visiting the town, they're coming through on the bike path and such. And for myself, I feel like that's a big burden and it doesn't send the right message to folks who are coming through that they have to know. You are now entering Arlington town limits. You know, all water bottles do not pass through these gates. So I'm concerned about that. I feel like, I think Mr. Greeley said and Mr. Dunn, if you start, you should start at two places, I would think. It would be one is at the state level on the bottle bill. I know Representative Garbley has been very supportive of, I'm not speaking out of school, am I Sean? I know he's been very supportive of that. And at the school level, where you really do have a population that you can control, I mean, I'd submit that if this weren't a high enough priority, if the students weren't buying from those machines, they wouldn't be making money for the school anymore and you might well see that you have success there. And I think that would be a pilot that would be very important to have under your belt before trying to extend this to the school. I think we've all been reading in the papers about Mayor Bloomberg's little, you know, attempts on the health end of the spectrum down in New York and they got shot down in the courts this past week. He targeted a specific type of drink and the court said it was arbitrary and capricious, is the term, capricious is the term. So I can't support this right now. I do really, you know, like all of my colleagues, my hats are off to you for bringing up the issue forward but I would really encourage you to first start within your school community and see if you can get a successful pilot there where there is a model that works within that community. And from there, try to see if you can work it to the rest of the school system. And I think you'll have some difficulties though. When you go throughout the school system, the PTOs have already been making a lot of changes to offer healthy options and a lot of water has been in that mix. So I think that that's part of the place to start. Right, and we've already tried to go through the school to some degree and have not had the success and we saw that Concord was successful and we thought, well, why not try here? Arlington's a very welcoming and open town and they are, we know there's a big environmentally conscious community here and so we have, we will keep trying, thank you. But yes, this is not our first attempt. Okay, thank you. And good for you though, seeing what was done in Concord and taking the steps here as you have. Do either of you two lieutenants want to say anything, you know, to get some time on camera? You gotta come to the microphone, I'm sorry. Say your name again, sorry. My name's Sonia Zachar. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to thank the board of selectmen for hearing our proposal. My name's Marina Milan and I just want to quickly talk about what we have been doing at the high school. When I was a freshman, we, the SAFE Club has a program where we go to freshman classes towards the end of the year we should be doing it in the next month or so and we do a presentation to the science classes. We have all the science teachers permission and it's just one period and we do a taste test and we show a video and we give them a bunch of facts about bottled water and I very distinctly remember my class that year and I have not bought a bottle of water since I really didn't know much about bottled water before that but I have not bought a single bottle of water since that day and I really hope that our efforts in school continue to have that impact on other people and then maybe people will stop buying water like you said and then the school won't be so opposed to getting rid of the water roll machines entirely. Thank you. Just the fact you're here talking about it as much as you are the millions watching at home and I do expect to see you again at town meeting. However, now so if you want to just step to the side we'll take other import but I will let you speak at the end just before the board takes the vote, okay? Mr. Harrington I saw first. Shawn Harrington precinct 15 town meeting chair. I have actually for the record what I'm going to say so I was hoping I could pass that out if that's okay to the members of the select. Just give them to Ms. Mahon she'll pass them along so you can speak. All right, first thing there are some typos in here. I was at a conference I only got about nine hours sleep in three days so there are some typos so please pardon that. You're not reading this whole thing. What? You're not reading this whole thing. I'm not reading the whole thing. I'm going to cover it a little bit. So. I mean you can Shawn but I. No, no, no, I do like to talk but no, not tonight. I just got in at midnight. I haven't had about two hours of sleep so I'm running out of fumes. So I have at the top the bylaw I'm not going to read it but it's based on environmental issues with plastic waste but I took a look at it. I contacted a woman named Adriana Cohen from the Concord for Consumer Choice where they're currently fighting the bottled water ban in Concord and through links that she's giving me I kind of compiled some information that in the case against the bottled water ban. The first one when it comes to environment this ban doesn't reduce plastic waste if anything it hurts my priorities to help the environment. I'm on page three I have a quote by a woman named Maria Rodale. Now Maria Rodale is the CEO and chairman of Rodale, Inc. and Maria's company is the world's largest publisher of health and environmental content such as Men's Health and what have you and her company also published Al Gore's book Inconvenient Truth. She wrote an article for the Huffington Post called The Bizarre Insanity of Banning Bottled Water in which she stated banning water might feel like a win in the short term but it's a major loss in the long term and the biggest loss is the misdirection of energy it creates in very intelligent people who could otherwise be solving real problems. And she goes on later in the article to talk about recycling mandates when it comes to soda, banning soda or possibly. So really why do we say it's not it doesn't help the environment? Bottle water is 100% recyclable. You get rid of bottled water in stores most likely that people think when it comes to convenience not everyone remembers to bring a reusable container with them. I know that I have multiple of them but I don't always bring with me. So I go to the store and I buy bottled water. For kids if you're an Audison student you'll usually you'll see them at some of the convenience stores. If they don't have bottled water there's soda and high sugary drinks with twice the amount of plastic PET and non-PET that they're going to be using. So really what you're doing is you're increasing the amount of plastic in our waste by if this passes town meeting because we're not well we're eliminating yes plastic bottled water which is 100% recyclable. This is harder to recycle and higher amount of plastic and it's just giving kids a higher amount of sugar in their diet which is something that I don't think any of us want to see. Now I do have a quote here from the Concord for Consumer Choice have a website called Free the Water. It says in Concord, Massachusetts well proponents of the ban have fought bottled water. They have ignored the environmental impact of other containers leading people to make false choices to switch to less environmentally friendly packaging. For example, glass bottles take more energy to produce and transport than plastic can break and injure workers and our abrasive and wreak have it on recycling equipment. So it's harder to recycle if anything it will cost more in the long run if let's say nationwide or what have you we go to ban or get rid of these single serving containers. When it comes to health and safety according to the National Sanitation Foundation public water fountains contain 2.7 million bacteria cells in one cubic inch. Even more than public toilets which are sanitized more often.  Concord has seen around the area Adriana Cohen has seen major amounts of sales going up around for businesses around Concord and less in their town Arlington wants to increase our tourism. There's a major thing that we wanted to do and as a second curl said do we really wanna be the town that pushes that away? You know, it's really about convenience as sad as it is we're a consumer society we have to think about convenience excuse me. It also goes against buying local so it really does go against the grain of what we're trying to do here in Arlington. Now using reusable bottled water containers isn't always an available option I already went through that. I was gonna say you got most of it in. The other problem is that let's say if we have another storm like we just had and where the governor has a driving ban and there are many cases where your water system could be, I don't know what the- Compromise? Yeah, compromise, sorry. But if it's compromised you're gonna have to drink bottled water and stores are not going to keep a whole container or a whole bunch of bottled waters in their storage area taking up space for in the case of an emergency they're just not gonna do that. So what you're really gonna have to do is call people to go in during a ban like that driving on the road where they can have accidents and what have you and it costs more. There was another point that I wanted to make and then I think I'll shut up after that. What about personal freedom? This ban takes away residents freedom of choice and promotes unhealthy choices. We as citizens should have the right to decide what is best for our families and ourselves. Reducing waste is a great idea but this should be encouraged by changing minds as these young girls do. And I should also say I commend them tremendously. I know what it's like to go up and try to make a stand on things. A lot of people, when I was in high school I did the same thing with another issue so I commend them a lot. I think there's a lot we can do with increasing the amount of recycling bins we have and recycling mandates. There are many ways we can do this without necessarily getting rid of bottled water and solving the problem with most of our plastic containers. And the other thing is that the other thing that they had a concern about was when it came to the EPA's regulation on plastic containers. Now that regulation is the same thing for plastic containers no matter what. Food containers, milk, what have you. So really it goes for all food products and we're not gonna go out and ban all food products from being sold in Arlington. So while it says yes, bottled water, it's for all of them and also it's not as, and it hasn't been as big of a risk for people as people thought it's been kind of debunked by the bottled water industry and other consumer choice industry leaders. So really that's my point. It seems like it'll hurt the health of Arlington. It'll hurt Arlington businesses as we've seen in Concord. It's hurt their businesses. And there are other ways we can really solve environmentalism. I'm a strong supporter of environmentalism. As weird as that sounds being a Republican but I really do. I think that we need a work toward environmentalism but there are better ways of doing it than necessarily throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. And I do remember you as a senior in high school being before us on the Pledge of Allegiance. Right, you were a senior at that point, weren't you? What was that? You were a senior when you first. I was working on it my four years of high school but it kind of came to a head my junior year going into my senior year. Okay, thank you. Anybody else wishing to speak on this, sir? Hi, I'm Christian Klein, I'm a resident on Newport Street and I'm also the event coordinator for the Friends of Robbins Farm Park. We are a friends group for the local park of across from the Brackett School. We host somewhere between eight and 11 public events over the course of the summer and we host a concession standard at probably the majority of those events and we do sell bottled water as one of the things we sell and we've debated as sort of as a group we don't have an opinion overall on the issue of a water ban but what we would like to see if this goes forward is if there is a possibility for an exception for public outdoor events. We don't have a good way of providing water other than to have it prepackaged at these kinds of events and we've had incidents in the past where we have run, we basically run out of water at certain events before and it has definitely caused concern among the police who were there and others for the health of the insafetive people who were there and if it was a more limited supply of water at public events, we think it would be not only difficult for us and difficult for people who are coming from out of town to these events but it would also have some possible health impacts and so what we would like to encourage is if this does move forward if there could be an exception for these public outdoor events where it could be stipulated that the events have to be fully licensed through the Board of Health, through the recreation department which they already are and that they would have to have recycling containers at the point of sale and at the point of waste and we would certainly be willing to abide by those kinds of considerations. So thank you. I mean, just so you know, your best route obviously is try to amend this at town meeting if indeed it comes up if this board doesn't vote it down but I do see lots of issues with that. For example, town day then wouldn't that have to be exempted as well as long as a number of others, right? But that's any point well taken. Who else would like to speak on this? Okay, Amy you're a team if you'd like to make a closing statement then the board will vote. Hi again. We actually do agree with that amendment to have an exception for outdoor town events. We've heard his points and we actually think that they're very well thought out and we are very receptive to that idea. So we very much do agree. We know this issue is very controversial and we do take into consideration all opposing points and we are just very much looking for the most environmentally friendly solution. That's very much of this, but I hate using your ban because it is a negative connotation to it and we want this to kind of more move in a positive, move at least Erelington in a positive direction to be a less consumption, having in a less wasteful town. But thank you very, very much for hearing us tonight and listening to us. Thank you very much. Thank you. And one of the first rules you'll learn is you're a select minister to count to three and I think you've heard the comments from at least three of us so far. But I'm begging you don't go away. I think we'll see you again at town meeting, but please come before us again at another time. And you're really to be commended for what you've done here and for the work you've done. But forgive me, I'm going against you, but you have, I really like Mr. Kuro's idea, strike first at home if you can, see what you can get done in the high school in terms of some of those other areas. But that said, does someone have a motion please? Move no action. Recommendation of no action, is there a second? Second. Second. And so what will happen at town meeting is we will, I believe, make this recommendation of no action however you can substitute. So if I have a feeling you know that better than I do Amy and your team. All those in favor of the recommended vote of no action, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Am I right, that was unanimous? Okay. All right. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. Thanks Amy. Good luck neighbor. Well no, she did a tremendous job. Okay, article nine, grant of easements for the Thompson School. This was related to the poll discussion last time. Yep. Juliana? Yes. So I'm Mr. Chair. This was related to the request of Verizon to obtain an easement from the town for the placement of three utility polls that are being moved from the sidewalk to onto actual grass area around the new Thompson School to accommodate a change in parking patterns. I did raise a concern at last week's meeting that I didn't really see why it was necessary. The board requested that I speak with Verizon's council, which I did do. Although I'm still not thrilled, I'm gonna withdraw my injection. That's just not worth having a big argument about. I don't think that's good use of this board's time or town meeting time. So, you know, I would recommend that this board would support the request. I will certainly look very closely at the easement instrument when it comes before the board and make every effort to ensure it's not overly broad. But I would suggest at this point that this board take favorable action on the request. Can you do anything on the issue of the easement last for eternity? An easement does last for eternity, which is my problem, I'm worried about it. Right, so no, we can't, right? I mean, we're at a, we're loggerheads with Verizon. They want it to last for eternity. I don't want it to. Right, and how do we take back an easement? Is that possible? We can take it back by having a domain. Okay, okay. Mr. Hayner, did you, did you want to spare? I see the school committee supports this. Yes. Okay, so nothing to add. Okay, is there a motion? Moved favorable action. Moved favorable action, second? Second. Mr. Dunn? I'm having real second, I'm, yeah, I'm not sold on this one actually. Is this something, it seems so pro-former and what I'm hearing is we're all having, oh, if I may, Mr. Berling and Mr. Dunn. I think it's the word permanent for easement. Could we maybe, I would ask town council, do you think there's anything else that you could do to have the conversation? I know you can have the conversation, but I don't want to waste your time around that word permanent if we could get some other type of an easement or they're holding hot and firm on permanent easement. Well, they are, but it's certainly within this board's purview to recommend, I mean, I don't know who's gonna be around to enforce it, but I won't be, but even that expires five years after the school comes down or something like that. I mean, their issue, because what the discussion I did have was, we've got a school there, obviously we want the lights on, their issue is those polls serve not only the school, but also the surrounding communities and there will probably always be people there. So they view it as an investment of their time. I don't think it's much of an investment and I think they certainly recoup it very quickly in the charges that they get from ratepayers, but the reason for their position is that if the school, if the land is sold, if the school is taken down in 50 years, there will still be utility customers. But even if town meeting authorizes the grant of a permanent easement, this board can certainly choose to grant something less than that, or this board can ask town meeting to grant less, you know, authorization for less. I just didn't feel it was sort of a good use of anybody's time to argue if I'm any further. I know if that helps. Mr. Dunn technically still is the floor, I don't know if you want to. So I'll just say that I'm torn between the, I agree.   I'll be much more dangerous.  I'll say it. Mr. Girov. I was just wondering, apropos of our conversation at the last meeting, can it be written, can it be written into an ease, can, let me back up, can an easement document instrument contain conditions around the state of repair that any polls or any infrastructure must be kept in? Just a lot, I just figure, I mean, if we have to do this to facilitate the Thompson project, I'd love to at least be able to send the message again around the subject we discussed last meeting. We can certainly put that language in. I can't really make a guarantee as to its enforceability, but we can certainly put it in. We can send a message. But the same thing we discussed before, state, we trumped by the state current laws, right? Related to polls and stuff that were referenced before. Well, my issue has more to do with kind of the nature of the property right that's an easement. An easement is a, it's something less than full ownership, but it is an enforceable property right that has value. Whereas we're talking about like implementing regulation, I'm certainly happy to write it that way. And, you know, we can certainly make the argument that the easement would be revoked or curtailed in some way. And we could certainly keep a close eye on these polls. I don't think these polls being brand new are gonna be at the top of it. Probably not. I would just love to, if we have to do this, I would love to at least use this opportunity to send the message once again. And it would come back before the board after town meeting authorized it. And at that point, the board could still decline. All town meeting does is it authorizes the board to grant the right. It doesn't require the board to grant the right. Only the board can decide. I do this to Julian as well. I assume that we need that rise and then needs to sign off on whatever we send to them. So with all these stipulations, they might choose not to agree with us. And then they can, and then moving forward, they can also, you know, kind of be a headache to us as well. When, you know, say something like a microburst comes along again and we have to rely on them. You know, I think that we, there is a very thin line that we have to walk on. And I don't think that we should just be jumping, you know, over it and making, you know, real serious strides when, you know, this is a partnership and we will be relying on them at times as well. So. Well, the argument that was brought up tonight that was, that made me look at this a little differently is cause I am hesitant to give anything away for eternity. But the fact that these polls are used for the neighborhood, the homes as well, and, you know, I mean, that's a pretty strong argument as well. Why these these ones might survive the school, but, you know, again, 30, 50 years or whatever way. Anybody else who shouldn't speak on this? Sir, a motion from one of my colleagues, please. I move favorable action with the stipulations that I had laid out around trying to craft that easement document. Okay, and is there a second? Second. But am I, all we're bringing to town meeting is the easement. The easement, yeah. Right, Juliana? When it comes back to us to decide whether to grant them or not, that's when we deal with this. But perhaps we could address that in the comment. Correct. Sure, I can do both. Okay. All right. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying I, I, all those opposed? Opposed. Okay, so four to one, four to one vote. Bylaw amendments, safe streets. Mr. Oster. Good evening. I'm Adam Oster. I'm from Precision Free. Just want to check, do you have the report from the Transportation Advisory Committee on this? Yes. And I'm not sure how to proceed because I don't want to repeat from our previous meeting, but Ms. Mahan is here tonight. So how much recapitulation is appropriate and how much should I skip? Ms. Mahan, what do you feel you need? He was here at the last meeting I went through this for you. And I asked you to come back? No, you weren't here. Oh, okay. My only question, I know I'm saying, what did I ask them to give me? My only question that I have, and thank you for putting this back on is, and you address it in here. I'm leaning towards this, isn't something that's accomplished by a town bylaw. I think it's something that maybe the Board of Select we could take a vote on it. And I think it's more through the town manager. And these are just my thoughts in the planning department. I think we're kind of headed down that road, perhaps of the Board of Selectmen. I'm just putting this before my colleagues. I'm not saying it's the answer because I don't want to get into, because other people may come in and say, autism is an important disease that we need to attack head on. Yeah, the Board of Selectmen can vote that. Do we make that into a bylaw? But my only thing is I'm leaning towards that we accomplish this, but not through a bylaw.  And then what I'd like to focus on are the changes that were made since our last, that since I was last before you. This is obviously, it's a general bylaw about street planning. It's not about traffic enforcement. It's not about the MASSav project. It is proposed as a bylaw because only a bylaw can express the settled policy of the town at this level. Only a bylaw is permanent in that, in so far as it outlasts individual staff members, however talented, and it addresses an issue of, I think, general concern to the community. The changes since the last time, I know Mr. Chairman at the end of the last meeting, you complimented me on being receptive and flexible to changes which you called compromises, but I just wanna make clear that I consider these to be improvements, not things that I had to give up anything for. And to characterize these, I would say that generally about transportation projects, it seems to me that the large projects are designed under many different constraints, for example, the constraint that I think we're familiar with that requires pedestrian and bicycle accommodation is an example of such a constraint. But within these constraints, there are still some decisions that are made by the town. For example, during the Mass Ave project, there was a lot of back and forth about what would be best to have where we have room for it, a median strip, or wider parking lanes, and those kinds of decisions are judgments that the town makes. And it's the changes since the last time I was before you are mostly to clarify that it's that narrow range that is the issue here. It's not to try to expand the scope of projects beyond what's proposed and beyond what's financially feasible for the projects. Mr. Rademacher also was concerned that this proposal might be burdensome, especially for small projects. Small projects really don't have that scope. A curb cut is a curb cut. So one of the changes is a half million dollar sort of floor on this. So it doesn't apply to the small projects. The bylaw also expressly does not require the town to seek a design exception to state or federal requirements. Town could do that if it wanted to, but not because of this bylaw. Again, the decision space is just this narrow area. The standard also has been sort of toned down and made more flexible. That was something that I heard from the board two weeks, three weeks ago. And the modest reporting requirement is limited to the first 10 years after which it goes away. So I really have tried to take into account everything that I heard. In terms of the question of why a bylaw, why not a policy, I sort of addressed that at the beginning. And I would just say that I think that adding the public to technical issues makes things harder in a lot of ways, but it also makes things better. We saw that with the Mass Ave project, I think on both counts. Our staff does its best work when there is appropriate collaboration on public concern and professional expertise brought to bear. And that's what this does. This bylaw does not say there have to be bike lanes everywhere, it does not dictate a result. It sets a general goal and leaves it to the professional staff and the volunteers of the town to implement it. And I think that that is the appropriate framework and it is appropriate for town meeting to be involved at that level. Thank you, I'll mention that. I just want to give a case in point why I don't think this should be a bylaw. I've been on the board 14 years, so this predates this. This was when I was sitting in the audience 10 years before and Mr. Greeley, correct me if I stray on any of this. And I think Mr. Gilligan was here. I remember one of the importance, the way I see it is that town planning, department town manager identify what's important, what needs to be done and why. And I remember way back when, let's say 17, 18 years ago, there were a lot of people who were concerned about the bridge over Pocab where the gas station is and the four or five of those stores. That bridge had to be repaired. That was about a million dollars. Just about a million. And we had state funding for it. And what happened was a lot of residents came in and said, you only have a sidewalk on one side that's not safe. And what the state said, well then you're gonna have to foot the bill or we're not gonna give you the money. And the issue was it would be another 800,000 or more, something about a cantilever system and it was do we repair this bridge with state funding the way it wants to, the way we can get the money and get it done or do we go out and foot that money? And my fear is I know nobody, and I see that the transportation advisory committee was divided on this being a bylaw. And I think this may be the very reason. You're not gonna do that. Nobody on the transportation advisory committee would say, I'm gonna say goodbye to a $1.1 million project. But if we have a bylaw and there's one resident, there were good 14, 15 residents. And I can remember some of them because they live on Alpine Street. They wanted that second sidewalk and they didn't care if it was, I think it was another 800,000. And we are in danger of losing the funding. But Mr. Marquis and the board said, ideally we'd like to do that and we can't. So my point is if this is a bylaw, we have to. I could see someone coming in saying, I want the sidewalk on both sides because that's the best pedestrian safety. You've already said in a bylaw, that's your number one thing. I'd rather have it that it's a goal, it's a policy. But I'll leave it to my colleagues, but I won't vote it as a bylaw if you wanna make that motion. Can you speak on that? No, I'd like to hear tech. All right, plus one more. Yeah, well I'd like to hear tech or the town manager speak also. And specifically, we have $500,000 is set here. I mean, realistically, what are we talking about as far as the number of projects that we've been looking at compared to all of the work that we do in the course of the year. Funny, because of all the other articles, I wanted to hear what I wanted to say before I want to speak, but this time I want to speak before other people have things to say. And that's because I want to say what I'm really debating of myself. It is what Mr. Mahan's point is, is whether or not this is appropriate to put in a bylaw or not. And I'll tell you what I'm thinking about. One of the things that the town has chosen to put in its bylaws is green design in terms of like building an acquisition of vehicles and things like that. And it's one of the, and the way it ended up being written is it doesn't actually enforce in most ways, but it was a clear signal by the town that this is the direction that we wanted to go in. And similarly, so I'm not the example that you brought up Mrs. Mahan, I'm not concerned about it because it says and within the programmatic and fiscal scope of the design. And so if you have a design that doubles the price from a million to two million, you know, that would be, that to me would mean that I could, as a policymaker, I'd be able to disregard this because I feel like it was outside the scope. But I'm still hung up on the same question you are, which is, do we care, I guess part of me is how much do we care about this and do we want to put this down in the books? And so the reason I brought this up, because I'm curious what other people who come to the microphone have to say on that. The town manager was signaling wildly and I ignored him. Oh. Adam, no? Yeah, you can mind if I, not at all. So I agree with TAC and I agree with the intention of Mr. Oscar. I think the intention of this proposed bylaw in this article is very well intended. But my concerns are around enforceability and applicability. I find, so that there's a lack of a third-party arbiter or even a within-party arbiter to decide whether or not we're meeting the standard. And to the point Mr. Dunge has raised, that when you first said that, I started thinking, well, you're right about the green building or hybrid or fuel-efficient vehicles. But in terms of building, there are third-party standards and certifications which need to be met under that bylaw, whether it be lead-certified or another energy-efficient design that you need a third-party to come in and say, yes, you've built to that standard. And for the fuel-efficient policy, it just asks to buy the most fuel-efficient vehicle available that can get the job done. So that's with the EPA fuel estimates in miles per gallon, that's a pretty easy standard to meet. I'm concerned here that there is no standard to meet and there's no one to arbitrate whether or not we are meeting up with this or not. And in regards to the applicability, in talking with the DPW director today, the $500,000 amount really would apply to, well, actually I should say, when you take the $500,000 amount and on top of the fact that we'd also have to work with in state and federal requirements, there could be no projects that this bylaw applies to. In terms of mass-app corridor, it would certainly meet the threshold of the $500,000, but we're working with state and federal requirements there, so we could be putting ourselves in a situation where there's a bylaw passed that is unenforceable and it's not applicable to anything the town does. So those are my concerns with moving forward on this bylaw. No, it's one of those where I believe we all agree 1,000% with the intent, but it's the implementation of it. And I can't imagine us doing a project where we aren't first and foremost thinking about pedestrian safety anyhow, but who'd like to speak on this? Jeff? Thanks, Kevin. Jeff Maxutis, Co-Chair Transportation Advisory Committee. With me is Scott Smith, Elizabeth Carr-Jones, Ed Starr. As you said, Kevin, we're all behind the intent of this, the emphasis on pedestrian safety. It's something, TAC, yourselves, other boards, commissions deal with on all projects. So we were split on this one. One is actually necessary to have this bylaw. We put great importance on pedestrian safety and every project in town. Schools, safe routes, DPW planning department. So one issue that TAC had with us is actually necessary to have a bylaw. The other is the balance with other modes. Is it prioritizing pedestrians over other modes? We try to strike a balance of equity in town. Bicyclists, motorists, transit, so forth, people, accessibility issues. So we had those two issues. We made some recommendations to the language. We thought it improved it. Even with that, I think the TAC had probably the closest vote in its history on this issue. Four in favor, two against and two abstain. So it passed by one vote. So it shows you there was some indecision within the TAC itself. With that, it did pass marginally, but there are benefits to a pedestrian policy, but there are issues, Adam said, with enforceability. So that's where the TAC stands. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Anybody else wishing to speak on this? Okay. Someone talked to me up here, then. Not the other end, I'm talking to you. Okay, Mr. Curell. Well, I just wanted to add a little bit. I think the last time when Mr. Osto was here, I think I said that there can be a place in law and bylaws for aspirational language. Just look at the Constitution. It starts with aspirational language right before it gets into laying out the rules of the land. I think Dan gave some, Mr. Dunn gave some good examples of aspirational language we have in the bylaws, but I think as I walk it back and I think about how we started the meeting tonight, meeting the consultant's gonna be working with us on the master planning process, and I'm wondering if at this moment in time, if we aren't better served by trying to embed this aspiration through that process first before we consider going a bylaw route. I assume there are gonna be a number of bylaw recommendations and other recommendations that come out of that process, ultimately. So I think, although I so agree with the aspiration, that Mr. Osto, I think I'm gonna move no action on this. Thinking that after the master plan that might- We could consider something like this. Okay. Yep. Mr. Burner. I agree with the no action vote as well, but I, of course, I think you can't say it enough that we agree with the intent. And one thing that stuck out to me was Mr. Chaplin's comment about the enforceability and what happens when citizens come up to us and ask about how the enforcement of this is going. And then time after time after time, we just have to say there's no, we haven't really had the opportunity to. And I think not that the phrasing of it isn't, in the town's best intent, but I think it might not be appropriate to have something on the books that we essentially will never use. So I'm sorry, but I agree with the no action vote. Anything else? Okay. All right, I'll give you, if you wanna make a fun of the play, Adam. I'll just thank you for your courtesy. I don't agree, obviously, but I do understand. I've heard these arguments and I've thought about them a great deal and they don't strike me as unreasonable. So depending on what happens with master planning, you may hear from me on this again. Or on anything else, Adam. I would certainly always like to hear from you. On the motion, my Mr. Curell recommendation of no action. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Article 19, do we establish the noise of Bateman Committee? Once it's at my height. I'm Jeannie Leary. I'd like to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to do this and I'm gonna be quick because I know you guys are tired and so am I. I'd like to thank Marie Kappelka too for helping me get the research on this. So real quickly, I just wanna go through a real quick history of what's happened here in Arlington with noise. So in 1998, we actually developed the noise abatement article in May. And then in December, we made a noise abatement committee and then in 2003, the committee reported that they couldn't really do their job because they didn't have a noise meter. And then in 2005, they really amended the policy to reflect the federal standard. And in 2006 and 2007, the Summer Street group really heavily utilized them and I really wanna commend John Leonard in particular who was out at all hours of the night with us and Frank Segiano and John Fitzmorris who were the only three that were left at that time on the committee. So they were great. Then in 2008, the leaf blower committee came up. The leaf blower issue came up first. It also, we had filed the noise abatement amendment because of noise with the sports complex. Both of those at the time were no action and they were sent to the noise abatement committee. 2009, the noise abatement committee disabled, not disabled, disbanded, sorry, disbanded. They were down to three members, they didn't have the noise meter and there wasn't any current issues. But then, lo and behold, the very next year, we had two things. We had a fire alarm nuisance warrant article and we had a bug zapper warrant article. In 2005, there were five warrant articles, mainly from our group and we worked them out with the parking rec commission and Paul Carroll from Little League who were wonderful. So we got a whole amplification policy done. And then in 2012, the leaf blower came back and since that has come back, from what I can make out, we spent roughly $30,000 on a special election, $6,000 for a town meeting and we have another town meeting coming up on the 24th. So I mean, never mind the administration costs and that kind of stuff, but we're over $42,000 already just on one noise article. So what I wanted to prove is it's coming up year after year and we don't have a noise abatement. The next thing I wanted to say was why is it an issue? And in Arlington, we are the most densely populated town in the Commonwealth and we're getting more and more. So I know on Summer Street Mill, between Sims and Brigham's, we got 400 more units opening in the next year. I'm an RN, so I'm really into health and there are a lot of repercussions from being exposed to noise. I was really surprised. I haven't looked into noise in a couple of years and the amount of articles that are out there now are just mind-blowing. It's really becoming a really hot issue. But everything from hypertension, heart disease, provoking aggression, now they're saying childhood development, birth defects, I mean it's just unbelievable what they were saying. So what I'm asking for is if we could please re-establish the noise that made the committee and if I had my druthers, I would like it to be a selectman's committee. I don't know if that's possible, like a tax committee, because I think it's a real important public health issue and I really think it should be, the issues that come up should be in front of you and the committee working together, plus that I think then we could have the police and the border health, yeah. What happened before is in the past when we've called to get noise meters, either the noise meters weren't working or the noise meter that was there couldn't get the kind of noise that we were recording. And then when I, then Board of Health closes at four, so if you called at night, the police don't have any, they're not trained, only certain people in the Board of Health were trained.  My main purpose is to take out the subjectivity and make the subjective rather than, for instance, if Carol Band was bothered by ABC Landscaping Company and she approached you or the noise abatement committee, someone could go to the ABC Landscaping and test their blowers. I mean, whether it happens, you don't expect police to leave a crime scene to do this, but they can go later and check their blowers. And if they're 50 over, well, then they can't use the blowers.  If we had a committee and a meter, we could just nail these things out and not have to