Good evening and welcome to the select board meeting from Monday, June 21st, 2021. This is Steve DeCorsi, select board chair. The Commonwealth passed last Thursday an act relative to extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency, which among other things allows public meetings to be conducted remotely until April of 2022. However, tonight's meeting with the board is being conducted in person in the select board chambers in Town Hall for the first time since March 9, 2020. The meeting is also being simulcast online in the interest of providing additional access and piloting hybrid meeting technologies. I have three additional notes before we begin the meeting. First, as the first in-person meeting conducted by this board in well over a year and in light of continued vaccination efforts, we have reduced the seating capacity for the select board chamber to provide greater social distancing for persons who are required to be physically present or wish to observe the proceedings in person. We respectfully request that those in-person attendees, waiting for the business item on the agenda, wait in the larger, higher capacity, blind hearings room, where this meeting will be simulcast. When it's your turn, or if you'd like to comment on an agenda item, please enter the chamber for your business and exit when you have finished. Furthermore, we respectfully ask that all non-vaccinated persons wear masks while they are in Town Hall. Second, Board Member Len Diggins is participating remotely this evening, consistent with remote participation guidelines for board members. As such, all business will be conducted by roll call vote, similar to the manner in which we would conduct our meetings via Zoom. Third, while this meeting is being conducted in person, it is also available via Zoom, is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the Town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. Further, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. And during public hearings in the open forum period, I will first call upon persons physically present in Town Hall and then afford public comment or open forum to persons joining the meeting by Zoom. We will promote Zoom participants one at a time and we'll be able to see and hear them on screens set up in the select board chamber as Mr. Diggins and other members of the public observe online. Finally, both Zoom participants and people watching on ACMI can follow a posted agenda materials also found on the Town's website using the Novus agenda platform. With that, all members of the board other than Mr. Diggins are here as our Town Manager, Adam Chapelling, Town Council, Douglas Sein, and Board Administrator Ashley Maher. This time I'd like to invite all the members to introduce themselves. Starting with Mr. Herd. John Herd. I'm Diane Mahon. I'm Eric Helmut. Adam Chapelling, Town Manager. As I said, Mr. Diggins is participating remotely. Thank you. Okay, and before we start, I do want to thank ACMI members of our IT department, Deputy Town Manager Jim Feeney, Ashley Maher, and Lauren Costa from our office. Here's been a tremendous amount of work to get us to this stage to run a hybrid meeting and we're grateful for all the work that they have done to get us to this point. It's the next item on the agenda is a letter of appreciation for how we use Chair of the Transportation Advisory Committee. Mr. Muse is here this evening. Unfortunately, we had this scheduled for earlier in the month, but because of difficulties with weather, we had to cancel it and the rescheduled date was actually a meeting of the Transportation Advisory Committee. So I'm going to read the letter and then open it up to comments from the board and then allow Mr. Muse to address this as well. And Mr. Muse has announced that he will be leaving the TAC as of June 30th. He started in August of 2005 and as a board we wanted to send him a letter of appreciation that I'll read now. Dear Mr. Muse, the select board would like to offer you its most sincere thanks for your years of service to the Alley Transportation Advisory Committee as a member, co-chair, and chair. Your volunteer efforts have provided innumerable benefits to the town and its transportation network and the entire town owes you a debt of gratitude. As you well know, you began your volunteer service as an associate member of the TAC in August 2005. You became a full member in June 2006, became vice-chair in 2010. You then advanced to the position of co-chair in 2011 and served as chair from 2015 until June 2021. Along with other TAC members, you were awarded the Allington Volunteer of the Year Award in 2007. You provided strong leadership, technical support, and community engagement to the TAC for many years. Your accomplishments have included many sensitive and complex issues and projects such as East Allington Mass Avery Design, Allington Center Parking Improvements, Allington Center Safe Travel Project, Lake Street Minute Man Bikeway Improvements, the New Allington High School, the Mewbar Redevelopment Project, Chestnut Street Safety Improvements, which I think we're going to hear from you a little bit on that tonight. Many smaller projects involving multimodal mobility, accessibility, and safety improvements. You've led the TAC through a changing transportation environment and your efforts have improved transportation safety and mobility for Allington residents, school children, businesses, employees, and visitors of all ages and abilities. Thank you for your dedicated years of volunteer service to the town of Allington on the board. I would like to call on other members of the board and one of the Mr. Diggins has been involved in the transportation advisory committee, so I'd like to call on him first. Mr. Chair, I'm going to plug in my next question, but I hope you miss out. So I have been working on the TAC, the representing the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of ACMI, Mr. Houston, the Chair. And he's been very well-meaning and always very knowledgeable, but more importantly, he's been very calm, because as we'll see there on the agenda, there are lots of topics that come before the TAC that he already got into the Chamber of Commerce a lot. And I'll just add one more thing. It says everything about Mr. Diggins that he joined as as a, I'm going to give this a term for it right now, but before he was able to close the D was a member of the TAC, and people really care about the D or the ones who tend to join in that way, because as we, the office is able to be, it's not so important that you have to close with any other voice, and our office is very good about the value it needs for people to have a voice at the table. So I really appreciate everything that Mr. Diggins has done in thanking our service, and we should have asked this move on. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Hurley. Thank you. And I do again want to thank Howard for his years of service. I also used to be the Chamber of Commerce representative briefly on the TAC, and I served with Howard I think in your transition from co-chair to full chair. And I think sometimes people don't understand how much work it takes when you're on the TAC, because there's a couple meetings or a meeting a month, but there's a lot of work on top of that, because what we, every month we send new traffic issues to the TAC to explore, and then it takes hours and hours of time actually out in the field exploring those issues and coming up with recommendations and solutions. So I do thank you and all the TAC members for all the work that you put in. And I know and often on the subcommittees, HMUSE is usually listed on the TAC website. So they got to put the expertise where it's needed. So again, thank you for your years and years of service, and good luck as you move forward. You'll certainly be missed. Thank you, Mr. Hurley. Mrs. Ma. Thank you. I have to say this is kind of bittersweet, because how valuable you, as well as your colleagues on the Transportation Advisory Committee, but especially, you know, starting out in 2005, Mr. Diggins Linsett is an associate member. And the other thing that I really credit you with in large part is most people in town who A, know what TAC is, they know what that acronym is for. They frequently say, you know, can you send this over to TAC so they can resolve this. To most residents and or businesses in the town, you are viewed as an official department working for the town, but you're not compensated. So you're working for the community and the businesses. And I really have watched it, the TAC Transportation Advisory Committee, really transition under your leadership tutelage, but also the credentials that you have, as well as every other member previously and currently on TAC. I often say the town couldn't probably afford your services. I mean, you in the committee members, you know, when we say we refer something to TAC, a lot of people don't realize unless they call one of the members of the board and said, hey, I saw three people out there and they had something and the strip was across the road. And you know what, and I say, oh, it's transportation. Oh, can I get them down there to do that for me too? So and really, I know this board has endeavored currently in previous boards to really try to save some things and not send it to Transportation Advisory Committee because of the people hours that you all dedicate to it. So to Howard, I'm going to hear from you later on tonight because you're still working on the clock, volunteer. I do want to wish you well, good health, my sincere thanks, but also say I feel so sorry to lose you. I know you're not going away. You will be around. But you certainly paid your dues. And you're one of the architectural roots of our current day TAC. And for that, I'm truly grateful. Thank you. This is mine. Mr. Hall. Thank you. One of the first things you learn when you get involved in town government is how important TAC is and how much this elect board relies on that body to make really important decisions that have really big implications. And everything I've heard from my colleagues tonight just reinforces what I've heard for years, that this is one of the best committees in town. And it's clear to me from hearing Steve's letter that a lot of that has to do with you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. And I just want to echo from the letter and from the comments. It just did my time on the board when we got a difficult issue that was going to TAC. We always knew it was going to be reviewed thoughtfully. It was going to be reviewed thoroughly. And when you made presentations, they're all just top-notch. And we really appreciate that over the years. So if you'd like to say a few words, go right ahead. The floor is yours. Thank you for all the wonderful comments. I do want to say that it's been a pleasure on my part to serve on the committee and also a privilege because I think the committee does do a lot of good things for the town. And one of the things I would stress is how supportive, I think everyone on TAC feels that the board has been. It's just, we always feel welcome here when we're bringing recommendations and even if they might be somewhat controversial with residents or businesses. So it's been quite an experience. If I could just correct one thing, I'm not out of the TAC just yet. I'm no longer chair. Laura Swan, who is the school committee representative, has taken over the chairmanship. And I'm going to stay on the committee for a couple of months to help with the transition. That's great news. Thank you so much for coming in tonight. And again, thank you for your work. And we'll see you a little later in the year. Okay. Next item is the recognition of the new homeless outreach team. I believe they're outside the chamber that may be coming in now. Thank the public for bearing with us because there will be some delays as we have different agenda items. We go through the evening, Mr. Dunn said it earlier in the year, the select board will be the lab for learning in the hybrid environment. So just wait for a moment for everybody to come in. With us tonight are Allenton patrol officer Joseph Kniff and Hannah O'Halloran, a social worker from the Summable Homeless Coalition. We ask them to come here to the meeting this evening so that we could recognize and thank each of them for their work on the multidisciplinary Allenton homeless outreach team. We also want to recognize Officer Kniff for actions he took on June 2nd in the Mugar Woods. On that day at approximately 9.30 a.m., Officer Kniff was conducting weekly outreach efforts along with Ms. O'Halloran when a verbal altercation began between still homeless men at the site. Following the initial altercation, one of the men returned and demanded that a gun be returned to him. A homeless woman who had been staying at the site then handed the man what was believed to be a rifle. At that point the man became aggressive and began to charge toward Officer Kniff while brandishing the gun at him. Through de-escalation efforts, Officer Kniff was successful in persuading the man to drop the gun, which was later identified as a BB pellet gun. Other officers responded to the scene to provide assistance to Officer Kniff. Through his actions, Officer Kniff de-escalated the situation and prevented any injury, not only to the suspect who has since been charged with assault and others in the area, but to Officer Kniff himself. In recognizing Officer Kniff's actions, Chief Flaherty, who is with us tonight, said in part, the actions of Officer Kniff are consistent with the highest standards of law enforcement and public safety. Faced with a split second decision and a weapon pointed in his direction with a suspect coming towards him in the woods, Officer Kniff remained calm and fell back on his training to de-escalate a volatile and potentially dangerous situation. As a board, we want to commend Officer Kniff for his actions on June 2nd. We also want to commend Ms. O'Halloran, who's with Officer Kniff and assisted him during this encounter. Thank you both very much. Members of the board, for any comments, Mr. Heard. Thank you. And thank you both for coming in. Ms. O'Halloran, thank you for your efforts that day. I know it's a really tense situation and that day and also everything that you do in the MuGar Awards. I know that the Somerville-Holmless Coalition has been an integral partner for us in helping the homeless population in Allington and the outreach that you guys have done has just been invaluable. Mike Libby lives down the street from me, so I'll be sure to make sure I pass on my thanks on your behalf to him as well. And Officer Kniff, thank you so much for the work you've done. That day, we talked about this last meeting. Me and a couple members of the board attended the training, that the de-escalation training at the Allington Police Station and the tenseness of these simulated situations is so overwhelming that I couldn't imagine what it's actually like in the field when someone brandishes a weapon that you, for all intents and purposes, would assume was a real loaded firearm. So this is just another example of the incredible community policing efforts that we do in town from the Chief on Down and we always tell people that even with everything going on around the country, we want people to look at the Allington Police Department and say, this is how police departments should act. And this is an example of this. I think this is another example that people in Allington should look to and really start acknowledging the incredible work of the Allington Police Department and being thankful that we have officers like Officer Kniff who are watching over us under Chief Flaherty. So I really want to thank you for your efforts, both that day and also anyone that has kids knows Officer Kniff. He's great with kids. My boys always go up and see him. He always laughs because my younger, one day is a fireman, one day is a policeman, one day is a fireman. He'll be an astronaut. He'll always be a policeman. And then I know he's also been caught on tape showing off some sweet dance moves from time to time. So he's a multi-talented, incredible officer from incredible parents who I know very well as well. So thank you for your efforts. Thank you both for coming in. And much appreciated. Thank you, sir. This is mine. First, sincerely, I hope you're both okay. I know you train for this through the Police Department, through the Somerville Homeless Coalition, but it's a lot different in real life. Similar to what Mr. Hurd said, prior times, I remember going to the de-escalation long trailer and people, fellow police officer, not fellow, I'm not a police officer, police officers told me it's really intense. And I'm like, how intense can it get in a huge trailer that I know I'm safe in? And we went in, then members of the board as current members did, and stood alongside and viewed. It's amazing how quickly you get pulled in to that situation. And I remember thinking, I got a breath right here. So that's in a trailer where I'm safe. You all were out there. One of the things I have been and will continue to be is so extremely proud and grateful of our Allington Police Department, men and women on the force, all the way down to administrative personnel, and especially the Somerville Homeless Coalition. I know there are so many times I've called upon you, especially during COVID-19, with Allington residents who sometimes were asked to leave their homes and literally were homeless. And I'm not going to say any of the names because there's privacy. And that's the other thing. A lot of people don't know what the police department through Officer Kniff and the Somerville Homeless Coalition, how many people they help and what some of those homeless Allington residents look like. You know, they're members of our community that we could find ourselves in the same circumstance. So again, I don't think we thank you enough. The Homeless Coalition as well as the Allington Police Department. You have, especially through 2019 pandemic, a new group in town that I'm not even going to dignify by even saying their acronym that really have tried to discredit and speak untruths about what happens here in Allington, whether it's through the police force or through the Somerville Homeless Coalition. And I'm so glad that this is just one instance that we're speaking about publicly. I could probably speak about seven and you all know who the top one is I'm talking about and the service you provide. And lastly, I'd say to both your families, thank you so much for your sacrifice because I know it's a sacrifice. I know it's the worrying having police officers and firefighters in my family. And it's also the sacrifice that you're willing to commit to your son, daughter, spouse, friend that they're going out there and they're not thinking of their safety first. And that's really hard thing to do. And that's a testament to this incident here. They're thinking, how can I gain control of this situation, de-escalate it to a safe resolution and make sure this person gets home, gets the help they need. And then they think, and so I go home to my family and loved ones. So a lot of people don't, you know, people say that, but when you live it, you really do live it. So you should put yourself first, but you don't. So thank you so much. And thank you, Mr. Decorsi, for highlighting this. Thank you for coming. It's not easy to stand there in front of the microphone. I've done it a lot. So it means a lot that you would do that. And your service to the community, both of you means a great deal. The work you do is hard. And the fact that you do this to help the individuals in the homeless community and the extraordinary courage and care that you both showed during that very stressful incident speaks volumes about who you are.  And I am grateful to you and this community is grateful. You both represent in the most outstanding way possible community policing in Arlington with its model of partnership between the police and mental health clinicians and social work clinicians. I know I can see that you're proud of that. And you should be. I'm really proud of that. I'm grateful for the leadership in the town. As Selectman Hurd said, that comes from the top down through the chief. And it's clear to me that you've internalized that. And that's why that day ended well. Thank you again for serving us so well. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Chair, and you know, one of the above. I kind of just pointed to the location is that all the things that I was able to say here. So I really want to press my appreciation but also say that the first time I gave you that I really liked that opposite of this was when I went to help with this, we know, a little bit more of what was being done back in late April. He was very clear how dedicated he was. But also, I'm honest, I've been mentioned that I don't go home as a colonel. That was the difference during this day today. And I did this way again on his time because I didn't want you to see like in the least thing that I was talking about myself, but I would say that his dedication to the police department, to everyone in the community is wonderful. It's great. It's what we come to expect. And I've gotten to know a number of officers from and generally they're all just really big guys. And so to a certain extent, I'm not surprised that this has happened. It hasn't been big, but I'd love for you to be very appreciative. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. And before I ask if you want to say a few words, I just want to speak briefly about the partnership between the police department and the Salvo Homeless Coalition because I've seen Joe and Hannah working at Bugar Woods and at neighborhood meetings. I've been there at the cleanups and see the work you do, the work that you do together, and the outstanding services that you provide and Hannah, I'd like to say specifically to you, you are very good, excellent at what you do. And I've seen you out there doing the work. And I know you get up every weekend and it's outstanding service. I know it's been, it was difficult. And we're here to support you and we support what you're doing and for you to do the same thing, to see what you do, how you communicate both at the neighbors and the people who are in the woods and your commitment to your profession and to providing services. So thank you so much for that. So if you've heard at home there's a little noise in the background, that's a proud daughter. No recognition is with us here in the back to see her dad. Just wondering if either one of you would like to say anything. Sure. I just want to express a great honor for our collaboration with the Salvo Homeless Coalition. Hannah is an extreme asset in the town of Arlington. I know some of you have seen her in work and she is simply amazing at what she does. And I can't thank her enough not only for our friendship but for being part of the team. So thank you very much. I also wanted to say thank you to Chief Larrity for the training that we've received. Training is crucial, continuous training. And I'm very grateful to work in the department that supports us for that. So thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, sure. I would say that when I first started outreaching in the Mugar Woods I was very against ever outreaching with police officers because at times it can be very detrimental to our relationship. But I think the way that Arlington Police is trained it's probably the best trained officers that I've ever interacted with. And I work across a number of communities in the area. And I am unbelievably grateful to have been partnered with Joe especially on that day. So thank you for giving me him. Thank you both so much.  Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take you to our home town. Bye, Nora. Bye, bye. It's Jewish. The next item on the agenda is a Prince Hall Day proclamation listed as a resolution. We had moved approval of a recommendation to town meeting and a declaration of Prince Hall Day for June 24th. At the time we took our vote earlier in the year the proclamation was not complete. So the final version was presented to town meeting. We did present it at the Prince Hall cemetery on Memorial Day. But the fact that now that we're back in the chamber and in Prince Hall Days later this week that we would read the proclamation and have a confirmatory vote on the day. I believe there are members of the from the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in Dorchester who we will promote onto the Zoom. And I will read the proclamation and ask for a vote. Mr. Chairman, would you like us to promote the original proponent of the resolution? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, that as well. And I also want to recognize Seth Beckham-Lofchak who had brought the resolution to us originally which actually reached out to me this afternoon and we corrected a small administrative issue on. So I appreciate her doing that and we'll allow both of them to both groups to be promoted here and then we will read the proclamation. Is also the Prince Hall Grand Lodge? Yes, in addition to we recommended this by five to zero vote. Tom Meading recommended it unanimously for the consent agenda. And once we have the final day promoted. They are there. Okay, great. All right. Thank you very much. So good evening. Thank you, Mr. Lofchak. I'm now going to read the proclamation. Whereas Prince Hall was a revolutionary war error black leader, community leader and abolitionist in Boston and believed to have fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And whereas Prince Hall served as one of the United States first civil rights leaders petitioning the general court on January 13, 1777 for the abolition of slavery. And in so doing was the first American to publicly use the language of the Declaration of Independence for political purposes other than justifying war in Britain and advocating for education as an inalienable right central to the advancement of all peoples. And whereas Prince Hall founded the first black Freemason Lodge in the United States, African Lodge number one in 1777 and served as its grand master. Employing such position as a Freemason to advance civil rights interests of black people throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And whereas of the many rights and privileges Prince Hall endeavored to secure was the rights of black Freemasons prior to obtaining a charter was to walk on St. John's Day June 24th of each year. And whereas 20 years after the final founding of the African Lodge number one, Prince Hall offered a charge delivered to the African Lodge at Mononomy on June 24th 1797. And Mononomy being the historic predecessor to the town of Arlington and portions of the city of Cambridge. And whereas in 1864 the grand master of the Prince Hall Freemasons deeded land on Gardner Street in Arlington for the establishment of the Prince Hall Cemetery for the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Boston. Recognizing part through the historic preservation efforts of the Arlington Historical Society and the town of Arlington on the National Register of Historical Places. Now therefore be it resolved that the Arlington Select Board declares June 24th Prince Hall Day throughout the town of Arlington celebrating the life and legacy of this founding father and civil rights leader. And be it further resolved that the town of Arlington public schools and the broader Arlington community is encouraged to develop programs and events to inform the public of the life achievements and contributions of Prince Hall. I turn to the board for a motion on this. Any comments? Is it movable? Is it movable? Thank you. Mr. Delma? Thank you. I'd like to move approval and it was- Second. Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have anything else to say? Yes, sir. Okay, move approval. And I'd just like to say, second. That it was a real privilege to be there Memorial Day and meet many members of the Lodge and to sing, lift your voice and sing with y'all. And it was a great day. We are honored by your presence and it's really wonderful to be able to finalize this. Good, Mr. Chair. Just brief comments. I want to thank everyone as well as the African Lodge number one who overseers of Prince Hall as well as the Freemasons who also are caretakers down there. And I'm so glad we're doing this. I wish we did it 30, 40 years ago because I'm 58. And I lived in- we called it the projects then but now it's in monotony manner and we moved from different buildings. But when I lived on Gardner Street, I remember going by Prince Hall Cemetery and it was not 100% well kept. And I remember as a senior in high school and I went to my teacher's history department and asked about the Prince Hall Cemetery and nobody really knew. And I also worked as a page at Robin's Library and I tried to find reference material. Back then it's Dewey Decimal System and looking for the actual books. Couldn't find anything on it.  She had historical anecdotal information of what she knew but she did not know at all. And I remember thinking back then, it's really an overlooked not only jewel but opportunity. I know the town has lots of things to do, long way to go and we're all committed to do that. But I've always said, especially around history, that's really one of the top echelons of Arlington, which was West Cambridge, which was monotony. And I don't think not only do we promote our historical stories here in Arlington, we don't learn about and educate enough. And I'd like to, you know, the town day committee, we incorporate a David Lansom way and try every year to get the information out about that. Another great black American during the Revolutionary War that this is such a wonderful historical story behind that. So I want to thank everybody, Ms. Milofchuk, for bringing this to town meeting. I and my colleagues will certainly follow through on our end, but I also agree our colleagues on the school committee who I also heard agreement, as well as perhaps through library services, through the town manager. Look at, you know, David Lansom way, Prince Hall and other areas in town that we don't know about and we should. And we work to endeavor to speak those stories just as loudly as some of the more well-known ones. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mott. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for being there. And I would like to thank you for having me. I'm happy that people are celebrating more and more towards the late June, late June, late July, and I appreciate being educated about Prince Hall and all that he's done, the ITNB one that looks forward. Way forward. And so it's not surprising often when I don't know a lot of historical people in places, but I'm delighted when I am educated about them myself. So I have to say that second whereas though is the one that I really appreciate because towards the end of it, it says advocating for education as an inalienable right central to the advancement of all peoples. And I couldn't agree with that more. And thanks to people like Prince Hall and lots of other people of all races that have helped me out so much during my life that I was able to get a good education that's made all the difference. And I think the one thing that we can do to really prove that this proclamation means a lot, means something to us is to make sure that everyone gets an education. And yes, it costs money to do that, but we as a society really need to do that. So I hope we will do that. And thank you once again. Thank you, Mr. Heard. And I also like to echo my colleagues' comments. Thank Ms. Milovshek for bringing this really important cause to the forefront in Arlington this year. I want to thank the Prince Hall Masons for the incredible event that we had a few weeks back, the music, the celebration, just the formality. It was just breathtaking. I think me and Mr. DeCorsi let Mr. Helmuth represent us as far as singing from the board so as to not be shown up by Mr. Helmuth. But it really was an incredible event in conjunction with the Mystic Valley Lodge of the Masons and the other Arlington lodges as well. As far as, you know, I'm a lifelong Arlington resident and I'm saddened to even say that I didn't even know that the Prince Hall Cemetery existed until recently when this issue came to the forefront in Arlington with recent efforts. But in learning about Prince Hall and the life he lived and the accomplishments that he accomplished with the barriers in front of him, it was really an incredible story and it's been just really an honor to learn about Prince Hall. I was watching the History Channel just a few days ago and they had a special on Prince Hall and just went through his life and how he created the Prince Hall Masonry and his legacy and how the legacy endured into the Civil War and recruitment for soldiers for the Union Army and how it endures even today. So it's really an incredible cause and I'm happy that this was brought forth and I'm looking forward to all the efforts that we have going forward in relation to Prince Hall. Thank you, Mr. Regnade. I just want to add again, we didn't thank Mr. Loftrack at the beginning. I also want to note that with us this evening, I didn't identify the Grand Master, the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, Timothy Downs is with us and thank you for being here this evening and there's another member from the Lodge as well and we appreciate you being here with us and in addition to what we have learned and we will refer to a number of things. Professor Daniel Allen of Harvard has published an article about Prince Hall earlier this year and the Prince Hall Memorial in the Cambridge Common is something that we were made aware of. No, it's been there for a while but it's a really remarkable career and not enough people know about the accomplishments of Prince Hall and hopefully that's going to change. So with that, I don't know if Grand Master Downs, if you wanted to say anything this evening or we will be sending you a copy of the proclamation and we appreciate you joining us here tonight. If you don't mind, just a few words. First of all, thank you the town of Arlington for this proclamation of making Prince Hall the 24th of June Prince Hall there and I met with the governor a couple of weeks ago and I mentioned to him that the town of Arlington is making Prince Hall the 24th of June Prince Hall there and right away he said, well let's make it statewide and he has done that and so while not taking any credibility or any any of the accolades from the town of Arlington I think this is because the town of Arlington acted to make Prince Hall there on the 24th so I appreciate Beth and those who made it possible for the town of Arlington. So I want to thank everyone for the support and we look forward to having greater things and greater education because as we know Prince Hall was the first person in Massachusetts as a black person to have a school Prince Hall school and so we're doing some great things right now at the White House education wise we hope that we can get the support from the cities and towns around because we have to educate our young people like one of the previous speakers said they didn't know anything about Prince Hall and so you know we all stand in on his shoulders and we like to continue this time on his shoulders because he did some great things in his time which was I would believe extremely difficult to accomplish but he accomplished some great things so I want to thank all the select men and women for the town of Arlington for the bold move this evening. Thank you very much and unless I did also want to recognize Alan Jones and thank him for acting he's a Mason here in Arlington and for his work as a liaison and working with us as well so on a motion I'm sorry go ahead okay thank you Reverend okay thank you very much so on a motion by mrs oh one other thing sure I don't know who's all representing the lodge but there's also a gentleman named Jerome Frazier who's got her hand raised I don't know if it's a representative of the lodge who wanted to also be yeah it is mr Frazier representative of the lodge or he said that's his and I think he said go to the reverend okay oh reverend did you want to say something the reverend joseph reverend petty is that there okay good evening everyone may sonic protocol dictates that the grandmaster speaks for everyone thank you okay so you really appreciate you being here this evening so on the proclamation on a motion by mrs mahan seconded by mr helmuth for approval of the proclamation uh attorney hind for the roll call mr herd yes uh mr diggits mr helmuth yes this is mahan yes yes yes thank you very much thank you all right we will now move on to our consent agenda item five minutes of meeting may 26 2021 re-appointments all terms to expire june 30th 2024 commission for arts and culture christin bagnell thomas formicola Beth lock the council on aging nancy cox mary hung michael quinn park and recreation commission jennifer rothenberg scott walker veterans council william hainer and marie rousseau for approval olington ish international film festival banners april rank executive director request for a contractor drain layer license quiche excavating ink quincy massachusetts on the consent agenda um mr helmuth live approval um mrs mahan second mr herd no comments mr diggits no comments okay on a motion by mr helmuth seconded by mrs mahan attorney hind mr herd yes mr diggits yes mr helmth yes mrs mahan yes mr decorsi yes june adams vote thank you item nine is a public hearing we're running a little late it said it was for 7 15 p.m or tona street request to repair private way and a betterment order um insert our dugulu resident i think is a spokesperson um believe is the residents are going to be participating remotely okay so if you could promote them miss martha great good evening uh is this miss out this mr dugulu if you could um introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the request for the repairs um and then we may have some questions for you on that before a vote uh my name is sardar the blue i'm a resident on autona streets so we've been living here since 2008 uh i i guess as in any private way about us here in arlington we're also suffering from these deteriorating conditions of our private bay this is a relatively short street which is being utilized by many at arlington heights it's it's almost like a shortcut they're actually coming from the heights area into appleton and then two root two so it's about 275 feet long it's relatively small like i believe about 1000 square yards is the total area and i've been in touch with the the town on and off for a while to get some basic repairs done but eventually at some point in time the town decided that you know it wasn't worthwhile to patch the road anymore and eventually starting from late 2019 we were able to get at least four of the six abutters support and eventually was we were able to move the process up to this uh this two-thirds approval and be able to get the repairs done private uh very repairs on i'm myself is also not very happy with you know each of the abutters having to the need to pay $4,500 you know $26,000 to repair the road but eventually everything is falling apart i'm actually in a butter on awola street which is right behind us we're living on a corner actually which will be liable again so eventually you know now that we were able to bring the project into this stage after a very slow process of two and a half to three years our request is right now to get these repairs done as again as quickly as possible and eventually again it's it's going to be you know all the abutters are are carrying the the fiscal responsibility anyways so eventually i think our request is basically to get the approval and move forward with this project and i know this is in the town's bylaws upon a petition of the abutters on a private way if two-thirds of the total number of abutting property owners petitioned the town there is a mechanism for financing the repairs but if you could just give us maybe a little bit of background on on that attorney hymn and then we can open it to questions from the board thank you mr. chair and just for the sort of public's knowledge and information this is a complicated issue in the sense that it's it's it's hard for folks to understand that the town is basically prohibited from spending money to improve private property and private ways weren't laid out or developed because there was some advantage to private way owners they were laid out and developed for the purposes of basically building housing and so the only thing that the town is allowed to do under the general laws is to basically provide a low-cost financing mechanism uh that we call a better so the petition has to be approved by two-thirds of the total abutters one-third of the cost has to be put down and the abutters sign a contract the town does provide some technical services to help in the veteran process we sort of push the envelope as far as we can by providing the town engineer and some other folks to help navigate the process and make sure that it's understood what needs to be done to repair a roadway but essentially what happens is given the board's approval on a petition for a better man order the town essentially provides the other up to two-thirds of cost of repairing a roadway and puts it on as a low interest assessment on everybody's tax bills if there's a party who can't pay their portion of it up front a larger portion of it can be put on their their tax bill to sort of stretch out that cost over time the town doesn't make money on betterment orders the town probably has a little bit of a negative on this probably lose a little money but it's the only way uh absent accepting a private way that we can help private way abutters improve the roadways and the thing about accepting a private way just for a little bit more background is that in order to accept the private way which we use here as a public way you have to have it meet public way standards which are width drainage oftentimes storm drains and that process would also be on the private way of butters to get it to specifications before you could accept it as a public way so I sympathize with a lot of folks this has been an issue that's been a thorn in everybody's side for as long as anybody can remember it is it is difficult and sometimes a arduous process but that's the basics of it if the board has any questions or the petitioners have any questions I'm happy to talk about it further but I hope that background is useful okay very helpful thank thank you attorney hi I will turn it now to the board for questions comments motions and I'll start with mr. Diggins thank you mr chair I'm just pausing a little bit to see if the echo that I was having is gone it seems like it's gone good well I am going to make a motion to approve of this um of this um repair um work um and um and I do have a question if okay I'll be Mr. Chair through um through you to Mr. Heim and so um you explained a little bit about how private ways come into existence you know can you explain a little bit more like so you have a public way that exists first and then the private way branches off of that how is there any any um requirements or something that the private way has to have in order to exist Mr. Chairman yes sure so uh there's a lot of private ways in Arlington uh higher than than many other communities but basically what happened is you had large tracks of farmland mostly or other uh basically large lots that were subdivided and they were subdivided and usually approved a long long time ago by a board of survey whether it was a board of survey it was a slack board from you know 80 90 100 years ago some of them are more recent than that but basically in many instances it wasn't feasible or it was very difficult to build a full fledged public way um and frankly oftentimes it was an expense that the folks who were developing these subdivisions didn't necessarily want to incur um because of the cost and um difficulty with building things out to being full fledged public ways so there isn't necessarily unfortunately a larger rhyme or reason to it it's really more about the uh development and sale of individual lots from a larger uh subdivision again I'm I'm not an Arlington historian but I'm pretty certain that most of these areas again were either large residential lots that were subdivided into six seven eight houses or they were even larger than that they were farmlands and stuff like that that you know essentially you had smaller narrower uh private ways developed on there are some that existed prior to the way that the law is codified now there's also something called a true private way we don't need to get into that most of these are called statutory private ways people have to be allowed to pass over them um and unfortunately the town is doing about as much as it can just so folks know there are many towns that don't provide trash service or snow removal to private ways uh because of the expense associated with that town meeting many many moons ago voted to uh provide those services great thank you turn him thank you thank you Mr. Hurd and given I think this is correct stat I think about 40 percent of the roadway in Arlington is 40 is is private way and so I have one more question Mr. Chair and that might be to Mr. Hurd or any of you who deal with real estate do you know to what extent people who buy on property or are aware of the fact that the street they're on is a private way Mr. Mr. Hurd I would say probably not unless this is a trade-off with private ways right some listing agents might hold it out as on-street parking because the two issues that we hear most it seems like here is overnight parking and for a time we talked about private ways but there's nothing that in the title that would jump out and say that you're on a private way okay well thank you I mean the only reason I bring this up is that we we can hear me the the let's just say um less than positive emotion from the advocate about the need to have to pay for this I don't know the extent to which he was surprised by it but to the extent people are we maybe we can do something so that they are aware that the road they're on is a private way and eventually they're going to have to pay something if they don't want to keep that the stuff but that's neat but that's often the house so thanks for indulging me on those questions and and once again I do make the motion to approve of this repair thank you thank you Mr. Diggins Mrs. Mahan I'd like to second that motion I don't have any questions okay thank you Mr. Hurd just I guess a point of clarification from attorney Heim which I assume when you hit two-thirds on the the nose that's sufficient under the private way act because I don't think we've ever received a application exactly two-thirds I just want to thank you know for it seems probably a couple years back now we had a number of different private way groups of residents that came in and they were asking us to do things that we were legally barred from doing and we often would direct them to the private way act and so I just want to thank the proponents for using the appropriate way to go about fixing the streets with through the private way act and I know it's not it's difficult to go through the process and there's steps that you have to take and there's a financial burden but you know this is the remedy the town does not have the ability to go and just repay the private way regardless of the condition unless it's an extreme situation and like I said there's trade-offs we hear a lot about overnight parking and we hear a lot about private ways so you know I is bad things about private ways and there's good things about private ways and I grew up on a private way right near Mr. DeCorsi in the Calamanner and that was a more centralized association that could see road repairs coming so I do feel for people that live on small private ways that have to take a sudden burden through the betterment act but I do thank you for using the appropriate avenue to get these road repairs done thank you Mr. Hurd Mr. Helmuth thank you I'm happy to support this I just want to say to the proponent I live on a private way I feel your pain thank you for organizing it thank you thank you Mr. Helmuth yeah and as Mr. Hurd said I'm on a private way but I also want to reiterate what attorney Heim said this is a matter of state law we don't control what can be spent in that the local by-law allows us to to provide some financial assistance for the repair but in terms of the designation and what the town can do our our hands are tied there so with a motion by Mr. Diggins seconded by Mrs. Mahan Mr. Chair Mr. Joe yeah I'm sorry there's a public hearing and I believe we oh I'm sorry yeah yeah I believe we have two folks their hand raised online yes okay I'm very sorry yeah so if we can promote the two people with their hands raised that's would you like me to do them one at a time sure okay the first one's going to be John Gersh okay greetings to that board John Gersh the Kipling Road I would like to make a comment on this because I have been working with Cerdar on this this attempt for a long time and I just want to give you a quick impression of why I think Ortona Street is an exceptional case that is warrants any additional consideration you can provide and that's because it's a short road less than 100 yards long and it just so happens that everybody in precincts 16 18 and 20 use this as a cut through as the Northwest Passage in between Appleton Street and Route 2 and the Mass Ave Trader Joe Walgreen area it's an extensive burden I think on the residents of this street to have hundreds of cars a day it's not your ordinary private way that's a sleepy little thing this is every delivery truck every oil truck every everything is beating on this road and you know it's a burden on the butters and that's a that's all I have to say thank you the next is Victoria Marsh okay and then there's one more after okay so this marsh we can promote you're muted hello hi thanks for giving me a chance to speak as everyone stated it's a very small street and so my question is why does Arlington have it structured that we must pay one-third up front that's very onerous for each of us and it was mentioned before that there's it's okay to go ahead and amortize the total cost but if I for instance I wanted to amortize the total cost to relieve the burden of paying the one-third up front but then I learned from Serdar that that would raise the amount that he has to pay up front so I wondered why Arlington has it structured that we all must pay up front why can it be amortized for all of us that would be the kind of financial assistance that would be really meaningful in this case I believe it's because the way the town bylaw is written in terms of how the costs are allocated and how town meeting determined that that's how this procedure should work but if you can enlighten us further returning home on that that's that's correct Mr. Corsi I'm not I want to be very clear that the short answer is is because title three article three sections six and seven say that's how we have to collect on the costs and for better or for worse on again I think all of us are sympathetic to the petitioners and the residents and responsive to what Mr. Gersh had to say but the board just doesn't have discretion under the bylaw to say that you know in certain circumstances that are heavily more traffic private ways we can treat them differently you have to amend the town bylaw I'm not prepared tonight to say how much you can amend the town bylaw to make sure it's consistent with I believe it's chapter 80 which is the general law that authorizes Betterman acts but you know it's it's something that we could certainly look at in the future but this is what the town bylaw requires thank you attorney is there another individual on the list there is one more okay all right just takes a second it's okay I'm purposely not looking at you so you don't feel oh no it's my eyeballs on you okay Mr. McCarron I believe you're muted right now sorry about that but thank you everybody and thanks for doing all this work I've been on no atona street fixing pot holes since I was in the eighth grade which was back in the early 60s so I've fault asphalt filled holes and I know what our tonus street means to everybody but the general made the point there's a hundred cars and trucks go up that a day if it's a private way doesn't seem very private and never has been how do you make it private so thank you sir thank you mr. chairman the there's a very long answer to the question and there's a memo that's quite extensive on the legal department's website on private ways anybody can read about it but the really short answer is there's nothing particularly fair about the way that the law developed so there is something called a true private way that's essentially a driveway you know this is more common in communities that are a little bit more rural we might have three or four houses at the very end of some very very long driveway that's given a name but isn't really what's called a what isn't really a private way the way most are in Arlington Arlington private ways are something the law calls a statutory private way they were approved but not accepted and the conditions of the law basically mean that people have to be allowed to pass over them and so again I don't have answers on terms of the fact that it would seem to be nice if it was more equitable but the only real options for private ways are for them either to be maintained in the process that we're talking about here or unfortunately for residents to bear a different type of financial burden which is usually to widen and install storm drains to meet public way specifications and then get those public ways accepted by town meeting so there are possibilities but most of those things are just as expensive if not more expensive unfortunately than the betterment process I feel people's frustration but it's it's unfortunately not a function of some greater purpose it's the way that your houses were part of a subdivision many many years ago and that's it thank you returning home is there anybody else on the list miss mark okay all right so thank you all for your comments thank you mr to google for bringing this forward to us on a motion by mr diggins seconded by mrs mahan for approval of the request to repair and for the betterment order attorney heim mr herd yes mr diggins yes mr helman yes this is mahan yes mr de course yes unanimous vote thank you thank you you item 10 under licenses and permits for approval all alcohol license the heights pub 1314 massachusetts avenue james o'rourke if we can promote mr o'rourke or whoever else is within this evening good evening mr o'rourke and mr betancourt good evening for you good thanks rills on the request but if you could just tell us a little bit about the application before the board and then we'll we'll go to questions or comments sure thank you we'll have mr o'rourke talked a little bit about the heights pub that he's opening there and with Bruce canary that's putting application in his manager i think jim is is on right now so we're gonna have about 70 seats uh full liquor license hopefully just a place to gather for the community excuse me i'd like to first move approval um subject to all conditions um contained therein i know there were some people that um were questioning about the process um in the common victor uh license permit request being at the end but that's the way it's structured uh in terms of some people were saying how can they build before they get in well there's other town departments and i think in your case a neighboring city department that's been working with um the owner and the contractors subcontractors along the way so this is the process as it's always been i do know there's a lot of excitement up in the heights um i live a little bit further down parallel to jimmy steakhouse but um i've heard when i first got on the board everyone would say east allington unfortunately it's the third sister and really didn't have a lot of exciting things coming up and about and then that changed and then the center said hey look what you did in east allington what about us up here um and that changed and uh we did have in the heights when the planning director was alan mclennon so i'm dating myself a couple of decades ago that you know did some improvements out there and i know the businesses have done the best that they can and one of the things a lot of people in the heights and not in the heights i know you have a good following from i think i believe it's winchester have said you know how come we don't have anything adult up here in the heights besides the agistinos that closes at nine where we get a really good sub so there's a lot of talk about the heights pop a lot of excitement anticipation and people that really want to come down and know that when you're starting out a restaurant and you all know this and my family has several restaurants it's a tough business to open sometimes break even or make a profit and continue to do that over the years so i wish you all the luck on that um and thank you mr chair thank you mrs mahan mr herd i'll second the motion i have no questions but just as we i said at your common vic application a few weeks back i live in the heights as well and there's a lot i have a lot of neighbors who are very excited about the pub opening and i look forward to getting in there once you open your doors and uh welcome thank you mr herd mr diggins i wouldn't dare stay in the way between the folks in arlington heights and pub but but i do just have a quick little question and i'm looking at the um the departments that have signed off on this and so um none of the departments have um had no objections me four had no objections but had comments then the building department's missing i just don't see the building department accounted for in this a am i missing something i don't know who that's to miss chair exceptional services okay yeah it's that that is being done through mentford inspectional services so we don't see a report on that yet okay all right thanks like i said i'm not staying away from the pub i'm happy to have them come aboard thank you okay thank you mr diggins mr helmeth thank you and i'll add my voice to the to my colleagues who are excited for this to get going and i also lived on the heights and i have a lot of neighbors who are asking me about it i do have a question for the applicant and that is can you tell us a little bit about your plans for alcohol server training mr or be all the servers all the servers will be tip certified which is um they go through a course um it's about a three hour video training um so they will all be it go through being over served and how to handle that um you know proper way to to serve a customer and how much they drink so that will be addressed real important to us as a board and to someone to the board of health for responsible alcohol service so i'm i'm delighted to hear that they're going to go through tips thank you thank you mr helmeth and and i support that that the motion and comments by my colleagues i thought mrs mahan was talking about the heights a while back they we always had charlie's pizza up there mrs mahan that was about it um so yeah so um on a motion from mrs mahan seconded by mr herd for approval of the all alcohol license subject to all conditions attorney heim mr herd i'm amazingly too young to remember that yes mr diggins yes mr helmeth yes mrs mahan yes thank you mr de course yes it's an unanimous vote thank you very much and best of luck thank you good luck thank you thank you all item number 11 for approval common viturals license prep neighborhood kitchen daniel loper fido or loper fido 1367 massachusetts af is he with us okay with us but it's not video i think it's through his phone okay i apologize if the video doesn't appear to be working on the computer did you hear me yeah we can tell us your name and a little bit about the application in the um in the prep neighborhood kitchen that you'd like to open absolutely good evening thank you all for taking the time to uh hear my application tonight so my name is daniel perfidow i'm 32 years old i've been managing and working in restaurants for pretty much my whole life um was recently as a general manager at the fairmont copley plaza's oklahon bar and kitchen for about three years there i managed a chatting bars in that in the cape i worked at park plaza opening up doretta with michael schlau um in the last few years right before the pandemic i had begun a search to open a small place of my own where i could pursue this as a personal craft and really take the time to connect with the community and engage in a local atmosphere beyond just luxury guests in a hotel setting um so this place itself will have be primarily takeout um there'll be about 16 seats inside primarily american comfort food we will serve nationally leaven pizzas we'll do sandwiches but they'll be on homemade bread and rolls um seasonal salad very farm to table oriented so very um rotational depending on what's in season at the moment we do plan to serve a few desserts as well and some cold drinks coffee drinks non-alcoholic beverages um for my time as a bar manager and mixologists we're actually looking to do some really fun non-alcoholic stuff so people walking through the town will be able to stop by for homemade shrubs mixed with sodas and items like that it's essentially a fine dining approach to casual eating where you would have something you would expect at a premier place downtown but at a really approachable um price point for everyone in the neighborhood to gather we say it's food that makes you feel good and it's food that feels a need so perfect example of the food we're trying to provide um my wife gave birth to our first son over the weekend and we're here at the house now and my mother tried to send us food from a local restaurant but in all reality what we were given was nothing you'd want to feed your wife after she got home and i'm looking to be able to have something we could put meals out that people ate they felt good about what they ate they felt healthy they felt sustained they felt comforted um and that's what we're really hoping to bring to the town well congratulations on the birth of your baby over the weekend um i'm going to turn it to the board now for the questions or comments mr diggins well um mr chair i would like to move approval of um to some license um and um i have um two things to say first um this being the month of june i am going to have to come out as someone who likes the alcohol dehydrogenase gene which means i can't process alcohol me so when i hear that you are a mixologist of non-alcoholic drinks i mean i'm like delighted at that i'm looking forward to try checking that out and also um the the truffle the truffle popcorn that has me intrigued so i'm i'm really looking forward to coming up to acmi sometimes because you're in that neighborhood and popping over to your place and checking out what you have so welcome to welcome to arlington thanks thank you mr diggins mr helmeth thank you yes welcome to arlington and uh my turn for personal connection of sorts i saw on the menu that your pizza is not only naturally 11 but done with fresh mill grains uh one of my hobbies is artisan bread baking with grain that i mill at home on my countertop mill and use uh sourdough culture so i'm very interested in this pizza and i look forward to trying it thank you thank you mr helmeth and mrs mohan um thank you um one question and i guess uh one comment i don't mill grain i wish i did i'm really impressed by that i used some bread yes i'll take the bread um i just want to make sure that it was intentional um that mr low perfido um you want tuesday through sunday so you won't be open on monday was that your intention i just want to double check yes this is my intention um we're actually looking to build a business model that over time will employ you know local what's called them chefs and salaried positions rather than uh just hourly positions in a restaurant and sort of providing an opportunity for people who work in hospitality that provide a craft that they can grow with and live in a town with in a like a sustainable way beyond the food for their own lifestyle as well so some of that comes down to almost guaranteeing there's going to be a day off at some point in there where you know the people that work for us and myself will have time to be with the families and now seven days a week because on happenstance sometimes they say no i did want seven days and then um i do appreciate you have family males in there um which is very exciting kind of to the point that you raised with uh and congratulations on the new baby congratulations on your new family that's expanding um and i just want to let you know here in allington nothing is a prerequisite or requisite um but we do have a very active chamber of commerce um and especially now in in covid 19 they've been out there advocating for businesses who aren't members um and getting the word out um and one of the other things that is really effective are the face group groups we have here in allington there's one for businesses called vibrant allington where they feature different businesses or businesses post to them that they'd like to have reposted that reaches a lot of people um as well as i know a lot of people that um go to facebook or ask about restaurants and i see other people responding by tagging it doesn't have to be facebook um that that's where i see it used a lot i don't know how it translates over to um twitter instagram and now you can't do tiktok unless you're dancing in the kitchen but um i just wanted to let you i know you know starting a new business especially in the food services um you know first of all letting people know where you are and what you do is is a big hurdle but then also um getting that word out so other people go down and experience it like mr. helmeth who's going to talk to you about your meal grains um and so that they can share with other people and they say i'm looking for something new or something that serves a family so i wish you the best of luck um and i'm really excited to um see that business come in and yes mr. diggins those uh the truffle popcorn caught my eye too you beat me too and so thank you thank you mr. mahan mr. herd i can't believe i'm the first person to mention the fried pizza dough yeah that is just well that could be a daily occurrence for me um but i do want to thank first say congratulations hopefully you're getting some sleep in these past few days in this menu is just amazingly appetizing i think the only difficulty is going to be deciding what to choose the first time i go in there but we'll have to make it a make it a few occasions to try everything so i'm excited and uh welcome to the town and thank you for choosing our only tend to start your business thank you mr. herd and i i want to echo the comments of my colleagues that this is a great-looking menu it's uh really impressive and uh really clever use of the the two peas with the the knife and the fork on on prep so um i want to wish you the best of luck with your business and the best of luck um with your family uh as well with that that the great news that they had this weekend so on a um a motion for approval by mr. diggins seconded by mr. helmeth attorney heim i'd be remiss if i didn't in our first meeting back uh have a kevin greeley memorial class for samples did you bring samples the virtual ones in ifa cup but we'll have them first eventually mr. herd yes mr. diggins yes mr. helmeth yes mrs. mahan yes thank you mr. of course yes it's unanimous vote best of luck thanks so much okay uh next day we have open forum except in unusual circumstances any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established it should be noted that there is a three-minute time limit to present a concern or request uh miss mara i don't believe there's anybody here in the hall and we'll check to see if there's anybody who wishes to present to us remotely if they would just raise their hand if they would like to speak i have one okay two two sure okay i'm gonna it's linda veroni okay good evening mr. veroni you could just say your name uh for the record you're in mute right now can you hear me now okay thank you very much um this is my first um slept board meeting so i'm assuming that this would be the appropriate time to bring up the issue of the chestnut street crossing situation so if you're speaking about chestnut street we'll put you on the list for that okay great okay great thank you okay i didn't believe there's one other name on the list yes and it's beth maloftchak okay good evening miss maloftchak hi thank you beth maloftchak russell street i just wanted to thank um the select board and then also the supporters and colleagues who assisted um with the prince hall uh article it was very much a group effort i i thank you for um uh acknowledging alan jones it started with a conversation on up on robbins hill when i was walking my dog and i ran into he and elizabeth so i um i would just like to recognize the enormous support that uh we received from the mystic valley lodge as well as i reached out to the n double acp zane cru I had conversations with and he put me in touch with barba bolts and pearl morrison this was very much an arlington effort and the arlington historical society alan jones was also a conduit to that wonderful organization and i spoke with the um the president and then um friends and fellow supporters in arlington fights racism did an enormous amount of research uh that helped me enormously as I tried to formulate this um article so i just wanted to mention everybody it was very much a townwide effort thank you very much that will conclude open forum for this evening now on to traffic rules and orders and other business item 12 for approval festival of love saturday june 26th 2021 at uncle sam plaza three o'clock p.m. to five 30 p.m. laura shacken or shakoon shira leon if they are here so I don't see either of them but if they are if someone is representing them if they could raise their hand okay um I don't know I know the application was submitted to the board we have that in our packet here um I'll turn to the board uh mr. helmeth I think you mr. chair in light of the the um the date would it be appropriate to move approval of even in the absence of the proponents speaking yeah I mean we've had that before if the board is comfortable sure we can do that yeah I look I looked it over you know it's fine to me it looks very like a small simple event so um you know as long as as long as the I mean I know this has been vetted by the the uh town managers is designee so I'm comfortable with that so I will move approval okay thank you um Mrs. Mahan we'll approve for discussion and um if I may um I'm looking at their application which um I would have had questions if any representative was here um for this group um in light of um my commitment to really um continue to pay attention um in terms of Arlington the community and and things that happen and go on there so I think I heard my colleague mr. helmeth reference that someone from the like like one of the things where it talks about where you set up a table and I see one table and few something speak which is probably speaker um does anyone have any more information about this event uh before we do sort of a blanket approval where we don't I mean I know it says it's it's it's modeled after a similar event that happens um up in Maine um and I know they say they only anticipate 10 people but if I could through you sure mr. chair mr. chapter in the town manager did anyone from your office have any interface and do you have any further info if you don't I totally understand mr. chair yes uh thank you mr. Mahan uh no I've not spoken or is anybody in my office spoken with this group the application came in through the board's office um if I could attempt to read your mind I think if the board does feel inclined to approve it either someone from my office or maybe from the police department can reach out and make sure that there's no blockage of the bike way that wherever a table in canopy is set up that it's in a safe location and try to make sure it's you know it's attendance is managed in such a way that it doesn't create any type of circulation issue in that area okay um thank you mr. chair okay thank you mr. Mahan mr. herd yep um again given the timing that I I'm happy to support it I think we should let people know that submit permanent applications such as this going forward in certainly I know the suck board office informs people this that they should be at the meeting just because especially with a location like this where you could do it right there and you could do it wrong there because there's a lot of traffic that we just if any future applicant is listening to this meeting they should know that they should be at the meeting um and I think we've done before where we've approved subject to the authority of the town manager to work with the applicant and so our approval is subject to the applicant complying with any guidance that they receive either from the town manager planning department or the police department regarding the way that this event is laid out mr. chair yes I'm happy to amend my motion to uh to the conditions that mr. herd suggested and thank you mr. Mahan for pointing out the the need for due diligence that's great now I'll take that as an amendment to the motion thank you mr. herd mr. diggins yeah you know I don't know about this when we um uh it's um striking me is odd you know they're not here and again maybe we've approved them and they're not here but they're not here uh and it's it's running from three to five thirty being they're going to have a setup there we don't know what ours is going to run from and so normally you need to have some buffer before and after uh I don't know what this event like is it this event in Maine is like I mean I mean I could guess it could go along with it me but me I really would like to have the I'd like to have so much assurance meet them from town manager or someone meet after this meeting before the event that it's going to be okay and if it's not going to be okay maybe we have to do something on an emergency basis need to to knock out our approval of it but but I'm just not comfortable with this one I'm sorry to say it but I'm not and so if someone wants to make me feel better about it now thanks. Mr. Hurd? I would just reiterate that we are essentially trusting the town manager in the police department and to the applicant if they are listening we're approving it but if the town manager in the police department don't approve the way that the event is described to them then the event can't go on so we don't need to have an emergency meeting to revoke the approval the town manager in indoor chief chief of police can tell them they can no longer hold the event. Yeah any further comment Mr. Diggins? We are mute. Sorry about that. Thank you for that Mr. Hurd. Okay yeah I can go along with it thank you. Thank you Mr. Diggins and I think we have to stress this is a conditional approval if the event wasn't later this week I don't think we would be even giving the conditional approval and I think for people who come before us in the future for an event they really should be here so I think with those added conditions and controls I could I could support the motion but Ms. Maher I don't know if you have anything further to add. There is one person that has their hand raised I her name is Linda I think she spoke before I'm not sure if she's affiliated with this event. I don't know. Okay I don't see. I did speak with these applicants. I did ask them to appear I don't know where the disconnect went but they did let me know that it was a small event that they were mimicking an event that was in Maine. Okay yeah I think we're going to need more information. I can reach out to the applicant after the meeting. All right and as far as Linda she well she's up and down I don't know if she's confused. Okay yeah okay yeah we're all set.  Oh Mr. Diggins. Yeah I guess I have one of the things like I just don't know how it's going to be limited to 10 in that spot I mean it's just going to draw attention I mean the 10 I'm just not buying it's going to be 10 and so now what do we do it's just larger but once again I mean I'm going to trust the talent manager on this I mean in the police department but this one just makes really uneasy I don't know why but but it's just I don't know I'll just stop there thank you. I think your concerns are well founded because we don't have much before us and in this situation I think because we don't have another meeting between now and the weekend we will rely on the talent manager's office and working with other departments including the police ahead of time but it's it's an exception that I don't think just speaking for myself we might not be inclined to to make in the future people should be here the night that they send in an application. I agree. Okay all right so with that on a motion by Mr. Helmuth seconded by Mrs. Mahan attorney Heim. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. I'm gonna vote no just because I'm just thinking of the precedent that we could be setting here that someone says I want to go down have some signs sing some songs with 10 people in the fact I agree with the chair if this happens again in the future and nobody's here and it's like one of the most central locations in Arlington so if anything goes left it's a very well traveled intersection so I'm just not comfortable with having nothing before us but I think what I'm hearing from my colleagues is that the town manager starting Tuesday and has to get it done by Friday at noon along with the select board office is gonna try to get more information but with my colleagues indulgence I think if you reach you both reach out or someone from your respective offices and there's still no response my personal preference would be please don't waste any more of your professional time because I'm anticipating we're not gonna you may not be successful and I don't know if my colleagues are okay with that but I think if the applicant has reached out by two different offices in town hall you know I don't want this to be we try them on Tuesday we try them on Wednesday you know that would be my preference but I'll leave it to the town manager how he decides to handle it with his staff and the chair and mismar regarding the select board staff well and I think if there's no further information there's no event that the conditions haven't been met so let's be clear on that okay between now and then so we'll return I believe I'm the last one left to the attorney hi mr. Corsi yes it's a 4-1 vote correct that's right okay thank you item number 13 request for a handicap parking space on allen street mr. herd thank you mr. Chad this request came in through one of the businesses on mass at the corner mass have an allen that has a number of elderly patients that they service I had been working with select board office who's working with the honest police department we're not at we don't have the materials in front of us so I'm gonna ask for a motion to table this but this will very likely be on with all the needed materials for our next meeting with a location for the proposed handicapped spot okay I'll take your motion if you want rather than asking so motion okay if we have a second second okay and rather than go through the board on a motion to table that's been seconded by mr. helmeth attorney heim mr. herd yes mr. diggins yes mr. helmeth yes this is mahalin yes mr. de Corsi yes it's unanimous vote thank you next item item 14 for approval tack recommendations for traffic coming on chestnut street Howard muse transportation advisory committee welcome welcome back you've been here the whole evening we'd like to do a slide presentation this is a revised version of one we did a public listening session updated to include the recommendations finally adopted by tack sorry I wanted to talk about the background a little a little bit about why what we're doing with this project and why the most obvious reason is that there was a pedestrian fatality at the chestnut terrace crosswalk in December 31 2019 and the board sent a request to tack to study potential safety improvements along chestnut street all the way between mystic street and medford street so we've been looking at it as safety and traffic calming measures that could be implemented and just one action has already been taken in that tack added crossing flags at the chestnut terrace crosswalk was something we could do right away and so we went ahead with that chestnut street is 50 feet wide and we mentioned that because that will affect how some of our recommendations fit into that cross that with the roadway it's also state numbered route 60 so it carries a fair amount of traffic 15,000 vehicles or more daily and it also includes buses and trucks and again that's a factor we had to keep in mind with some of the things we're looking at currently there are no bicycle accommodations parking is allowed on the north side and on the south side for weekends I think to serve church traffic what we call the slip lanes are the two right turn separate lanes right turn from chestnut street onto mystic northbound and right turn from mystic northbound to chestnut street they're separated with islands from the main line of the roadway they have very large radiuses on them which allows traffic to move through fairly quickly and the crosswalk is approximately 250 feet from the mystic chestnut street crosswalk and it's really pretty much in the middle of mystic street because it's also about 235 feet from medford street so one point of discussion is whether it could be moved and it says driveways on either side of it on the south side so that's really not an option and very little would be gained by doing that just to go over the public engagement we had it has been discussed extensively attack meetings uh pretty much most every month uh from about march 2020 to may of 2021 it uh we also had some good public participation even at our regular attack meetings which is something that doesn't happen very often uh we set up a chestnut street community survey the department of planning and community development organized and uh administered what we did was ask people about possible short medium and long term safety improvements and uh we mailed out 100 we mailed to 190 properties around the area and we provided printed surveys in some of the residential places around the area we received 162 responses i think the number in the memo was slightly lower than that the 161 62 is a final number and then we had the listening section on march 30th of this year there were about 30 participants there excuse me so i want to go through a list of issues that were identified both in our attack meetings conversation within tech but also by the public listening session and uh through the survey one of the major issues is the perception that there is speeding on chestnut street so we're looking at things that might contribute to trying to reduce that i mentioned the high speed turns through the slip lanes also the question of drivers not yielding to pedestrians at the crosswalk on the turns from chestnut street uh if they're coming at a roll with high speed and they don't have sight until they get out of the slip lane that that can be problematic so uh and in general we have poor driver behavior in yielding to people in the crosswalk which is a little more universal uh there was inadequate pedestrian accommodations across medford street at chestnut street and i'll talk about that in a little more detail but basically there's three separate crossings you have to make to get to the south side vehicles queuing back from the missus street at intersection sometimes queue through the crosswalk the town did install pavement markings and signs to not block the box hopefully if people obey that then people trying to cross won't be hidden between two queued vehicles uh there's we we did some site visits and saw frequent bicycle traffic there but there are no marked bike lanes on the roadway and also the sidewalk across the russian common parking lot driveway is broken and that would be the path people might take to go up to the library and the town hall and other places in the center mentioned the crosswalk is about 250 feet from mystic street um we wanted to look at whether this is an uncommon occurrence because there was an issue of whether this crosswalk is too close to the crosswalk at mystic street uh the minute man bikeway crossing at mill street which had a rapid flashing beacon installed at it is about 111 feet from mill summer street crosswalk so that's quite a bit closer there's also a right turn lane that's controlled by the signal and not not separated from the rest of the intersection but there's a right turn lane that people can come around and they're on top of the crossing for the bikeway uh chest in a street is posted for 25 miles per hour and if people are obeying that you can see on the chart i forget i can't see it myself but the 25 miles per hour was well within the 215 feet a distance so 155 thank you i think these replaced and some of the uh sources we looked at including the municipal resource guide from mass dot indicated crosswalk should be spaced two to 300 feet apart in developed areas and i think we consider this area to be a developed area it's part of the basically part of town center um and up to 500 feet is acceptable and of course again i mentioned that this crosswalk is about midway between the two crosswalks so we were wanted to focus on counter measures to make the crosswalk safer and of course the most immediate thing was to put in the flags which we've had success with that program started around the public schools but we do have them in some other locations the public was very supportive of the crosswalk locations one of the questions we asked is whether we should remove it and about 20 percent of the people survey respondents reposited uh responded in the positive and again the multi-stage crossing at mystic and chestnut the response we're getting from the public is they don't want to cross the street at that location they're not comfortable with it so we went through oh could you back up i sort of skipped over oh yes there you can see probably you can see it better in printed materials or on your own screens but the graph is showing uh the response we got from people for various options and this was for the short term i believe and uh you can see at the very first item was they didn't want to do any of the above and there was you know i think it was three or four percent so obviously the public is looking for some action at this location uh repairing the sidewalk got more than half of uh approval uh and installing the um we described it on their short term as putting in bump outs as a temporary measure and then they depending upon how successful they were they could be made permanent uh and just about that received about 50 percent too and then installing additional uh warning signs for the crosswalk thank you so these are our recommendations we ended up not breaking them up into short medium and long term and said we just wanted to present a package uh some of them can be done quicker than others and we try to note that uh obviously uh we mentioned the crumbling sidewalk across the driveway uh we think that should be repaired and detection detectable panels put on either side of it so that it's uh improved handicap accessibility across there and also number two is to provide advanced warning signs for both approaches for both crosswalks they have warning signs right at the crosswalk but we believe it would be helpful if there's some advanced warning signs a lot of folks ask for a no turn on red sign on the right turn lane from chestnut street westbound to mystic street northbound um i think people see the red light and a lot of them are looking over their left shoulder to see if they can go and uh then ignoring whether somebody is walking in front of them well uh so we that's an easy thing to do just to install a sign and then we mentioned the curb extensions on both sides of chestnut street both crosswalks um going from terminate temporary to permanent uh next year i believe right now is programmed to resurface chestnut street and that might be if we could do the temporary ones this year then we would know what we would want to do when we could do it well street was being resurfaced we also looked at the possibility of installing center islands that would provide a refuge for people um good example from my neighborhood in east arlington was the crosswalk at orvis which was four lanes wide it's been reduced to three lanes it has a bump outs and it has a median island we had had two fatalities at that crosswalk over the years and as far as i know it's been working very well the other is to install a pedestrian activated warning signal such as the one we have at mill street what that does is people have to push a button or be detected with mill street works with detection and then it goes on so it's not something going all the time and it's different from what was set up at swan street in the center which did not seem to work very well for that location each of those would cost about 25 000 so this improvement would be something that could be done when the street is repaved and that's to provide 11 foot travel lanes in each direction seven foot parking lanes on each side of chestnut street and with a four hour parking permitted which is consistent with the rest of the center five foot bicycle lanes on each side and a two foot buffer between the bicycle and the parking lane it's possible when we get down to looking at exactly how we want to do that it might be good possible to flip the bicycle in the buffer lane but i think that's a judgment that should be made at the time we're actually laying the roadway out so we have a couple additional recommendations i'm going to do the second bullet first and that's items one two and three i think as i mentioned was we were going along could be implemented quickly four and five could be installed the temporary installations for four and five could also be done fairly quickly with the permanent installation when the work is done on chestnut street longer term we'd like tack we'll continue to look at this particularly at chestnut street mystic street long term i think we'd like to look at a possible redesign of that intersection to eliminate those slip lanes we would the design might not be completely straightforward because of the need to accommodate trucks turning at that location but the idea would be to eliminate not have three crossings that have to be made at separate times in the cycle but hopefully to have one single crossing and we were also would like to look at chestnut street and mentford street if you're walking on the south side of chestnut street toward mentford street there's no crosswalk to cross you have to go up i think it's about 150 feet to get to a crosswalk and then you'd have to double back to go down to the warren street intersection so that seems like something and i think another issue with that is that mentford street comes straight into chestnut street almost like a merge from a highway and i think it would be better if we could have clearer control for who gets to move when and of course our action is requesting the board to approve these recommendations thank you very much mr muses oh could i just also mention i have dn amstotz is here from the planning department and jeff max tutis who's vice chair is i believe on line and i asked them to be here to help me answer questions and fill in any things i missed thank you very much i did nice to see mr amstotz i don't see anything to add now or any questions that you you want to handle what do whatever your preferences thank you thank you daniel amstotz senior transportation planner for the town i just wanted to say so the full within the materials included the full survey so you could see all of the questions and all of the answers and comments on that you could see you know that people were majority in favor of many of these these improvements so that was that was the point about sort of the 20 percent only 20 percent of people said that they wanted to remove the crosswalk which was something that was suggested earlier on and so there's also the summary of the comments from the public listening session that we had so just again showing that there was a lot of public engagement we tried to get through in getting the public interest and and how people use that crosswalk and what their thoughts were on what would be some of the best some of the countermeasures that we identified and sort of which ones would be would one would be better so there's a few other things in the materials to just sort of give the board the complete picture of everything that that tack did sort of leading up to these recommendations thank you thank you so i'm going to turn to the board but i ask miss marv if there are people who want to be heard on this wealth questions for mr mus first and then we'll hear from anybody would you like me to promote just sure he is here good evening mr max tutis good evening members of the board during if you want to add anything i know you're available for questions if there's anything you want to add to the presentation um just a couple things um the tack took careful consideration of this over a while knowing that it's a sensitive issue and it's an important issue but the area on chestnut street is really dominated but vehicular traffic today and one of the the goals of the tack is really to look at improvements for all modes of transportation and we're not seeing the pedestrians and bicycles are really getting you know equal benefits of that that area so we think our improvements will our recommendations will improve safety and mobility for both pedestrians and bicycles while not significantly reducing capacity for vehicular traffic i just wanted to point out that when we sent our recommendations and we also sent a letter from the town engineer where we expressed some reservations about what we were talking about doing and i just want to make sure everybody was aware of that yeah now we received i imagine there may be some questions on the particular chestnut terrace i believe he is okay um so i will turn to the to the board now mr diggins thank you mr chair well since and i uh voted for the well i have some questions perhaps later for the town manager thank you mr helman thank you um i move approval and um just one question thank you for your work i was happy to read the very detailed report and materials that you sent that was very very helpful so thank you for your diligence thank you for your diligence in these months is studying this really important uh area and uh and i have to say too i was glad to hear that you had a lot of citizen participation i heard a lot from from citizens just as a select board member in advance of this meeting um i think they all were really passionate about that crosswalk staying where it is um and it was great it was great to hear from that and i would say to the to the public uh write to us you know we read we read we read the notes and we consider them um so that was that was good to hear citizens participating in their government my only question is and i like the proposals to do some of the temporary changes to to study them and see if it does what we think it's going to do and i saw that there were cost estimated for the permanent i'm not sure who mr chair the question for this is but um do we have a sense for the cost for the for the temporary ones is it just negligible or is there a cost that we should consider i think it would be small i wouldn't call it negligible but um it would be a question of maybe putting out cones or uh flexible posts to make sure that people could see that area now obviously it wouldn't be raised up like a curb extension would be but the idea is to let people get closer to the roadway when they're behind uh where there's cars parked so that uh they're more visible to people driving by mr abscess thank you um i think uh i would think about doing something similar medford um gamers summerville i think boston has done a lot of similar sort of we call them tactical improvements um one that comes to mind most recently from last year was that um in medford along high street route 60 i think at boston av there was um that is also a very wide intersection and coming off of i think boston av to try to turn on to high street can be rather difficult because there's just quite a lot of pavement space and it's sort of difficult to know when you're when you're it's difficult to see so the city um put out they sort of painted a line on the ground on the on the pavement showing where a bump out would be and then they put some there's different names you call them flex posts they're they're ones that um i think your cambridge and and again some of the larger cities have used to um try to demarcate bicycle lanes but they can also be used as they're demarcating this temporary um uh you know curb extension area or even potentially a refuge area you know not as well protected as say a physical curb or a real bump out but certainly more so than what's there now thank you that's that's good to know and and i appreciate that i think it's good information for the public as well um my only other question is uh you're also suggesting a temporary island as well and and uh i know you wouldn't suggest that if you didn't think it was safe to do that but you know that's a whole it seems like a different animal than than showing where curb extension would be can you detail how that can be done with a reasonable degree of safety um i think one of the issues with trying to do that temporarily is that particularly at the chestnut street crosswalk the centerline of the road is not in the center of the road which is where you would want uh the island so it might have to wait until the road is reconfigured in the way we were suggesting or something similar to that but uh jeff or dan if you'd like to add to that um i'll just say that's people were a little bit more concerned about the refuge island so i mean we you know we have examples in town already on mass avenue starlington um i think it's a similar kind of idea that um people may be going out into the crosswalk and then being kind of stuck in the middle of the road while they're waiting for traffic to yield to them and this would be sort of setting up that as you know somebody needed to do that that they would they would be more visible certainly and the the paint and the paint and the uh flex post would would sort of channel the traffic where you actually want it to go as opposed to um being sort of a 20 foot wide lane where it's you know it's very easy to to to uh go from place to place and not be um in the middle of the lane so that that's how i imagine it would work thank you thank you um and i just want to say too that i just is a i am very happy to support this and i really appreciate the intent of this which is to to really design this very traffic centered place uh to accommodate multimodal transportation i think that's the world that we live in that's what people are doing so it's really important that our safety practices catch up you know with what people are really doing and what their intent is and uh so so thanks again for this thank you mr helmet and mrs mohan um i will definitely second this um also with the understanding these are incremental steps something that can be done in the short term some in the long i would just give you sort of my rating um of the seven recommendations um i'd like to see one two three four and six as something um that when we continue further on in the process that that happened sort of on the front end um i have a couple hopefully only two comments on one question on one i have a lot of trepidation on five and i agree with mr mus that um perhaps we don't even do anything temporary and or permanent until we address number seven which i see that not happening quickly because i'm thinking of the people um that uh we're concerned about and other people are concerned about it not a hundred percent but residents of chestnut manor and um on a traffic island um whether you're elderly whether you're in your 30s or 20s but you have a physical disability and i'm thinking of the traffic islands on mass ab i orvis there's a lot more road there and then there's also some people in order for that to be effective and handicap accessible because if you're asking someone who's pushing a stroller has a walker or cane to step up onto that curb um nobody out there in their 20s or teens are watching this but some people do have issues uh stepping up to a curb especially in light of the state guidelines of how high that curb has to be so what um so i'm just giving my preference for one two three four six kind of go to the front of the pack seven and then five at the end if uh we do go through seven and it bears out um my question is um the conglomeration of lights at thousand uh thousand islands does anyone know what thousand islands that's what we call it yeah okay the the lights there are they um traffic sensor controlled lights or are they just on this cycle that that's what they do at that same time every day of the week i believe they're on a cycle that's programmable yeah and i believe at one point if you could just step up put the microphone sorry there's no um that intersection was part of the safe center study um but i don't know what finally ended up all of the equipment there is older it was not replaced as this equipment was up on mass app so i'm not sure how much of an interface there is there okay i asked that question because i knew the answer um so i guess the reason i'm segueing into that is um if everyone's in agreement and we kind of hold five and seven um and perhaps start with seven first when we do do that um i don't know if there's anything that can be done in the short term but um especially in the morning commute it's really just seven thirty nine that thing is just tied up in front of the police station sometimes you get to wave to Charlie Keith in front of Keith funeral home for like two cycles so and i don't know if that's something that we should even um if it's too time-absorbent even endeavor and it's because those lights are sickle on a cycle or not so what i would say is i'd leave it to the town manager with planning or whomever and i don't want to add any more to tack if that's something that we should look at or just kind of continue to let that play out because the traffic is going slower when there's that backup bottleneck but um i would just put a request in whether when we do get down the road to number seven and it may not be exactly what we have before us tack may continue to look at it and say well we kind of want to take out two and replace them with two other that um we also consider and tack may be doing this um sort of upgrading the traffic signals traffic control signals down there to take them off of a strict cycle and and cue it into traffic sense sensory um unless that's cost prohibitive because the other thing i know we're looking at is uh mr decorcy our chair also chairs long range planning committee and one of the things that um the chair of that committee as well as the chair of the finance committee charlie foskett had really um put to the members of that group which then branches out to everybody else is we do have um the funds we one time funds from the federal government um arp i think it is but yeah and yeah but that we really need to before we embark on anything big in the future whether the future is one or four years um you know if there's things that we can't do that would like to do um if number seven becomes that including my eye my ask about the signals being changed then i would say you know that's one of the things thank you mr chair i i didn't mean to go on so much did you want to say something so i i i think that's a very good recommendation mrs mahan in terms of when the light signalization could be analyzed i want to talk more with power jeff and dan and micrata mocker about whether or not it should be part of potentially number seven or the future step uh looking at the slip lengths in the configuration of the intersection just to see what would make the most sense of when not only looking at the timing but new lights as well right if they're going to be changed if we are going to change traffic patterns i think putting new footings in the ground might be more appropriate for that but i think we should look at that and to your point about funding um i'm glad you raised that because i would ask the board to consider any vote it takes tonight being conditioned upon the identification of a funding source not at all to slow down the process but just acknowledging the reality of needing to identify funding um so if the board as it continues to debate would consider that i'd appreciate it mr chair do i need to amend my motion to that factor is sure which well why if you're willing to do that we will yes okay so so amended okay attorney high before i turn to mr hurt i'm sorry but this might be mr chair this might be the appropriate time for you to mention something the chair and i discussed briefly earlier the town apparently received a federal aid to form a fairly comprehensive project all the way back in 1987 that listed a number of conditions some of which are very specific about where there are prohibitions on turns on red where left lane must turn left and chestnut street is one of many many streets it's not a hundred percent clear to me that the proposal is inconsistent with this nor is it necessarily a problem there may just be a process by which we have to notify federal highway administration and the state department of transportation that we intend to make certain modifications so if mr helmeth would be willing to further amend that motion uh subject also to um uh appropriate uh reconciliation thank you manager with uh the federal aid project of 1997 i'd appreciate it if that's okay with you mr and for a penny and for a pound yeah that's fine thank you can i just ask hoskey is was that 1997 or 1980 i just want to make sure it's a clear record thank you sure i apologize thank you mrs okay mr hurt i wasn't going to say this before but the funding discussion made me reminded me that the mma for years has been pushing to increase chapter 90 funding by a hundred million dollars and this is one of the reasons that we need to do um thank you for the work on this we in recognizing how earlier we talked about all the time that you put in in the tack and this is certainly a good example of all the additional time and unfortunately we came here in some part due to a fatality that occurred here a few years back and mr roger's daughter may be listening but we did receive a letter of support of the tack recommendation from and roger's daughter who unfortunately lost her life at this um in this area um i am very happy to see the recommendations like mrs mahan said i'm the only way that gives me a little pause is the intermediary safety language and the exact language that you use but it didn't sound like that was part of any of the plan for any of the temporary improvements anyways so i'm i know if that is considered it will be considered carefully and only in a manner that we know will be safe to do so um and as far as the crosswalks i i do agree with the recommendations reminds me when i was on tack when we had looked at academy and town hall and you said oh they're too too close why do you need those two crosswalks and then we looked at the counts and five times as many people use the crosswalk at the academy in town hall so you know if you take out a crosswalk it doesn't mean people aren't going to cross there it just means people are going to cross there safer so i i do agree with the recommendation and i'm happy to see the no turn on red because i often you know with the slip lanes which i'll talk about in a minute you go and you can't tell if you can keep going i actually call it a straight on red because you're kind of just going through and you're like this and so it's good to at least even that just one sign is going to have a dramatic effect effect on the safety of this area so i am very happy with all of the suggestions both temporary and long term and i'm happy that tack is going to consider a look at the slip lanes because even from an overhead view right now it just doesn't they don't make sense and if this was a computer program that my son was on i think you could just put your finger on those two just slide them back and you'd have a safe intersection so i look forward to further discussions about that but i support all the recommendations that you have in front of us and thank you for your work on this thank you mr. herd and i agree with my colleagues i i particularly missus mohan's comment on a number five that's the one that that concerned me as well um in the short term and just a question on the the right on the no right on red or no turn on red um from chestnut to mystic i don't think right now there is a right turn arrow i don't know if you went to a no turn on red if you would have to upgrade the lights to allow maybe for a right a green signal when mystic is taking a left on chestnut because i think now it might be it might be read all the time there i i i don't know if there's any way to configure that where it might allow for a little bit more turning but you'd still have a no turn on red a longer cycle if you will those two could overlap and i honestly yeah i can't remember if they do um and if they don't that could possibly be a restriction in the existing equipment that might not let that happen well as an early action i think one of the things to do might be to ask dpw to look at what was proposed for that intersection and what was actually done at that intersection from signal standpoint and if there's a difference then the decision could be made whether make an adjustment or not and that would be relatively easy to do okay all right and i on the crosswalk i didn't in full agreement on the chestnut terrace i was actually with a group that came down mystic street to to head back towards the the lot behind saint agnes no one even thought of crossing it at mystic at the end of chestnut everybody headed right to the chestnut terrace crosswalk with the end i think that's a good location so um with that if there are members of the public who want to be heard on this i know this has been a significant issue and we've received a lot of input so miss marr if there are people we do have two hands raised okay there's linda three hands raised linda veroni i'm gonna promote her i miss veroni nice nice to see you again hi thank you for your patience um i'm a resident of chestnut manor so anytime i go into the center i cross chestnut street at chestnut terrace i'm lucky that i'm fit and have no mobility issues but even i have difficulty crossing that intersection because there is heavy vehicles on the street plus if the if the speed limit is 25 miles an hour nothing nothing travels at 25 miles an hour it's between 35 and 45 miles an hour which significantly increases the stopping distance for any trap traffic on chestnut street um the crosswalk at mystic and um chestnut street is even more dangerous than the one at chestnut terrace the sidewalks on both sides um are narrow and there's absolutely no buffer between the traffic on the street and someone walking on the sidewalk there's no parking lane there's no green berm there's nothing it's sidewalk heavy traffic that's moving fast so that in its own way is is more dangerous than crossing at chestnut street um there is talk about the red flags um those have not been really adequate to the speed of the traffic because this is not a quiet neighborhood street it's a busy heavily traveled street um there's a talk about poor driver behavior already um the lines in the do not block the um the uh the intersection are fading and and cars are driving right in the middle of it so that's that's not helpful plus crossing the street even when there's no traffic there is still dangerous now i sent a letter to the board and it included a photograph of the street i took this in april i hope you can see this okay this is standing on the crosswalk in front of okie funeral home and that car on the outgoing lane is um whoops sorry about that the car on the outgoing lane is approximately at the crosswalk you cannot see the new signs that were placed there about a year ago they're literally not visible so that's why i'm saying we need to have a flashing pedestrian crossing sign like there is at no street to let people know because of the curve people will be able to see the flashing sign on the south side of the street even if they can't see it on the north side of the street so there's all this talk about adjusting the lanes and and slowing down the traffic that's a long-term project what the reason why this has become an issue is because a woman was killed in the crosswalk so i'm thinking that moving to the most on target solution for this which is the flashing pedestrian crossing sign is the best solution in in the beginning and then work on these other things as fine tuning of the larger um chestnut street that our street missed extreme situation a list of recommendations the warning for the um the crosswalk set thank you very much for your comments um next person next person is marci back i'm sorry could you say that name sorry it's marci back okay hi i'm marci back the daughter of androgeous the pedestrian who was struck and killed in the crosswalk um on chestnut street i have lived in arlington my entire life i'm very familiar with the area um and i visited my mother very frequently over the 20 years that she lived there at 47 mystic street um she always would warn me when visiting her of the dangers crossing there and i myself was very aware of how dangerous it is there to cross um she thought about the slip lanes and how dangerous they were and how cars would speed over the crosswalks um she was extremely healthy um she unfortunately that day had a minor knee injury um and needed to use that crosswalk that was the closest crosswalk to her home um there's no doubt in my mind that if there had been better pedestrian safety measures that she would still be alive today um i've attended several of the tech meetings and i'm in support of their recommendations um and i want to thank them for their hard work um it's been a good source of healing for me and i appreciate everything that they've done um and hopefully we can get the safety measures um going as soon as possible um to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again thank you very much i'm very sorry for your loss is there another speaker the last one is paul schleppen okay i'm gonna promote him now good evening mr schlickman thank you mr sir hey good evening thank you uh i'm not gonna speak long because i have an extensive report in your packet and i know you've all read it uh and i want to express my appreciation to tech which worked very hard on this issue and came up with some outstanding recommendations and there was a lot of debate going back and forth regarding this proposal and and i'm very impressed with the quality of work that has come out of it and de rocher was my downstairs neighbors no doubt that if we had the flashing beacons she'd be alive today and that's really why that's one of the priorities but the slip lanes are inconsistent with an urban neighborhood uh that intersection is located block from the center town uh this is the only way for pedestrians to make way from north of the center into town either by crossing uh trestner street at one of three locations uh the street needs to be rebuilt in a manner consistent with a street in an urban neighborhood the slip lanes must go i've talked to representative garbily who's more than willing to help well the project in medford that is the safe reaches school project about five intersections between the west medford station and the rotary has been funded by state funding uh with state cooperation and he's willing to work with us to get that done if there is strong support from the town of arlington and the strong support from this board for getting rid of those slip lanes and putting a traditional pedestrian safe intersection there but uh without any further discourse these are good recommendations i'm thankful as before you i'm thankful for the motion to adopt it i urge you to adopt it tonight and to stand with the neighbors to make this a safe way to cross my my wife and i cross here very frequently it's a very concerning place to cross and the safety measures will be an improvement in our lives in all of our neighbors thank you i believe unless there's any yet further comments from board members we um like mr diggins yes so you all have touched on it a bit and asked in the town manager's book a little bit about how we're going to fund some of these recommendations but i wanted to understand better that last modification on our amendment to the motion that mr heim raised i'm sorry could you repeat that mr diggins i i just i want to understand better of the the amendments to the motion that mr heim recommended regarding state mr well mr heim's recommendation on the 1987 agreement or on the source of funding mr chair yeah if i may um mr diggins uh essentially the last time and maybe there was a time in between that i'm not aware of that there was a major investment of federal funds to design and improve this particular area of roadway it was from all appearances a fairly comprehensive project there were certain conditions that the town agreed to as a condition of these funds including things as specific as where parking would be prohibited where left lanes had to turn left where right lanes had to turn right um and the agreement essentially says that we're going to install and maintain these traffic control measures um i don't frankly know i'm just sort of getting a prize to this today i don't frankly know what the uh binding effect of a 1987 grant agreement is but it is a contract that we entered with the commonwealth uh department of public works on behalf of the department of transportation and it is references the federal highway administration other folks who ultimately provided the funds so what i have asked for the board's motion is to just make sure that whatever recommendations are adopted by attack are reconciled thank you mr manager with our obligations under this grant that we received quite some time ago and it may be that some of these things might need to just be added as a sort of codicell if you will to this agreement that federal highway and the state are okay with the change that we're making or it may be that they turn around and say you know what it was 1987 you guys have fulfilled this agreement for you know 30 years i think we're we're good to go but i just want to make sure that we don't lose any eligibility for future funding because we didn't follow a process for making sure that uh these changes are basically okay with the state and with the highway administration okay i understand you know so who will do who will do that follow-up game who in terms who would do the so-called reconciliation process that we talked about yeah i'll basically be reaching out to the mr diggins i'll be reaching out to the commonwealth and if necessary to the highway administration to make sure that anything that doesn't perfectly harm isn't perfectly in harmony with this prior grant agreement can be recorded and approved by them thank you thank you thank you so i guess what i am a little concerned about in and it is just i do want to make sure that the if we approve this means that we do have a real sequence for seeing it happen and so the the funding is going to be the issue and so the we may have to have like some logic trees that fork a little bit but we think them through means so that the if ultimately we can't identify the funds in short order then we have some mechanism for getting this in the queue in next year's budget so so maybe this is a discussion that maybe needs to happen in a subsequent but soon meeting but but let's just make sure that we really follow through on whatever we decide to do thank you that's it so diggins there is one additional okay so we will i think the person was on the list um and we missed is it the miss president it is okay and that will be the last speaker for the public participation section of this this agenda right good evening miss president um this is a great moment i've been working on this pedestrian safety on chestnut street um forever as a matter of fact i came before the select board over a year ago with my own proposal and you sent me to tack and i'm very glad you did because they've done a really excellent job um there are a few pieces of this and a little nervous um one is that's i thought about speaking there seems to be all this red tape about all the agreements i really hope that can be worked through also there was a sense that the temporary measures we put in place and if successful i thought the idea was to wait you have to wait a year to resurface the street then we could put in more permanent ones and i hope if if successful means that you will again have public participation um i'm not sure exactly what it means um because if um hopefully people will be able to cross the street more easily but the permanent changes are far more important like i don't feel like i'm comfortable standing behind a cone to protect myself from this heavy traffic but um maybe someone could respond to that is that a big condition or is it not i don't know if you want to quite yeah well i i think part of the reason well why don't we do this why don't we hold the question you have another question too because i um well let me let me try to respond part of what was said earlier in the evening is that there at some point the road is going to be redone yes and so some of the temporary improvements you don't want to make them permanent now because the roadway is going to be resurfaced um and that the temporary work allows you to see if it's successful yes and and without a major investment only to have the investment uh perhaps be in jeopardy when the roads resurfaced okay um so that's that's what we have to do with future work okay okay all right thank you thank you miss president i yeah we're running a little short i if you have another one other question i'd be fine but we're running towards the end of the hearing and with a number of agenda items this evening but if you have another question go right ahead no i just want to thank the transportation advisory committee for the wonderful job they did on this i feel quite relieved and happy okay so that closes the public comment period we'd have questions on the board and we have a motion by mr. helmeth seconded by mrs. mahan uh for approval attorney hind mr. herd yes mr. diggins yes mr. helmeth yes this is mahan yes thank you of course yes yeah miss folk thank you thank you very much for the great work on this okay um i would like the task of boards indulgence to we can take item 18 out of order which is a discussion the muga property chief flowery has been with us most of the evening and this is one item that she may be speaking on so we'd like to take this out of order before we go back to 15 16 17 attorney hind is going to present on this but i i mentioned last meeting at new business that i'd like to discuss various action items relating to the present condition of the site and work that needs to be done to clean the site um i did mention that we would be reaching out to the muga our interests to see if they would be willing to meet with us we did not hear anything until today and it was a wasn't an immediate response and at the timing of the response was such that we could not schedule meeting so we want to go forward and discuss options and perhaps take a vote on action items so with that attorney hind thank you mr. chairman and i just want to note that um i was able to conference last week with christine bongiorno the health director uh chief flowery uh peter buckley from my office emily sullen the environmental planner who also went on a site walk with um representatives of not necessarily the property owners but the applicants relative to the comprehensive permit and some of their folks uh i believe a representative from the bsc group uh so she also cultivated further information so there's been a team effort to kind of develop a set of options given the relative uh lack of response by uh the current property owner so i just want to lay the table for an efficient discussion and also for public information there's really two parallel things going on one is the comprehensive permit with respect to thawndyke place which is obviously not within the board's jurisdiction we've talked a lot about that but what i want folks to know is that's more of an intermediate or long-term set of issues with respect to the site perhaps a comprehensive permit will be granted perhaps it won't perhaps it will be appealed perhaps it won't but one of the things that uh the zoning board of appeals has been working on is a set of conditions that would talk about what would need to be done prior to transfer of that land either to a third party the state or even the town that includes a lot of things that are longer-term pictures like a 21e a phase two environmental assessment solid waste removal throughout all 17 acres a long-term fund for the removal of heavily invasive species all throughout the entire site as well as other types of remediation and potential long-term assistance for any uh homeless that might be there not tomorrow not three months from now but a couple years from now if we ever get to a place for thawndyke place uh is actually a reality and it may not be but that's one track the other track is what the board has been trying to do for quite some tim