Okay let me call the meeting to order. First thing let me read this is from the town court. The last one in the line is hearing room close to the doors. Because all the election stuff is happening again and again so the last one meeting had grown, please close the doors. That's really funny. That was great. Do we have to turn the lights off too? Yeah. Okay, on the third line where we talk about the CPA committee, maybe we shouldn't say they're running late. Maybe kind of a little slack because they're first year or working through their first year process or something like that. It seems like we're kind of... Okay, I close. Peter, I'll leave it open to your diplomatic skills to just sort of smooth that over a bit. Are there any other questions? Corrections. Okay, there's a P here that I don't understand. On the second page, budget 19.3 police, second line, there will be assigned to traffic duties full-time and then there's a space and a key. Is that just a zero? Okay, second line. Second line. They will be assigned to traffic duties full-time with a space and a key. I must have fixed that. Okay, this is full-time period now, right? Right. Okay, mine has a P there. Does anybody else have a P? Yeah. Okay, everybody else has a P, Peter. I'll make sure the P is missing. Okay, any other corrections? Okay, all those in favor of the minutes. We say aye. Opposed? Okay. Okay, our first hearing today is the Tourism Committee. So, Gloria, can you have them come in? Here are the safety seats. Right there, fine. And then, who's ever going to speak? Okay. So, we have a couple new members. So, Angela, who could introduce yourself and the committee and tell us what you do and why you were asking for these outrageous sounds was one of them. Okay. Okay, so, I'm Angela Olszewski and I am a former member of FinCon. And I live in FinCon and I chair that committee. And generally, we ask for our standard committee budget, which is 1,775 dollars, very patriotic. And we use that for our various committee activities, which is everything from supplies at the visitor center to the morning page. You can stay in town and hang out with that. So, we do who we are asking for that basic amount of money. We have a mission to support when we looked at what we were asking for. We didn't want to ask for the money for our committee specifically, but we were looking at it as in our mission to promote this in town, what did we think we needed. And I'm coming to you asking for some money. We totally know that the schools need money and all of that. So, we're not coming, you know, we're not knowing that there's other competing demands for money. And then we're asking for more this year. What we are asking for, like I said, is our 1,775, which is the usual part. So, you can break this all up. 7,500 dollars for a centralized website for visitors in town. Because that's the way most people get their information when they come to visit as they go online. And we don't have anything like that. And I'll go into just a little more detail. And 2,500 dollars to help us support the visitor center. Because it's entirely volunteer run. You know, we had asked for the money a couple of years ago and you granted it and it's been tremendous. And we think it's a great resource, but it's very difficult as a volunteer committee to completely support it. And so, we're asking for a little money for help with that. So, like I said, we understand that there's a lot of competing demands. But like any other apartment in town, although we're unpaid, we're asking you for money to fulfill our mission. And we just want to point out a couple of things. And the first is that, you know, we don't have any kind of revolving fund. But we look at our budget sort of as a percentage of the meals and hotel tax that gets generated in town. Because that has to do with people coming and eating in the restaurants and staying in the hotel. So, that's how we sort of look at it. And I got that number from Adam and it was over 732,000 dollars for fiscal 2015. So, the total amount that we're requesting from you is about 1.6% of this amount. And given the fact that it's businesses in town that are generating that revenue for the town, we look at it almost as a little bit of a give back to if we can do something to help them get more people in then that potentially can generate more revenue for the town too. The other thing is for the last two years, we've asked for $5,000 to support the Battle Road Seedic Byway, which is of course another important part of tourism in the town. And I talked to Clarissa and we do not have a warrant article in there for that this year. So, we're not asking for that 5,000. So, we looked at it from that perspective too. We're not asking for that but we'd really like to put it toward these other initiatives. So, as far as it goes on the website, just a few things. We think we want to look at ourselves compared to our peers. So, for example, Lexington. And I looked at some other towns too. If you Google say Lexington MA, Marblehead MA, Salem MA, Lincoln MA, I did, you can go to the town's website and you can click on a section for visitors.  I have examples if anybody would like to see them, but those are the particular towns I had. And they still have the town ribbon across the bottom. But Lexington's a little bit more of a hybrid. I think some of them still link out. And I talked to Adam about this too and he said he understands, he showed him, he's open to the idea. And we don't want this website for ourselves. We want this website for the town and we just don't feel, we've tried as volunteers to do the website. We can't get a centralized website as volunteers. And that's what everybody that works in this area agrees we need. So we just want the money appropriated. Adam just walked in. We want it turned over to the town to decide the best way. Is it part of the town's website? Is it a link off of it? We don't want to decide that, but we think it's important and we think it should be an initiative of the town. And we do have notes of support from Beth Locke, who's the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. And once again they have their own website. They have members, but it's not centralized. And she says the chamber would be in favor of a comprehensive visitor information website for the town. Increased tourism would be a positive for many of our businesses. At the moment a visitor in town, whether it be from a far or from a neighboring community, must wade through a wide variety of sites, many of which are not regularly updated. Presenting a polished image and informative hub for the town's many offerings would be a benefit to all. And then we also have one from ACAC, which says thank you for proposing it. And ACAC agrees with the need for a comprehensive, attractive, well-designed, well-publicized, and user-friendly website with a calendar of events to go to site for residents and visitors alike. She says it's not only likely to increase the level of tourism, but also likely to increase collaboration and cultural activity in the town. And then Jan Whitted from the Capital Square Business Association says the initiative to develop an attractive, easy to use website for Arlington's cultural events is both exciting and timely. Those of us who regularly hold events know that at least two-thirds of attendees are from outside of Arlington. Now those visitors get their information piecemeal from various online and published listings. A site that brings everything together and reflects Arlington's incredibly diverse cultural offerings would boost tourism and support growth in our local economy. So they support it. So I would like you to consider that. And Ted had gotten estimates, Ted also got estimates from people who do websites, and we said basically we're like, okay, $5,000 would give us a really professional, good-looking website, and we'd look at like $2,500 for the maintenance part. So I can't say, you know, if you agree to this, we would likely have to include working with Adam how much it would cost to maintain it on a regular basis and have someone pay to do it. Not that maybe volunteers would submit events or something, but we really need a coordinator. And the last piece of the ask is $2,500 to support the visitor center. And I just want to say, you know, bless our committees devastated by the loss of Roly Chappett because he was such a wonderful person and he meant so much to us and he was such a big part of the visitor center. And it just shows how much volunteers really, really do. We want to have it open as many hours as we can, every weekend as we can, but between our committee and we do have some volunteers, we just don't always have enough help. And so we're asking to have money once again can be put under the jurisdiction maybe of the town manager's office where we pay somebody on a temporary basis for a certain number of hours to help sort of coordinate, which would mean anything from recruiting volunteers, scheduling them, and actually being there when we can't have somebody else present in doing some promotion, because we do a number of initiatives on our committee and it's really hard for us to staff it and to run it and to do everything else. And I want to put this aside for everything we would love to promote. If people don't know, you know, Alan does, the parade's back this year, which is great and even more awesome, we're going to have a reenactment at the Jason Russell House. So the Minutemen have been able to get Minutemen from like two or three other communities are coming and yes, the British are coming. The regulars are out. They've agreed to come. And so on Sunday of that weekend at noon, please make sure you come to the Jason Russell House to see that because we think it'll be really exciting. And like I said, this is exactly the reason we want this is because this is something super important for us to promote and it certainly will do publicity, but lovely that the history and this event will be on our own website too. Thank you. Questions? Yeah, on the website. So you said $5,000 is for what the initial design and implementation, and then the $2,500 is for ongoing maintenance. Is that maintenance? The hosting and management of the town would be hosting it? I mean, ideally, and that would be once again, I believe it to Adam to sort of decide, you know, we got, Ted was able to get estimates for that number and that was the best, you know, we could come up with, Ted wants to say something? Adam wants to ask that. Okay. I spent about 50 hours researching what websites exist for the town. And they were all, well, honestly, if you folks say I'm going to find out where town attractions are promoted, you will find they are not. They are, even the hotel has attractions listed for Cambridge and Boston, okay? So to get back to the work that we did, we talked to three different people about the potential cost. The number you have of $5,000 came from the third person. It's high. We know it's high. There's nothing to do with what, in my opinion, you will pay. It has to do with the budget that we provided through the eight head line only because we didn't think we should go to town leading. If the town manager can negotiate it for a lot less than that, which I'm sure he can, it won't be $5,000, okay? So that's how we got to the number. Adam, why, how do you see this going? Thank you. So, frankly, I just learned about this in the hall as I was walking in, so I haven't had a lot of time to think about it, but I would think first and foremost we would look at the existing web platform we have and see if we can just have it be an add-on page which would be limited if any additional ongoing cost or set up or ongoing cost. I think the issues we'll have to work through are just the legal issues around what we can promote and what we can't promote. We can certainly promote arts and cultural festivals like Arlington Live and Feast of the East. You know, we'll have to look at what we can do in terms of, you know, putting up restaurant listings or retailers or whatnot, but Angela had mentioned that there are other communities that seem to be hosting an Attractions or Visitor's Site on their actual City or Town web page, so I think we can look at those models and pretty quickly see what we can do. I think moving from there, the big question will be, how do we staff updating it on a regular basis so it's actually useful? On a website like this, updating current content is... That's the whole game. So, you know, if we can't assure that we can keep the content current, then we shouldn't do it because nothing will turn people off more than stale data, deadlinks and so on and so forth. So, we just... So, we rolled out the new website a year and a half ago now and it's a much easier to use content management system. Our Public Information Officer has trained a pretty wide set of town staff on how to use it, so we can talk about who the appropriate staff member is and then ATED, Arlington Public Art, Arlington Commissioner of Arts and Culture, all of these different groups that interact with these events. We could figure out a process where they would just email whatever it is that's going on, whether it be the calendar event or an announcement, and have that one staff member do the updating. So, I think it's workable. We'll just have to talk about it. Do you have the capability within your IT department to create websites? To create the website? I wouldn't say that. We're probably not well suited to create a brand new website, but to build additional web pages off our town site would be pretty easy to do. Alan. I love the idea of a centralized website where you want to stop shopping, and look at it like a cart, a rack full of cart, a traditional tourist center. Everybody's got a rack cart in there. It's one place to go and do everything. I try not to nickel and dime volunteer committees because I think it's a great investment by the town. I do think that the world of websites has changed. As you mentioned, the maintenance, the updating, it really needs to be fresh, and that's where the expense is. I would like to emphasize that a lot of that budget should be pay someone maybe two hours a week to update the calendar, put up specials on some pictures of the minivan coming, things like that. Putting up the mechanics of a website now are so trivial. A few hundred dollars a year to host, you can create a good looking website, click, click, click at www.drupalgardens.com or things like that. I personally think it's a good idea to not attach it to the town website because I think it can be a lot more flexible and easier to maintain something like WordPress or Drupal or a much more flexible content management system than the one used in town hall. Another aspect which websites like this very often have are advertising. With advertising it can actually be a revenue generator. Obviously you couldn't do that as a town website. In summary, I guess I'd say really minimize the cost of putting it up, budget at least one or two hours a week for someone to update it, with the right skills could be the same person that staffs the tourist center and consider the possibility of an independent website with advertising in the sidebar and services. Would you have a visitor's piece on the town website and then just a link? I think just a link saying here's the ATED website but it's not in town. You might want to do features on a restaurant or who knows things like that but certainly special events. Similar to the ACMI type slides that are going up where people would request if you put my event on your website because it's an open house or an art display of the Schwann Mill or something like that. I think you could be a lot more creative with YouTube videos and things like that. The town's content management system is pretty restricted compared to what's in the state of the art today. There's a whole technological aspect and I do 100 websites a year so I'm pretty familiar with that. But again, the important thing is make sure it's staffed to update it frequently. Consider using advertising as a revenue generator not just to pay for the website but even to help pay for some of ATED's other expenses. I don't know if that's possible for ATED or not. That's a legal question but again this much for the website this much for content management. How does the Chamber promise to promote their organization? So if they did that they would be probably promoting their members. It's like Capital Square. It's a membership organization. Would they also want Schwann Mill, Sam, and then the Chamber of Commerce would have to worry about that. They only have a part-time executive director. I don't think they have the resources to do more than they are doing and like I said, there's some benefit but they really need to be focused on their membership. And especially they could take advantage of advertising. But they can't offer advertising for someone who doesn't belong to the Chamber. And like I said, they only have a part-time executive director. So I don't think they have the staffing either to do it. Okay, Dean. I guess I'm going to go one step over from the question. I don't know if you're there for Adam but when I see this, I kind of get confused on why we have a planning department with an economic development coordinator. If we have to then have a committee do what I would thought an economic development coordinator would be doing. So how does this all... I guess that's why we get confused. I remember creating the position recently of that. They have a budget organization but why would the town's planning department be doing this? So I guess I would say first and foremost, I don't see the economic development director's position as being the community events organizer. He certainly plays a role but I don't... It certainly wasn't what any of my intentions were when we created that position. That said, I do think the planning department in some shape or form is where the staff would live. That would update whatever kind of website we're talking about. You know, and I'm sorry my thoughts aren't more well-footed out of this but I think as I'm listening, so ATEM is interested in this. I know in the past, the Arlington Commission on Arts and Culture have had interests in a bigger more easy to access web presence. The cultural... Well, the cultural council I think has raised similar issues. We've had these groups that are talking about these things and when we launched the new website we did include the community calendar so you have town meetings, community meetings and then all meetings so you can look at everything. It's not perfect by any means but I'm almost wondering if we should have a little bit more of a discussion sort of a cross-functional discussion among these groups and see what the actual needs are and what the wants are for a site you know, jump ahead with it. A couple of things. Have you gone to the Arlington businesses that asked them to fund this because it's to their benefit? We have you got a proposal for a website to promote Arlington businesses. Have you approached the Arlington businesses in this time to see if they will fund it because it's to their benefit? Well, no, but we don't, once again we don't want to run this website so as volunteers we get the money, I'm not exactly sure what we do with it because we don't have the manpower to do the website. But that's to Alan's point is that if the website can be done legally in such a way that we can have advertising then it could actually get funded that way. But this is to benefit the Arlington businesses. Not to really benefit town of Arlington. But it's for their benefit the most because they need to generate the money the most so they go into business. Have we approached the Arlington businesses and said we're coming up with this website or whatever and we need this amount of money have you approached that? And I agree with Christine, Chamber of Commerce says this is their back, this is them to promote the town, the businesses I think they should be definitely involved in this and it's just hard to swallow when I think everybody knows in the near future what this tax pays and this town will have to come up with. That's one of the five years and to keep giving it's just, it's hard for me to swallow. Okay, so the first thing is on the businesses supporting it I would say that the more than $700,000 that the restaurants and the hotel generate is supporting the town. So there is that money out there right now that goes right to the town and the more people that stay at the hotel and eat at the restaurants the more revenue goes straight to the town. And also the more people that go to the restaurants and the hotel benefit the businessmen. They're promoting. So there's that aspect of it. I mean we could try. I can tell you right now I work full time. We don't have the resources necessarily to go out and ask and we would have to do the legal questions. Everyone points to the Chamber of Commerce and I just want to emphasize again that they're struggling with all the other nonprofits in town. They're a struggling membership organization with a part-time director. So to keep looking at them to do things we'd love to give them the visitor center and they're happy to support it. They're probably going to buy us a table and chairs or something. They're going to give us some kind of furniture donation maybe. But they don't have, like I said we'd love to give it to them. They don't have the resources to take it but you know like I said to Alan's point if we can get this up and running and then you know and there's resources for somebody to run it and it's legal for them to get advertising revenue then we could get it supported. It's really hard for us because we're trying the best we can to get people into town and I know Alan always asks me what do they ask? I can tell you I've gotten questions for outside dining. I've gotten questions for ice cream. Where can I get a burger besides the restrooms besides people love coming to the visitor center and they tell us how welcoming it is and we know for a fact that we attract so many people from out of town off that bike path and where we're situated they come right off and they see us and we get to promote the town. So we can't measure an exact dollars but we know we're making a difference and so for visitors to come and for us to generate some more of that revenue and not to have empty store and some mass ad because one of our goals is to have a vibrant street life in town it's the 21st century and we don't have a place where people can go if they're coming here to find out where they can visit or where they can eat or where they can stay because it just doesn't exist that way I mean we had somebody last summer who was doing a genealogy trip around New England because he had ancestors in the old bearing ground and that's why he was in Arlington so those are the kinds of people we want to find us and to come and the reenactment is a tremendous opportunity to bring in people from out of town it makes us competitive with Lexington and Concord you know so that's why we're up here and that's why we're asking and I know you'd like somebody else to support it and you know if we had all the resources to go out and do the research and do all of that it would be great but we're a volunteer committee I think what I'd like to suggest at this point is that the tourism commission for a lot of the better terms sit down with the manager maybe Alan if you could if you could sit down with them and answer some of these questions so for example you know would it be a direct you know a direct part of the town website or would it just be a link to another website who would plan it would coordinate the coordination staff in the center who would coordinate updating the thing in other words sort of fill in the blanks and then if once those are set if you can come back and come back to that so if there's any other questions Charlie yes I have two questions one is what can we do here in other words whatever the amount of money that we're spending is what's defined as being successful or not successful and the second question is what happened to the battle road initiative that we already spent money on what is that for can I really say something here wait a minute we're going to hear another proposal no you can give me two minutes I spent the time you can give me two minutes what I'd like to do is answer Charlie's questions please I'm sorry Charlie close to a couple of questions I'd like to answer those questions okay so metrics the good thing about a website is we'll actually be able to manage hits to the site the other thing I'm hoping to get going for the visitor center if we can if we can get the manpower together is a program where we could have people come and get like a little discount card if we can get some visit some it's something like if you've ever been to hunted happenings in Salem years ago like a lanyard and you could come back and use it again so we'd love to start something hopefully this year where if it came to the visitor center you get some kind of card and if you come back within the next two weeks you get discounts of businesses and then we could track the card numbers and know that people are actually going there we haven't been able to do anything except measure who's coming in so we'd like to know that they're actually going someplace obviously the question metrics what's happened to the battle road it's going on they had if Clarissa came to the board of select men I think with the logo and the branding they're working on logo and branding proposals and I know she showed those to the board of select men she's on that committee so it's going forward they just didn't ask for any money this year okay so I don't want to get into a discussion I'd rather have you guys come up with some answers to come back I deserve to be heard okay now let me tell you I spent 50 hours on this it's needed okay you're not going to disappoint me because I'm going to be working as a volunteer on this website helping out to develop it whether it's with Alra or anybody else pointing to business community in all honesty now it's my understanding and if I'm out of line you know me long enough to know that doesn't stop me okay it's my understanding that this committee is it here to approve a budgetary item they are involved in getting it to some of the details but if you feel that we have to reach out to 50 businesses not just to the chamber to support it not to Bob Mose to support it not to the capital square people to support it if you feel we have to do that then you know what it ain't going to happen and your job as far as I'm concerned and I hate to tell you what your job is your job is to say yes or no to a proposal to put something into the budget I don't believe your job is to determine every little piece that goes after that you do have a town manager you do have people who have authority they will negotiate contracts if there are contracts involved they will decide how much they're going to pay and who they're going to pay it so what I'm suggesting to you is either approve it or don't it doesn't really matter to me at my age I'll find something else to keep me busy so what I'm saying to you is you don't want to work out every last detail every last detail isn't worked out for instance you want a last detail I'll give you a simple one if we make $30,000 from the website for advertising $30,000 of it to help the community by having people sweep the streets instead of putting it into the general budget what do you think? would that be a nice thing? probably so the ideas are going to flow like crazy they're going to flow from you they're going to flow from Joe they're going to flow from other people so what I'm saying to you is $30,000 of approval for $10,000 please approve the concept you've got people here who want to get it done okay are there any other questions from the committee? I move no action okay motion is made for no action on the entire amount I'm sorry on the entire amount discussion if I move the table I'll vote on that until Adam reports back to us you shouldn't ask for a vote if we don't have the information because this is what you're going to end up with but the concern that I have and I don't even speak for myself whether I vote yes or no for something clearly there's a need here and your volunteers are doing a great job and you're really looking for help I look and say we've got a position within the planning department based on the business side I'd like to hear some information as to what our economic development coordinator is doing and what the town can do to support this and then when they come back and Adam comes back after a discussion with you and Angela let's see what can be done and we'll take a vote then but why rush to a vote tonight town meeting is until April let him do his job and get back to us is there a second to that motion to take? second I have a motion to approve a budget of 17 times okay I've got two motions on the table if both of those fail we'll move to that motion by the way is there a second we'll go ahead and hit the motion okay so we've got a motion first motion is to move no action on the entire thing second motion was to table that's been seconded second motion first everybody understand? so the vote now is whether to table a motion on this all those in favor of tabling this until we get a report back from the town manager please say aye okay all those in favor of tabling until then raise your hand one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve all those opposed three okay the motion is to table thank you very much for moving on efforts we appreciate you very much yes I would just like to ask that the analysis that Adam is going to do also include what these other cities and towns are doing to finance the visitor site okay dear women Adam this is for you yes so there were website visitors websites for several other towns cited it would be good to know what they are doing to fund their websites and also what their metrics are yeah I'll be happy to take it like that again I apologize as I walked in as well learned a lesson, Gloria tells you to come to 815 come to 815 I heard about it when I walked in and the more I I think the value of what they are looking for is a way to promote events in the community and that's probably easily achieved I also think that the last time or the next time someone books a hotel via a city or town website will be the first time so I don't know that restaurants or hotel advertisements on a city website or town website make a whole heck of a lot of sense with Yelp and Price Line and Kayak and everything else out there so I think we need to work through exactly what we want to achieve okay we have articles now that the town manager has submitted or you might hit them on some comments the first one is article 28 community choice aggregation first obviously since Fincom I think there was two things one here is whether there will be any financial impact upon the town of Arlington and second what the heck is this so I'll start with that there is no financial impact on the town of Arlington as a government entity via this article so this started with the energy working group and a private group called Mothers Out Front which is a grassroots organizing group that has issues and environmental issues and some of their members from Arlington it's not just an Arlington group it's a regional group that has chapters in local communities some of their members started attending our energy working group meetings and suggested that the town should take a look at this community choice aggregation what community choice aggregation is it was started in 1997 via state law that would allow a city or town to aggregate all of their business electricity use and then go out to bid for a competitive supply so they would no longer need to buy it from the utility so here in Arlington if we went forward with this rate payers would have a choice of buying it from a competitively bid supply as opposed to from ever source so what happens is the method or the mechanism to make this happen starts at town meeting so the way the state law works out implies the community to move forward with community choice aggregation if town meeting said yes then we would work to hire an aggregator or a broker to help the town actually go out and put a bid out on the market for a competitive supply we'd also work with that aggregator to put together a CCA plan which would basically outline what we want the plan to look like what we want to look like for the community then that plan is reviewed by myself the Board of Selectmen we have a public meeting for people to come in and make comments on the plan also while we're formulating it we have a dialogue with the state's division of energy resources so that they're tuned into the plan then that plan goes before the Board of Selectmen for final approval and then it goes to the Department of Public Utilities for their review they hold a hearing and if they approve the CCA plan then an RFP for competitive suppliers goes out we get prices we execute the agreement with that competitive supplier notice goes out to everybody who's eligible and you're eligible if you're currently buying from the utility and you have 30 days to opt out if you didn't want to do it the basic idea of this started this idea of CCA was to get people simply a better price on their electricity as opposed to buying from the utility as it's evolved over the past 20 years it's remained focused on a better price for consumers but also allowed communities to say we want to buy a larger portion of a renewable portfolio than what ever source of the utility might be selling you so mothers up front who is supporting this we'll be asking that the CCA plan that's put together has a higher percentage of green or renewable energy included in it than what any of us would be buying from ever source so I it doesn't impact the town's budgets our electricity buying isn't through this we do our own competitive procurement for the town's energy as a government so there's no town financial impact and as we sort of went around and around on this of whether they should do a 10 registered voter article the Board of Selectmen wanted to submit it or it should be submitted by the town manager and based on the feedback and I guess my I guess I'd say quasi-personal professional opinion that it's a valuable thing to go through to see if there could be savings and an ability to get more green energy after dialogue with the Board of Selectmen we agree that I would submit it that's it I think mothers out front the Sustainable Arlington needs to sell this to town meeting and see whether or not town meeting thinks it's the right thing for Arlington okay are there any questions John so Adam you said this would be an opt-out imagination an opt-out and have you thought about in terms of the financial impact the costs to for education for such a opt-out program having been involved in some aggregation efforts I can tell you that there's a lot of education that needs to go on if you're thinking about an opt-out program because people have to make a conscious choice to as to whether to stay on the aggregation yeah no I'm sorry I want to interrupt that's a great question so we in preparation for this the MAPC the Metropolitan Area Planning Council did a competitive procurement for an aggregator or a broker so as an MAPC community we're eligible to use the broker they selected and we actually had someone from my office sit on the screening team so that we could learn more about the process through that screening so I met with that aggregator good energy last week we're not signing anything with them until after town meeting has acted permanently but I asked that question what are you prepared to do as the aggregator to help us educate, to handle these phone calls from people who want to opt-out or whatever it might be or just questions about the program so in a very preliminary conversation they've claimed that they are they've done it in a lot of places and they're fully ready to do that campaign I think I want to see a little bit more before I'm fully sold on that though okay Carol so every single resident in town would have to either would have to opt-out or not do anything to participate in this so I missed the last part so either they opt-out or they're automatically participating in this and we'd have to let every single resident and town owner in town though regardless of their use of the internet or engagement with the community correct and there's no way to make it opt-in no the law states it's an opt-out there has to be some guarantee for the aggregation like a competitive supplier has to have some guarantee that the mass that you're or the volume that you're stating is going to be somewhere near that right I mean otherwise you could say well we have 42,000 residents but who knows how many will opt-in that's the question I would just answer so how many of us is everybody in basically secondly there are companies that are doing this privately so why is the town in the business of competing in private industry well I I don't know that we'd be competing in private industry but we'd be trying to the mass buying companies out there would do this you could sign up for this right now it's not a different energy supply so why does the town have to get into the business of picking a private energy supplier where the citizens can do it on their own I guess I would say you don't have to but it's also an opportunity to get a better price than maybe what those competitive suppliers are individually doing and then it also provides that opportunity for the community to say you know we want to buy energy at 5% green 10% green 15% green whatever the number would be guaranteed the price is going to be lower and then it's going to be 10% green so you can mandate the renewable percentage how much how many recs renewable energy credits have to be part of the portfolio you can't guarantee the price but I don't think we would sign on we wouldn't finalize it if the prices were higher than what the utilities charge suppose they were later well so we wouldn't do this these would be still only 12 to 18 months so it would be you know if 6 months later the utility was cheaper that would be problematic but it wouldn't be a long term we're not signing up for 5 or 10 years or something like that yeah I would the only comment I would make is if there's a private industry out there doing this selling, excavating and selling and considering all the demands on the town why would we want to do this as a manager school building needs you why would we do this essentially going into competition with other private suppliers of energy so I don't see it as all that heavy a load for the town government to bear frank honestly and I think I've tried to be responsive to a segment of the community that wants to try to promote an opportunity for the community to buy a higher renewable portion of their electricity so let me just say so it doesn't impact financially impact the town because we go out separately in bid for the town's energy resources do you see this as a 2% of somebody's time to oversee this I would think when we initially roll it out no matter how good the aggregator says they are we'll have to handle phone calls so I'll have to get people up to speed on an FAQ to answer questions but I don't see there being an ongoing management cost Alan so it may be even Jonathan does but I'm wondering about experience in other towns first what's been the opt out the questions I would have are what's the opt out rate and more importantly what's the long term economic benefit to the citizens I mean one could maybe think that with a little bit of competition that it would pressure all of them to keep their rates down whereas ever source essentially a monopoly competition might help improve things and regarding the educational aspect if I were ever sourced and felt threatened by this I would do a lot of education about why people should opt out or maybe the other aggregators so I don't know if that happens but I would expect the other aggregators and ever source to try to convince people to opt out through education whether you trust it or not and I would hope that the competition is based on do you know what happens in the other towns what has happened in other cities and towns that have adopted is there any record there's definitely a record so I know definitively Dedham has executed and their rate is below ever source there's I think 17 communities total that have already gone full aggregation Brookline and Burlington town meetings have passed it yet so I don't know what percentage of people have opted out or how that process worked I can look into that I guess I would expect that the advocates for this article would come with a lot of data about what the experience is in other towns okay keep in mind I think we've established there's no financial impact on the town government of Arlington on this I thought it might not be that the finance community wants to take any position on this whatsoever and just let the select one handle it so you don't think about that and sort of limiting the number of questions we get into this Dean so I get there's no financial impact just trying to understand so it's an opt out program so you have to send a notice to everybody to opt out how do we send the notice so we wouldn't send the notice the aggregator slash winning bidder would be sending the notices all correct mail it get it back process it and then if there's an issue with the residents they have to deal with it so if I said that I opted out and all of a sudden I got changed I'd go to the aggregator you're saying I wouldn't go to the town I'd go to the aggregator procedurally they have to deal with it I would just practically what will happen is that people will call town hall and then someone will have to say oh no you should call this number but they will the aggregator the supplier will have the obligation to handle all consumer relations okay is there any other questions for the manager on this article okay then before we start I have an emergency situation my glasses are falling apart does anybody have one of those screwdrivers that they carry with them that I can put this back together again if they do if they give it to me for a second I appreciate it article 38 okay I think I see the other one I have to have a knife on okay we'll give it a shot okay article 38 is the appropriation for the new gar application reviews so what is this and how much is it going to cost so we put in a request for $25,000 and this is to provide legal and technical help to the ZBA more than likely the conservation commission as they deal with the MuGar or the Oak Tree 40B proposal so there we've already retained the services of Attorney John Witton some of you may have seen him at some of the public meetings we've had our hearings this year we're predominantly paying for it out of our legal budget we may need to come back to the finance committee later this year for a reserve fund transfer to balance that out depending on when the filing actually happens and then moving into next year Doug Hyme Town Council has been working with Attorney Witton to try to get an estimate of what we think the process through ZBA will cost if we end up going in litigation there will be further costs that we'll have to come back to but at this point we think that that doesn't look good L at this point we think that for FY17 $5,000 we'll be able to support again the ZBA Conservation Commission both legal and technical help Questions? Is there any steps to be taken by the town management or the Board of Selecting to have a say a progressive discussion or negotiation with MuGar people with respect to how that property goes developed or is it totally we're going to fight this to the death spend all the money we can and then eventually lose So I think I can safely say that the political dynamic has shaped up around fighting this to the end but I can say that I've tried to tell anybody who I've spoken to that we need to go into this understanding that 40B is very favourable to developers and the batting average for developers is like $9.95 there's not a high success rate for municipalities so I do think and I may get criticized for saying this but I do think there will come a time where we do have to contemplate negotiating with the developers so they don't get 100% of what they want and that we're able to try to to get a development that at least East Arlington and Arlington can live with I don't think that the leverage is there yet for them to be willing to have that negotiation but my advice will continue to be that we need to be open to that point of negotiation as a developer don't aggravate it go through the negotiating table tomorrow as a developer don't aggravate it go through the negotiating table tomorrow because you're going to end up going to the negotiation later spending money it's going to be aggravated and you're not going to get what you really want now you get all you want that's just my opinion as a developer done 40B probably talking to the wrong individual okay John Adam so what say it's an appropriation of $25,000 you say and what exactly is your expectation in terms of how that money would be spent with in terms of the ZBA I mean my understanding is that the ZBA they've announced that they believe that we've met the one and a half percent threshold and so the next step would again my crude understanding is the next step is that Mugar would have to dispute that and so is this appropriation to support the legal effort to in terms of that dispute or so there's actually a few steps before that so the ZBA has to clear or issue that one and a half percent statement in regards to a different application to the housing corporation of Arlington's Westminster application Oak Tree the Mugar development has not filed before the ZBA yet so my understanding is they're still doing probably a significant amount of engineering work before they're actually ready to file with the ZBA so once they file with the ZBA the hearing will open and the ZBA will have to hear their permit request and then as part of the ZBA's response to dealing with that permit they can again issue or state that one and a half percent when and if more than likely they will dispute that one and a half percent and more than likely dispute whatever it is that the ZBA issues in terms of their decision that can then be appealed to the state's housing appeals committee so I would think a significant part of this legal cost will be legal advice to the ZBA as they go through the process and then bridge into the housing appeals process we may also want to use some of these funds for some technical consulting to help with the review of their application but state law also allows for a fund to be set up for the developers to pay in for a portion of those technical reviews to be done by both the ZBA and ConCon so we'll definitely be utilizing that how is involvement and use some of this money what's their role because there are wetlands in the area and we'll have some jurisdiction over certain aspects of the application and ConCon's route depending on what ConCon's finding is their route is to superior core whereas the ZBA's route is to the housing appeals committee so there's parallel tracks Thank you Shane with an album Possibility has there been a thought to how best to manage our legal costs because just a few years ago we took beating in another matter where in my opinion I think we lost control of the situation and before we go down this route I would like some assurance that we have thought not to repeat our mistakes has there been some thought that I guess I would say probably the biggest difference I'm assuming you're referring to that employment matter the biggest difference there is we were in arms length separated by the insurance company in terms of legal expenditures up to a certain point before it kicked over to us we were definitely involved but there was that in between relationship whereas here John Heim is working hand in hand with this outside council and Doug himself will admit he doesn't have the years of expertise in this particular aspect of law that this outside attorney has but he's he's knee deep in this so he is scrutinizing every bill that comes in from John Witton and his firm so I just think this dynamic will be different it will be an active participant okay is there any other questions? there's just sort of a technical question in previous years when we've anticipated extra legal expenses it's gone under the expense line legal budget rather than a separate warrant why is this a separate warrant article this year? I'm not sure is that entirely true I don't know that we would normally I was looking for example in 2014 there was a big bump it's kind of what you put the Sims money into the legal budget when we did it eight, nine years ago so I wasn't here for that so I don't recall that I think what you're seeing in 2014 was a reserve fund transfer so we didn't bump up the budget request at the beginning of the budget season for expected costs we used the legal appropriation to pay it and then get a reserve fund transfer across again it's not an important question I was just wondering why this was split rather than a legal budget because it has been built yeah I mean I guess in general I try to never spike in appropriation in one year and have it go back down the next year and I think this is a large enough issue for there to be a community dialogue independently about the expenditure and it's probably going to be transparent this way because it's fairly clear what's going on okay Charlie do you think the 40B process has a 99.9% history maybe going through why do you think it's a good idea to spend this money I mean this is your recommendation as opposed to somebody else's recommendation so I think a little bit contrary to what Tom said earlier I think if we went right now to Oak Tree and said let's talk I think they would say no we have UB you can't stop us and if we don't think you have any commitment to dragging this out and making us lose money based on the loss of time you know then we want to build our 219 units but if we demonstrate that we have a commitment to putting them to even more than putting them through their paces then I think this is money well spent to show them that we're serious about the potential impacts of their current proposal on East Arlington that can then get us to a point where we're one of the precipice of a much longer and protracted legal battle that a negotiation would be more appetizing to them that's my thought I think now you're addressing both Charlie and Tom let's sit down tomorrow with Newgar and say let's negotiate mitigation let's negotiate putting the ACA there or something I think that would also involve contracts and some technical support and additional legal I don't think the Warren article says this is money to fight it but this is money to support the negotiations which sort of could go either way or if by the time the end of town meeting everybody rolled against us and it's time to stop fighting we probably do want to go to the developer and say what can we get out of this can we get a Warren Center can we get a community center can we get something that's going to involve some excess legal expenses and maybe some extra costs to have so Tom just remember at the end of the day it doesn't have to give you anything so if you've aggravated them enough and you've stalled them and you've made them spend a lot of money it does not have to give you anything if you be nice about it and sit down you're probably the most you're going to get right now I think so if I can so this is long before my issue there's probably a lot of opportunities there's two players here right there's the landowner, there's the Newgar family and then there's the developer it is, this town aggravated the Newgar family a lot I think that foundation has been laid so it's really with Oak Tree so I feel like it's a little bit of a mixed bag when we stand there and just one more question we're rarely in the process here there are a number of things in the application that Oak Tree sent in for the project the ability letter, determination letter that they haven't addressed that the town considers to be woefully inadequate so where we sit today I think it is appropriate to ask for the money and see what they submit but there was a number of areas related to floodplain and then just other issues what maps they're using that if they use the same information that they used earlier I think they're using inroads we could make and as to the batting average maybe we're just talking about the scope of the project at the end of the day but it's important to go through the process and at least be ready to respond to a comprehensive permit application a little later rather than talk about it's over, it's done let's see what we can do so I think you look forward and see what information comes in I think it's far too early to talk about at this point okay, if there are any other questions on this article okay article 39 is appropriation for public art so this is a this is a continuation of the discussion we had last year about holding a consultant to go through a process for looking at what kind of public art people wanted in East Arlington as sort of a capstone to the Mass App Order project at that point last year there was a lot of talk about will this be for art or will this be for process last year it was for process and the town hired a consultant Cecily Miller who's been going through that process this year or I should say I should go back last year I believe what I said was that I don't think the town should be the first contributing towards the purchase of fabrication or whatever the right term would be for the art and that there would need to be if any town funds were expended I think there'd have to be a leveraging of private ones and what Arlington Public Art the Vision 2020 Subcommittee has actually done is they've raised $15,000 in the past year to put towards this purchase of public art and what they've asked for is if the town would be willing to match that $15,000 so I I think it would add to the vibrancy of East Arlington I think that the project has come out wonderfully and this would be sort of a nice culmination to that and I do think that there's a reasonableness and it shows good faith in the part of town of matching the pretty significant effort that these folks have put forth in the past should actually raise $15,000 in private funds it's not it's not a promise to the money's actually in the town's fund for public art to be used for these purposes so I know last year we had a dialogue about whether or not I thought tax dollars should be regularly spent on art and I don't think that given our overall financial picture that we would ever want to do a 1% for the arts type program via the capital budget or another budget but I think on a piece by piece decision making basis that also looks again at what's coming from the community that this is a reasonable response. I know it's not art but I'm going to use it as an example how much did the friends of Robin's farm raise to redo the large slide up there I think they raised about $25,000 about an equal so in this case it's what are the two amounts? $15,000 $15,000 $15,000 $15,000 interesting how this when contrasting with the ATED asking for the website and these people raised $15,000 but there's a different slant who are the people who are donating this $15,000 are they the actual you know some sort of interest in the actual art that's being displayed so the majority of the families that were raised were through the program called that annual event they do to raise funds and there was Art Rocks two years ago Art Rocks spied upon this past year and those were raised funds and the culmination of a couple of years of charity to sit and those Art Rocks project raised those funds so they were all organized fundraisers okay I guess so how much influence would they have over the art that's decided I guess it's sort of the it's part of the rub with the website thing is if you let other people contribute money then they influence on what's on the website so they might you know I donated this money I want picture of the statue or something so in this case how does that apply would it affect would it what effect does those donations have on the actual art which have no influence other than we so we have this consultant going to go through a process going to issue an RFP for artists to come in and make proposals and there will be a panel of judges who will make a decision about which art we want to select for the various sites and we'll probably want someone on that panel of judges who is from the arts community so they can help us non-artists understand what we're looking at so there may be some overlap in terms of participation but no direct expectation what will be selected and they have a budget essentially if this gets passed $30,000 to buy any art and if not they'd have $15,000 to buy any art okay, thank you are these temporary installations like in spy bond or are these permanent installations like what is going to be done like do they expect? so I think that's somewhat of an open question based on what's proposed so I almost fell off my chair when I first met with this consultant and said oh most communities you talk $250,000 $500,000 for a nice permanent exhibit so I don't think we can have the expectation that there's going to be some 30 year piece of art that's made for this amount of money but I hope that we can have the expectation that it's not a one year piece of art but seeing what artists actually submit will help that out a little bit really it's actually raised or simply promised it's actually raised so it's sitting somewhere okay, other questions Carolyn I'm going to use the robin's farm example again how long is the slide supposed to last for? well, I got an email about the slide being broken last week do you know I guess you broke it I guess the slide should probably last about a year about a year, 7, 10 years do you have a judgment on how an appropriation of taxpayer dollars for public art might impact the outcome of a future override vote? to be candid? I think some people might be upset by it and other people would be invigorated by it and where that balances I don't know there's been a couple of things in public art over the last few years like for example if you look at Marathon Street right at the corner of Mass Ave and Anthony's East Side Deli that whole wall was a beautiful painting job where did that come from who paid for it? so that was all private and so that was Stephanie Marlin Curiel who serves on both the cultural council and the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture was sort of the lead of that I'm forgetting it was not through Arlington Public Art but I guess I would just say it was a community group that worked with the property owner and raised their own funds to do it four boxes through Arlington Center so that has been that is Arlington Public Art and every year they do a call for basically some of the map out what they'll do on it and then they pay out of the funds they've raised also from other programs they'll pay then for supplies and materials and a little stipend for the artist who comes in does it Grant? Sort of like the fine thread on the Emperor's clothes how much art does 15,000 buy and how much art does 30,000 buy how do we know we've gotten good art? can we get enough good art for 15,000? that's objective well that's what I mean it's good art that's why you have a consultant who knows what color the threads are ready? I've tried to dig into this a little bit and this art could be you know how in the Porter Square escalator has anybody been in there and there's those bronze gloves maybe that's a bad example but there could be something like that laid across or the side of a sidewalk maybe that'll last a long time or the statues they have named a square or a statue or a redesign of a set of sidewalk panels I guess it's pretty open as to what it could be I've tried to steer them away from paint on ground that will wash away and wear away and become light very quickly so I'm hoping that we can get something more durable see I guess that's what I mean well how much does one of those statues cost is that 15 or is it 200,000? a bronze statue is more than 30,000 is it even as sufficient it's hard to measure what does it buy I understand you're gearing it toward something more permanent but one statue or something again we spent more than this amount of money on a slide and I understand that it helps lots of kids but that's why I keep bringing up that example how much did the town put in for the slide so it was approximately 25,000 we're talking 15 we're talking 15 those slides were fun yeah they are this might be an altoste statue in the corner of Teal I just have a few I don't have many people remember this but for years and years and years at the bottom of the Boston Common there was a statue about the warriors of the Polish Army on horses so it was a substantial piece and for years a lot of people thought it was the ugliest thing they've ever seen and different departments in Boston were fighting on who had to take it and finally the last time I saw it was on the bridge going over to the convention center probably wouldn't spend that kind of money but okay so much for my little other questions for the manager on this article okay we heard the other day the Mount Bilboa transfer and we just wondered if you had any comments on it yeah so briefly I'll say this is an idea of this citizen petition but I've been to some degree vetted with town council and so you heard from Mr. Belskis is that this actually ties right back in to the Mugar 40B issue that if this was to go forward transferring the conservation restriction from the piece of land at the top of Mount Bilboa where the house sits moving it onto the Great Meadows the transferring ownership of that parcel where the home is to the housing authority would definitively put us over an out argument over that one and a half percent threshold so conceptually it's a very good idea in practicality it's a more challenging idea we've already started hearing from some residents who live up in that neighborhood about concerns about what the impact would be and I think those are extremely valid concerns today the most I can say is that I've had a preliminary conversation with John Griffith at the housing authority the executive director I guess they've long had an interest in the Mount Bilboa house so I can talk more with him to figure out you know if this was to happen what his thoughts are would there be any neighborhood impacts would he want to do something in the existing structure which I think he would have to from a historic standpoint anyways so you know fear of impacts might be overstated but having a clear path of what it would look like would be helpful for people to understand what the impacts would be okay John they're now yeah Adam I asked this question the other day what's the loss of rental income how much about $24,000 a year and just to follow up with that though how much regular maintenance would there be and how much deferred maintenance is in that house a lot of deferred maintenance and there's been years where we've you know we actually probably haven't spent very much on it recently but in years past we've had to spend a lot on some roofing issues, some gutter issues so there are costs involved when you said that the housing authority had long had an interest in that in the building as it is or as a site for putting up additional affordable housing so my understanding was the building as it is but I'd like to get more clarity on that even with all the deferred maintenance I have to double check I'm pretty sure the building is on the historic register it could do anything else I think we have to live within that anyways and I guess the the other question I had the other day was so what are the restrictions in terms of if the town wanted to outright sell the property and is that a feasible option or not so we would still have to deal with this conservation issue because right now it is on a piece of conservation land so we could not sell it I guess I think this through so let's say we did this but not transfer it to the housing authority and sold it we would in that case we wouldn't be doing anything to benefit the one and a half percent calculation and you know people might say that that's not what we want to do but we should try and attempt to sell it anyways and I think that's a worthwhile discussion to have as well I think the question is how much do we want to pay effectively pay to put the icing on the one and a half percent K because we've already had this EVA announcing that we've met them one and a half percent you might understand from the presentation last meeting was that this was a way to kind of give us a little added security in terms of making that number but no guarantee because the state could still say we disagree I think I tried to push selling that house several years ago and we looked into I can't remember who did this into the grant that allowed us to buy the thing and I think it would be a violation of the terms of the grants because you can't separate out the house you know in other words it was bought as one parcel and you couldn't separate out the house and sell it so we couldn't do it so I don't think we can Alan can you have a question I was just reflecting the concerns of our fellow neighbors they were concerned that if the transfer would take place and the house would come down and 20 units of residential housing would develop are there any restrictions on the existing agreements or the request or any restrictions that could be written into the transfer to reassure the neighbors that could never happen you can probably start with the zoning and I would hope that what we're not doing here is opening up the door for another 40B application to put in 20 units up there so I think that bears further review by Doug and I think the town spent $500,000 to acquire that property and there's a tremendously series of I'll call elephant or charismatic presentations the town meeting about the value, the historic value of this property and the conservation value of the property are we abandoning that I mean what are we really doing yeah I mean I think the spirit of it as I understand it is to at least it puts a permanent conservation restriction on the Great Meadows no totally fair argument that's not even in Arlington and you're removing that conservation benefit from the neighborhood so yeah I mean I guess I would say well I guess I'd definitely say in a recent filed article I see the benefits strictly from the Mugar point of view but in terms of neighborhood impacts and loss of conservation land it has to be weighed as to whether or not the town wants to do it just to clarify that though are we talking about transferring the house to the garage or are we talking about transferring just across to the houses so the rest of it would stay in the divisible it's already divided yeah okay Grant and then David so we'll say $24,000 in revenue that's gross it doesn't account for repairs just to be clear it's not netting it's not clear David and isn't that how it's part of the historical district I believe it is sometimes limitations and present limitations on what you can do with it and what you can't do okay Ernie John I don't know the answer to this but if the housing authority owns the property are they subject to those same restrictions I don't know historical restrictions yeah okay are there any other questions on the property and then the last one was close my eye oh the easement removal article 29 we have a hearing scheduled for it but my understanding is there's a process that you go through if you could explain the process of determining the the value of the easement how much we will get to remove it absolutely so there was a very similar question not even very similar the exact same question about Venner Road two years ago two years the issue very quickly is not a full easement but what's called exterior lines running through for the most part the property that town meeting dealt with two years ago but a little triangle of it on this property and two years ago I ran a calculation of what the reduced amount of tax revenue was that the town had received over the years because that property in the other that property was actually taxed at a different rate because it was non-buildable because the lines ran through there so I ran a calculation of what we would have collected in taxes if it had been buildable and then also I just inflated what the original easement or the taking price was that the town paid for it and inflated that up at that point 2014 dollars so that came to a total of $65,000 the owner of that whole parcel paid to the town to release the lines they subdivided it and there's two giant homes down there now this would basically allow the same thing there's one home on the parcel on Pleasantview but the parcel runs down to the corner of Venor and by releasing the small exterior lines they most likely I'm not positive of this but they'd be able to put two homes on the land so what I plan to do is run that same calculation it'll be a much smaller number based on much smaller square footage and offer that for town meetings consideration and to the owner for consideration and there's obviously no, we don't eat easements anymore I would say definitively after we gave up the one two years ago it's certainly of no use to us okay are there any other questions of the manager on this issue okay what we got up here are there any other questions for the manager in general status of the town snow is going away oh wait a minute you want to vote okay speak of the devil so what's coming around is a vote that we've used that for the past two years we're about a finance committee that will authorize us to death as a spend for Snowarice we provided a memo that was circulated last week at that point the estimate total was $727,000 since then a further salt invoices come in the amount of approximately $60,000 and then we had that snow icy event on Monday to Tuesday so we're still under the $846,000 appropriation but with another event we're more than likely going to go over that number so what's before you is a request to authorize up to $250,000 in additional spending for Snowarice I think this might be the first year we'd actually get it to you before we did go over that upset and I knock on wood we won't spend this much but while I was here I figured we would try to get this done and have the appropriate authorization for the new people the Snowarice budget is the only budget in town that can be legally over spent unless we approve this they can't spend more than their budget is and he probably give out our phone numbers I move favorable action moved and seconded for favorable action on the motion any discussion any questions any discussion any discussion any discussion any questions ok all those all those in favor please say aye aye posed ok fifteen two zero thank you very much are there any other questions for the manager thank you very much for coming we appreciate your time thank you ok while all this stuff is so fresh in our minds why don't we go through trying to close one eye and go through the other one is just not worth it ok let's go back let's do these in order that we heard article twenty eight is the community aggregation issue the manager said there's no financial impact on the town per se because the town goes out to bid separately could be some small management issues with phone calls at the beginning I guess I'd recommend just let the select man handle this but I hear a lot of I see a lot of nodding heads Charlie I just have serious concern about how this cannot have some cost to the town if the town gets involved in managing electric power to every house in the community they're selecting the vendor issues of quality control there's got to be some cost here anybody else ok anybody want to make a motion to let the select man handle it or to do whatever else they want to do what you want to do so move move to let the select man handle it second ok any further discussion all those in favor of letting the select man handle it please say aye opposed so select man article I don't know if this has been heard by the select man yeah but I would suggest anybody who has concerns to bring them to the select man ok so article 38 is the ok so this is a request for $25,000 for illegal assistance to help with the ZBA when they receive the UGAR application what is the will of the committee moved to 25 is there a second ok so it's moved and seconded for $25,000 is there any discussion ok Charlie and then Dean I think that you know I think by voting this money we're supporting the town going in an entirely wrong direction this is a tippity iceberg amplification of the spending at the other end and he said in his own words he effectively said that the chance of us succeeding at opposing this 40B is less than 1% and yet I think Alan or somebody mentioned that this money could be spent for let me use the term non-oppositional efforts by the town but I don't think that's the intention of the town manager or the town council or any of the boards so here we are discussing all the tax impacts we're going to have coming up in the next several years in the school in Roman problem you know also it's a different financial demands and we're sort of blessing the town going out of this litigation venture and something that is just in my opinion it's going to end up in the town not getting anything out and somebody should be telling the town and maybe it is the finance committee telling the town management including the board of law that just spending money willy-nilly on legal adventures to take a political position and make people certain people happy is just the wrong thing to do when we have a lot of demands on the town and I agree that the you know there's a lot of aspects of this 40B that are not palatable and I I'm not in favor of dramatically increasing the population in East Arlington or what the impacts might be on the schools those are all negative aspects but spending money on lawyers is not talking to the developer or the owner and trying to get a different outcome and as Tom said earlier you know we'll fight and we'll fight and we'll fight and by the time somebody wakes up and says well we should do something different they're not going to care that they've already sucked money into it I just think we're going down the wrong path here and I don't think the finance committee in my opinion, my humble opinion you didn't know I had a humble opinion but in my humble opinion, I don't think the finance committee should endorse that Mary Margaret but I also feel like we have a financial obligation to the people who live there and whose homes will be impacted by flooding and they are part of the town and I think we need to at least try to support them and I think there's still some opportunity here I don't think we're throwing the money away and I don't think it be it's all part of our town in the nature of the town and the reason people want to live here and then to just ignore a whole portion of our town I mean it's not just a political thing it's their property values and what's going to happen to their houses John? I agree with you and the town manager and the assessment that if this were to go to the litigation and be fully litigated our odds are not very good but another way to think of this is you're spending money to create litigation risk for the other side to bring them to the table to try and reach a settlement and avoid the costs of fully litigating this battle so I'd say three things and I'd start by saying I fully support what Charlie says so before I moved to Arlington I lived in Bowman and we had this discussion we said look we're going to sue O'Neill because he's going to come to the table and we sue him so there's a giant 40B going up across the highway for a bunch of people with this argument and what that leads me to say is the second thing which is I get very frustrated in government where we have these counterintuitive arguments so in my private life when we get sued we don't get happy and think oh let's negotiate and then we spend a bunch of money on lawyers and we start to get the advantage and we start to win and then we say you know what we've got the town where we want them we get one let's sit down and cut a deal and that's what happened again over in Bowman is they said let's go fight O'Neill he incurred all this cost he incurred all this money he got the 40B permit and then the town ran in and said no no no let's sit down and negotiate and you can spend more money negotiating with us that's an absurd argument that we try to float here that doesn't it doesn't pass any muster the third problem I have is if the town had a good record of this stuff I believe it right I moved to this town and I was told this when I moved here I was like we're going to buy the Sims we're going to develop it in like 3 years flip it and it's going to be great and that was a disaster and it was funny because because you were talking about litigation that went wrong I first thought you were talking about the Sims because it was a debacle we couldn't manage risk at the school department either because don't worry we're going to terminate two employees no big deal no problem and again that became a disaster and I remember what happened in both locations is they came to the finance committee and said don't worry just throw us a little bit of money 25 grand we're going to make it go away it didn't go away it turned into disaster after disaster after disaster and then we had the field thing where the turf field was bubbling up again I remember we even had executive session for that we had an executive session for the finance committee no big deal John Maher told us we were going to bring the parties to the table and give me this 100 grand boom all was going to be cured and then we just replaced the turf field that was a disaster so you can't look at the record that Belmont had where they failed with this strategy you can't look at this town whose elected leadership can't manage these problems and say that this is going to have a different result that's it's insane and I agree with Charlie which is we're green lighting insanity at this point we're green lighting them to say let's gear up for war let's spend a lot of money and at the end of the day I think what it does it allows a vocal constituency constituency in town who always wanted this property to feel like they fought the fight and it allows the hope for the people of East Arlington that they're really really bad for to think that they can win this when Adam said they can't win this so I just don't I can't sort of sponsor this degree of rackles based on everything we've done in the past we table this until the town manager can devise a more narrow use of the $25,000 that is currently in this point because I heard two things I heard him say using the money for some technical consulting and some early phase they haven't even submitted their report yet also I did a ZBA they haven't even submitted to the ZBA so they're talking about some legal consulting fees around what the ZBA obtains from the Oak Tree developer and then maybe some consultation between them and there was another Massachusetts group that was or a state level group that was involved so that they narrowed this particular appropriation because the way it's written it sort of you're right, it does sort of drag out and is there a way to narrow it to the first two phases of the application process well $25,000 would in and of itself wouldn't be limited to next year because it is a warrant but it's obviously limited to $25,000 I think he said $5,000 for technical maybe engineering support and the rest for legal except that the way the article is written it can turn into this whole big snowball which is what Charlie and Jean are both concerned about so what I'm wondering is there a way to word the article so that it doesn't allow for that so they have to come back again for another warrant if they're going to take the process further well they would have to come back again I mean it's only $25,000 I'd rather it not be down this slippery slope path rather narrow the length of the slope okay Stephen? I second it takes motion for favorable action here and even if the town wasn't going to oppose the comprehensive permit application it's probably $25,000 worth of fees to assess the comprehensive permit to have our experts to continue with the lawyers now this is in my precinct I'm in precinct two so I have an obligation to people in my neighborhood as well as the town but what I heard from town meeting last year and what I heard from meetings is that the town doesn't want this our legislative delegation doesn't want this so I don't think it's just narrow to the people on Dorothy Road and a little John Revald and in that area and respectfully Dean this is much different than the Belmont uplands in terms of access in terms of wetlands issues in terms of what's going on there so to compare what happened with O'Neill and Belmont to what's happening here where there have been multiple attempts over the years to develop something and nothing has happened it's apples and bananas and the only thing that is in common is that yes it is housing that's being proposed but to the legal department now and our manager and say no we're not going to give you this money I think it's the next phase maybe that you look into okay how much is this going to cost but right now there are a number of issues that were identified with the initial project eligibility letter the Oak Tree people haven't responded to a number of questions and concerns that there's issues of whether they're using the wrong flood map there's a whole number of questions and unfortunately the money is going to be needed through this town meeting before we may have some of those answers I say give the town the money let them do their job at least in the first phase and see what happens and I think Adam probably could have chosen a better choice of words in terms of winning and losing because again a lot of these 40B type challenges even when everything is exhausted you talk about the scope of the project and I think there's a lot of people that would say if you just put townhomes on Dorothy Road for example there probably wouldn't be opposition to that outside of the neighborhood but it's because of the 200 units behind there's some real questions on that and significant questions and I think I feel like I owe it to the people who live in precinct too but I also think that we owe it to the people who are managing our legal budget to say we need this $25,000 right now to look at it we're all commenting on something that we don't even know what the comprehensive permit looks like right now because it's not even in and we're saying no let's not give them the money I think it's too premature and I don't think we should shut the door at this stage I think you'll look later on to see what is going on but I don't think that's our job to shut it off right now okay other people ran it must be a micromanaging evening or something like that because everything we've come across so far we've been saying the same thing to the website how are they going to, we want detail how are they going to do that and here we are I'd like to feel more comfortable so I'm inclined to agree with Charlie Dean's position or would be more objective to not supporting that if I did have an itemization just some idea of well the only saving grace is that they don't use it I guess it goes back but what are we buying with just an example well does it in fact if we saw this, we had 7.5 for environmental study in years I mean I understand it's pretty easy that you can go real fast but some sort of itemization about what we might go for instead of sort of a blind check would help me be more objective it still might be micromanaging that's a very good point but it would help me be more objective about it Alan? this is a question for Charlie and Dean if Fincom takes a vote to recommend no action would you think that we'd want to go further I think it's time to stop and be very explicit about that would that be appropriate in the recommendation time to stop what? time to say throw in the towel I'm starting to negotiate for the best negotiator is not throwing in the towel I mean I'm not in favor of throwing in the towel I'm in favor of not taking a totally 100% antagonistic view you know everybody says they're going to do to quote-unquote stop Ugo right and that's not going to stop Ugo I guess the question should do you think it would be appropriate for the finance committee to take a position that was more explicit than just no action that's up to the finance committee I wouldn't bother me if you thought it would be appropriate to take it more explicit if it made sense it would be helpful so I think Dean's I think Dean's comments to a certain degree were valid over in Belmont Belmont has some differences there were no neighbors of Belmont near that construction site and I'm not sure but I don't think Belmont was near 10% affordable housing or 1.5% of land I think the big issue here is the 1.5% of land area because it's not just this it's all the other projects that somebody could develop and ignore our local zoning and at least it seems here we might have a chance of reaching the 1.5% maybe it needs Mount Gilboa, maybe it needs one or two other things but ZBA has already declared that we're at 1.5% over another project it seems to me we should give the town manager in the legal department the resources to make sure if we're near there that we can have the best argument possible to get there and then if we're at 1.5% then we really negotiate from a position of strength on that so I think the $25,000 would be legitimate use to try to reach that goal if they're all possible my two cents anybody else? just a technical question if this was not appropriate in the warrant article would it be appropriate if the amount was needed in August for the town manager to come and ask for a transfer from the reserve fund? well would that be an alternative way of finding it? yeah I mean if the warrant article flushes out at 6.30 if a warrant article is defeated it would have to be something really strong for finance committee in effect to reverse the decision of town meeting so basically this is you know you could have just put it in the legal budget and just slipped it through that way instead there's an article before so everybody knows what it is we discuss it and decide town meeting discusses it and decides and then goes from there so it's an open transparent way to deal with the issue okay other people, Tom and then Christina? I think it's important we understand the finance committee agrees or votes for this $25,000 that there's no end to the dollar amount at the end there's no end it's not 25, it's not 50, it's not 100 whatever it might be so I agree with Charlie I think we should just tip it for now because it's going to be way more 25 just get you into a attorney's office so it's all going to get you it's just not an end to this dollar Christine? This may be a transparent move or it could be a shot across the bow and I'm not quite sure which it is I don't know why it's not in the legal department budget I am concerned for all the reasons that Charlie says and Dean says that this is the beginning of the slowdown we have not proven ourselves to be very good at controlling these type of things I'm struggling with whether this is very to me it's a fine line between a financial policy decision and a political decision and I'm concerned about the project and I'm concerned about the effect of it on the other hand I've lived in this town for 55 years and it's been flooding in that area of the town for 55 years so we haven't been doing anything to help that maybe this is a way to help that situation I don't know the capability but I'm greatly concerned that we'll look back at if this is the first step and something that may be unpleasant for us okay Carolyn and then John so again I also live in this area I'm closer to Mass Ave I'm higher up but this is the area where I live and there has been flooding all along and my concern as someone who's also considering buying in those areas or not buying in those areas is that we really need to approach between now and once the filing is complete with the ZBA and or the state that we have the resources we need to look at the information from a technical perspective and to look at the information from a scope perspective and from my point of view the 25,000 allows for that I'm concerned that the warrant article allows for more than that as someone who thinks we should be on some level representing the people of that section of town anyone who lives surrounding Thorn Dyke Field Magnolia Field along Outlife Brook is going to be affected is potentially going to be affected by this and to not put any money into the effort of scope and in early phases with the ZBA I think is crazy but I am concerned about what lengthy drawing out was expensive down the line we can draft the motion any way we want so it doesn't really matter what the warrant article says we can draft it the way we want and you're in danger of being allocated that task if this passes so John? I've heard a lot about the slippery slope I guess my question is how does it become a slippery slope in terms of the finance mechanism we appropriate $25,000 and $25,000 is spent however it is spent how does it then become a slippery slope presumably they'd have to come back to finance committee and town meeting to appropriate more money and it seems to me at that point you have the opportunity we have the opportunity to say yay or nay based on our feelings as to whether it's turned into a slippery slope I guess the question is is that a reasonable characterization of how the process would work or is there another mechanism for the spending money either has to be appropriated by town meeting or transferred from the reserve fund by the finance committee they have or whatever money they have allocated in their legal budget they could use that but yes they have to come back okay any other okay motion has been made and seconded for $25,000 for what's described here for technical and legal support for the zoning board of appeals to the manager again but then I also moved to table and so unless we to change the wording I move that we approve $25,000 break more limited scope for use of it more limited scope in the way that Caroline has described okay so are you making that second to your motion to table she did okay we hand to one thing at a time the first one is the motion by Caroline to table action on this article can I take a friendly amendment well you don't have so many amendments you've made a motion to table so all those in favor of tabling this article to a future date please say aye opposed okay we're back to the original motion and if it passes I will work with Caroline or whoever else is interested to to come up with wording that seems satisfying and bring it back to the committee so you'll have a shot on the wording too okay all those in favor $25,000 appropriation under this article please say aye aye opposed okay all those in favor please raise your hand 11 all opposed 1, 2, 3, 4 okay motion carries it's on 11 to 4 so I'll work on the motion and touch bases the actual wording and also work on the comment which hopefully can reflect some of the issues brought up at the at this meeting okay so that is favorable action on that okay the next article appropriation for public art request is $15,000 now before we start the discussion I wanted to read last year's motion now please this is somebody else could read it somebody else could read it okay I think I could do it that the $12,000 being here vice appropriated for the purpose of funding facilitation of a process to select and place public art at multiple locations in East Arlington set some to be raised by general tax etc now it was a 13 to 5 vote comment these funds will be used to assist with the public art selection process for projects along Mass Ave. quarter between Grafton and Cleveland Streets it is anticipated that leaves out my saturate teal streets you know what anticipated that funds for the actual construction and maintenance will be raised privately just wanted to let you know that's what we said last year what was the total amount? $12,000? $12,000 but that was to create the process and get the whole thing going we basically said that the actual raising of money to actually construct the artwork will be done privately I just wanted to read that and make sure you had that before you second okay moved and seconded for no action discussion I would remind people as a sort of a prototypical example that about three weeks ago there was a fuss newspaper because the president of Iran was visiting Rome and they covered up all these nude statues and people were complaining that you know these statues were thousand years old and they were the world's greatest art but to somebody else they weren't art it was pornography and I'm not taking sides in that particular argument I'm just saying that you know one person's art can be another person's pornography and I think again in the things that we have before us that are important for the public good and I'm thinking about this you know we I should say that our chairman made a very strong and clear stand to constrain school spending to try to keep spending within some budget limitations I don't think we should be spending $15,000 on somebody's conception of art I think the idea that this art gets funded privately is wonderful but I don't think it should be done with Italian money you know I was thinking now the picture on the Eastside deli in Arlington on Marathon Street because it has back in Greece the marathoners and modern and of course the modern people were all fully dressed but they actually put pants on the Greek runners I guess they decided really being authentic was going too far from Marathon Street okay, other discussion Carol? The town is on a slide for the heights and money was raised by private citizens in that area so that they could have the slide but the town shipped in $25,000 to match them we're only talking about $15,000 a year I agree with Charlie's point but I am going to keep using that as an example The the town actually spent I think $75,000 or $100,000 on the slide we paid the town paid for the original slide and it was destroyed and so the Capital Planning Committee said we're not going to pay for the full replacement of the slide local people have to have some skin in the game so I mean it that's a public purpose of recreation for the children it's a different case I think that public art is a great thing, I think it brings the community together I think they enjoy it at least where I lived in Starlington and Spiveon they had an installation last year people came to see that I think that's good for our community brings people in and I also think that a sum of $15,000 especially when it's been private citizens have added that is pretty minimal and I think it would be good for our community David? Surprisingly, I would say that excluding the bike path that the slide of the Robin Ston is probably the lightest tourist attraction we have in the town People come from Vermont and New Hampshire to use that slide Okay Motion has been made for no action in Article 39 Is there any further discussion? If not, all those in favor of no action, please say aye Aye Opposed? No Okay All those in favor of no action please raise your hand 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Opposed? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 6 Okay, so the motion of no action passes 9 to 6 I just want to say from the record I did grow up at Robin Ston Did you like the slide? Did you like the slide? I didn't get one It was a fine part back in the day Okay Article 30 Article 29 and Article 30 There's no money involved in this The removal of the easements could net us some money which we'll go back into the general fund You heard the manager's explanations So I guess I would suggest we just have to take well we could let the select one here Article 29 and 30 and handle it or we can take a position So let's take Article 29 first that's the easement removal of easement restrictions Dean I don't think we took a I think we punted Venner Road back to the select I'm sorry? I think we punted Venner Road back to the select a few years back but I don't know if we're at that point we took a precedent not to do these You know, therefore they're not going to look to us for a recommendation They'll look to the select one You want to let the select one here and make a recommendation? Yes So, Gloria, can you call them back and tell them we don't need to hear We don't need them for here Okay Now Mount Kilbola Obviously there's some rental income of 24,000 a year said there's a lot of deferred maintenance So do we want to I guess we have two things We could just let the select one handle the issue or we could wait until we hear the select one's vote and decide if we want to do any things Anybody have any strong feelings? One way or the other? I'd like to see the select one handle it Just let the select one handle it Yes Okay, so article 30 is a select one vote So I've been doing this for quite a while I've never had, I don't, the finance committee has never had somebody split votes on one night for quite a while So I guess, okay, so That means we're all sinkers Yup, that's everything Now it is 941 Does anybody have any budgets? Yeah Okay Budget time What budgets do you have? CBA Very Library Health and Human Services Okay, zoning board of appeals 80, 91 Page 92 salary You'll see that there's a very large increase for this person this part time person requested for FY17 and this was a grade 3 step 3 position FY16 it's been jumped to a 6 because there was an open position in the board of select one office this person applied for that position that was a grade 3 step 5 position so she has that position she's now full time and part time here and next year she'll be step 6 so that explains the step recommended as Okay I'm still So the 1792 was your basic pay for last year Okay So it's 18 49% of the full time So it's a $3,000 increase approximately Only going to add the 998 to the $2,000 increase It's 2,000 $3,000 $3,000 increase and you'd have two cost of living increases so that'd be a 4% Anyway this is what the step plan has for that what the pay plan has for grade 3 step 6 It's still significantly less than half of the max the other thing to notice What's that? If this person was a full time staff member their max salary would be 46 Yes, that's right And here she's only 41.5 So she's still she or he is still below significantly below the max Well that doesn't She's paid from two different budgets Right So she'll be at max So So she's both a full time and a part time She has two part time jobs that add up to full time Last year she had a part time job here So if you add the the end total to this plus the selectmen you'll have one full time job in the paper That's right. If you take the full time number of run-ups and multiply it by .49 you get 2,096 That's what the step is So are you recommending bottom the why don't you continue the presentation So we go back to the page that has everything on it and you see you may be somewhat concerned about the budgets being high but this is ZBA and we've been talking about what they're involved in probably not too high recent years they have not been doing anything Any questions How come they don't spend on office supplies They use the selectmen They probably leave it in the advertising Just a technical thing in the ZBA it's a .36 and the selectmen's office is a .37 Is that kosher? That's it's no Grade 3 Step 7 in the selectmen's office in level 3, step 6 in the ZBA It should be the same in both places So one of them is the type So is it a .36 or a .37 One of them is screwed up I don't think it's this one Where are we looking I was looking at the selectmen's office and the ZBA I assume it's the same person That's the .51 ZBA Are you talking about the percentage or the grade and step In the ZBA it's grade 3, step 6 I'm reading it right In the selectmen's office it's grade 3, step 7 And based on what you had said it should be 6 It went from 5 to 6 Isn't that what you had said earlier And the .46 123 seems right I think it just might be a typo and a step in this I don't know I told you what she told me Because the numbers She went from part time to full time She's always been full time Yeah She was part time We can see what the amount of next full time I'm just wondering if she was part time at 6 and then full time at 7 Yeah but I don't know Okay Any other questions? Do I have a motion? I move to the election Second Moved and seconded for favorable action on 25.862 Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye Aye Opposed? unanimous? Okay Peter? David? I plan to submit the Selections Budget and the Managers Budget but due to circumstances there's going to be an adjustment in the Managers Budget including a salary adjustment and a renegotiated contract with the manager and also a new position that has been created so we have to wait until the Comptroller comes back Comptroller's been away from February 22nd and that also involves the Selections Budget we have some questions on the cost of the elections the upcoming elections and we also have a question on what step it is on that position that we just talked about so I have to wait for the Comptroller to come back so Maria is supposed to get a hold as soon as he's back Okay that's fine Are there any other budgets? We could do the Veterans Budget That should be easy That's page 153 under Health and Human Services Okay so I think what's obvious is the change in expenses has gone up another $15,000 which is increases in the families in need and that there are younger and younger vets seeking assistance that are between jobs and need assistance and that actually Jeff has been who manages that has been going above and beyond in trying to find these people jobs which isn't necessarily his role he's supposed to help them access the different services that are available but he's actually helping them find jobs as well so that they don't need to have the services but nevertheless again there are more people who are vets and families of vets who need assistance so that accounts for the increase Are we going to will they need a reserve fund transfer request this year? No, but she knows Okay Well I'm just looking here the fiscal 2015 was $433,000 remember we had to transfer money there so I'm just wondering what the status is Well I'll ask her but it didn't come up that that would happen so I don't know what to say about that Well if she if they could they could push this out on a monthly basis and give some sense of what they'll need to address that I think that would be helpful I was just surprised to see this number dropped so much from the $433,000 to the $360,000 and then back up to $375,000 and to be that far off of the $433,000 Yeah I think I'm trying to remember the timing of the reserve fund transfer last year but it could be that we got clobbered after these budgets had gone to print and so that's why the $360,000 is as well as it was versus spending $423,000 so my guess is that was that was what would happen but I think it would be helpful if they could start projecting ahead granted it's only February but if they see what they're spending on a monthly basis and project that ahead please give some idea whether they're going to need more money or not Alright so I'll go back and ask her but she didn't seem to be an issue at the time I mean we were talking about the increase and for when she did the budgets you know all I can say is for when she did the budgets this is what she anticipated but did she anticipate $15,000? In 2015 there was some type of change involving veterans that particular state federal law that's why you want to but I can't remember what it was but it was a pretty big increase but there was some change in veterans services Okay do you have any further thoughts? No if you want me to wait and get an answer before we vote It's just reserve funds transfers a separate issue So what are you recommending? As printed the 439,642 Sir second? Second Okay questions any more questions to your discussion? When you do ask her ask her if the 15 is 15 more than she spent or 15 above the 360 because I think Alan might be right that this 360 was printed before they finished asking us for money I think that's what was appropriated I assume that's what was appropriated in the by town meeting Which doesn't include the reserve fund transfer Veterans 360 is what was appropriated by town meeting and then the reserve fund transfers were done in June We talked about this early last year we talked about this early last year it was before we printed the books so the number might not be all that this is the one where if we remember the majority of the money gets 100% reimbursement from the state and then there's a small tranche that gets like a 75 I think I made that number up 75% reimbursement from the state we had spent a while on it So we do get most of it back Okay And it comes in It just flows into a year later Well I bet it also comes in I mean you can't say we put this much out we're getting reimbursed exactly this because you know when it goes out and when it comes in it's all time Okay Is there any other questions on veteran services Okay Motions were made in seconded for 439 642 All in favor we say aye Aye unanimous 317 16 Mary and Margaret do you have any other budgets I do but I don't know do we have time Wait we could do the next one which is the council on aging Okay I think we'll make this the last one Alright so there was there are steps in COLA increases in some of these salaries Not that big a jump And The expenses are staying pretty much the same So I don't really have much to say about this other than I think we should go with the as printed amount of 225,730 Second They haven't used much of the reception support They want an increase In other words why do they want an increase from 9000 to 9500 When last year they only spent 674 dollars Yeah it was the year before Right I think it has more to do with having a real person I talked about this last year That They used to have just anybody answering questions and now they have A real person who does the referrals So they don't because they used to have this massive amount of volunteers And now they have a person who does that Why is it under expenses as opposed to being an employee I don't know Are they paid like Part-time per DM work Are they paid like part-time per DM work and it doesn't include benefits I think once you're getting a I'll go back and ask her and come back It's one thing for ZPA to not spend those 600 dollars in office supplies But this is 9500 dollars We could build a statue for that Let's put up a long website I'm not on the tails of person Yeah So if you could find out Is this a regular person How is it done And how come they only need You know they spent 6.74 last year and 2,400 the year before And why would they want a 500 dollar increase This is great to be beating up on old people on TV Okay, is there any other questions on this issue Okay, any other questions As long as she has to go back and ask about this, is there any other questions on the council on any new budget Okay, it is 10 o'clock, Charlie Good question Special town meetings There's a resolution voted that we reserve our money for the payment of the modulars at the Thompson And we had the request for those funds from the school park because I think the people in the east are looking forward to positive action in that regard I will call the manager I'll call the manager I'll call the manager I'll call the manager I'll call the manager I'll call the manager I'll call the manager I'll call the manager on the modulars for just to see the status We have a meeting of the enrollment task force So it would be good to have that in order If anybody has any Okay, Jit? What's the those modulars excluded on the strata and we try to negotiate the two people down there That process on the strata That's a pick up Okay Next week is going to be the besides our FINGCOM meetings on Tuesday is another meeting of the enrollment task force And Charlie and myself are on it And we've been consulting with the education subcommittee of this group to get ideas but round numbers 40 emails declaring that the is too much too big and what we ought to do is take over the gips and make it into a second middle school I've gotten 48 emails approximately from the Gibbs tenets saying that don't you dare touch it Mostly from the council on arts community down there So this is going to be Solomon dividing the baby So it's going to be interesting If anybody has any ingenious solutions to this we'd love to hear on that Okay, so we'll meet Monday Hopefully more I'd like to see the association provide a board of select committee with Mughard people and see if we can't get a community center So Any other business Okay