Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Ellington Select Board from Monday, September 13, 2021. This is Select Board Chair Steve DeCorsi. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahan? Yes, thank you. John Hurd? Yes. Len Diggins? Yes. Eric Hellman? Yes. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapelling? Yes. Doug Heim? Yes. And Board Administrator this evening, Lauren Costa, is participating remotely. Tonight's meeting of the Ellington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with an act signed into law on June 16, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded, and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others, and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novus agenda platform. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. Before I get to the next agenda item, I just want to procedurally just talk about a couple things. There are a number of items on the agenda tonight. There are a number of items that will be receiving public comment on. We also have an open forum section of tonight's meeting. What I would ask is, if you are speaking on items 13, which is Recreasing Thing 14, the discussion vote on Mass Ave. Appleton, 15 proposed removal of trees, and the 17, the ARPA funding presentation, we will have public participation during those items. So for open forum tonight, if it's not on the agenda, that's where we want, we would hear from you on open forum. So any of those other four items, there will be time during the specific agenda items. So with that, I will turn to the first item on the agenda, honoring Daniel J. Dunn. Hopefully Mr. Dunn is with us this evening. Good evening, Mr. Dunn. Good evening. How are you all? Good, thank you. Thank you for joining us. I just want to give a brief introduction. We have some comments from members of the board and then I would like to hear from you, but we have our tradition on the select board of honoring members who have served the town. Mr. Dunn served between 2011 and 2020. And if people were watching earlier this year, he came back on an interim basis throughout the spring of 2021 from January through the end of town meeting. Prior to being on the select board, Dan was a member of the finance committee. And unfortunately we've had a gift for you. I think you have it now this evening. We couldn't get you into the chambers, but we wanted to honor you as appropriately as we could tonight by Zoom and thank you for your years of service and really acknowledge the great service you've given to the town, both as an elected official, as an appointed official, and since then as a citizen of the town. So Dan, thank you very much for all your years of service. I do want to turn it to other members for comments. I'll start with Mr. Herrick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for joining us again, Mr. Dunn. I want to say first off, I'm very jealous of the recent trip that you just had. Yeah, the photos were beautiful as well as the idea of being off of email and phone for five streets is just a glorious thought that I recommend it someday I'll get but not anytime soon. No, I just want to, as the chair said, thank you for your years of service and I say as a new member on the board. I used to sit on the end and I think Dan was the second from from the other end and as I was talking, I'd see every now and then I see Dan. And I'm like, all right, I'm on the right track because because Dan's on on on the same page as me. So, you know, I have the most respect for you and all the work that you've done for years and years and years to the town, both as a, as a Slack board member, as a finance committee member, as a campaign worker, you've been involved in all facets of town and the town is certainly better for having you having had you serve on his behalf. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Diggins. My dear Mr. Don, you make me smile. And, unfortunately, I read you the poem at the end of the last, well, when you were with us being on during the interim period so I haven't come up with another one, but the sentiments are the same. You're definitely number one in and I remember when I started covering select board meetings. I was always interested in what everyone had to say, but, but particularly you and I'm not quite sure why, you know, but, but, but, but that's the case me and it was really a thrill being on the board with you when you serve being this last interim period and we got to do the, go over the, the, the, the articles, the hearings for the, the articles. And, and I really have a lot of respect for you because if you know, you know, I find myself disagreeing with you, unsurprisingly, and we would discuss some things, you know, later in and, and I learned a lot in and, and I really hope to keep in touch and I'm sure we will be in and when I have questions I know that you'll be there and I will say the only way I probably exceed you is that I have more great in my beard, you know, so It just means that my cat your camera is better than mine. Okay. Thank you. Take care. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you. So, just about 10 and a half years ago I got involved in Arlington politics for the first time I was running for town meeting. And I called this guy named Dan done out of the blue and said hey I really like your blog about Tom meeting sound like you know you're talking about can I work in your campaign and to my internal puzzlement and gratitude. He said yes. And here I am today, look what happened, and that is actually not an accident, then you have been a constant inspiration, a public service to me, and to so many others you have showed us how to serve your community. A lot of the time that is without glory. I've seen along the way how hard you have worked behind the scenes to bring people together without taking the credit yourself. You have always been thoughtful. You've always been fair to your opponents to people who have different point of view from you. You've always done the work to really know your thinking and have good reasons for it. And you've been a terrific human being. And all I can say is, as a new board member if I serve the town half as well as you have I will have considered my tenure a raging success. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr helmet. Mrs mahan. Sorry, thank you. My colleagues really pretty much encapsulated it. I too have a nodding head story. The opposite though with Mr hard usually on issues that I was very passionate about, especially in the last year or two of your regular service. If I saw you shaking your head no I knew I was on the right path. So, I want to say congratulations to you and G. I'm living vicariously through both of you on your professional as well as vacation, sometimes mixed up to sometimes not. And I wish both of you nothing but good health and God bless. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mrs mahan and Dan, yeah, whatever you'd like to say, Florida's yours. Sure. I'll be brief among others. I think I need to show off what I got among among other things so I've been using it. It's this chair. It's got like my name and it's got my years and it has the seal of the town. You can see it's you know this beautiful hardwood chair. And I am it was on my front porch when I got home tonight and I'm really delighted it is so. Thank you all for the kind words, I mean I have to begin like that that's kind of those kind of speeches that give you a big head pretty quick. But I'm really glad I'm very excited to get that when I when I resigned or didn't run for election I said that it was an honor to serve the town. It was my pleasure to serve the town and I was really proud of the things that we've done. And the chair is something that's going to it's beautiful and it's useful. And it's going to regularly remind me of what we have to be proud of, which is we work on budgets we will build schools we set policies we hire professional leaders we lead by example. And these decisions are sometimes easy but they're often hard, and we bring our best we do our best, and the results are the things that I really am proud of so thank you all for the kind words thank you for the gift. And good luck with the rest of your agenda. Thank you Mr done and truly is an honor serving with you we appreciate the words and we know we will see you around town active in a number of different things so thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. So item three is acceptance of funds received from various entities. Douglas high and town council, attorney high. Thank you, Mr chair, as the board has gotten increasingly familiar chapter 44 section 53 a of the general laws outlines the process for accepting certain types of grants and gifts. And really just to check to make sure that the board is okay with who is giving us money, and what that money is for in this particular case. This is another round of donations to the health and human services department. These are primarily in two categories, one for coven 19 testing and services from a variety of sources and two for various different senior services, ranging from some grants and gifts from the Metropolitan area planning council and lay hospital for transportation providers to Mount Auburn hospital providing life by hot spots for seniors, and the I'm still here foundation which is an Alzheimer's support organization providing some virtual fitness classes for residents of dementia. Obviously all these gifts are tremendously valuable to the town of Arlington there's no unusual conditions placed on these gifts or grants. And so with that I would look for a motion to accept to this slate of gifts and grants by the select. Thank you, turning home. Mr. Diggins. I will be happy to make the motion to accept those funds me and I just want to say, I'm impressed with where they come from me and it just really goes to show me how, how much me. We are part of a vibrant and caring region so so so yeah I'm really thrilled to make the motion. Mr. Diggins Mr. Helmeth. Thank you. I will say Mr. Diggins I second the motion. Thank you. Mrs. Mahan. No questions happy to support this. Thank you Mr. heard. No questions as well happy to support it. And I'm happy to support it as well. So in a motion by Mr. Diggins seconded by Mr. Helmeth the turning home. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Heard. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Item four AC AC. Thank you. Celebration at Uncle Sam Plaza Saturday, September 25. Laurie Bogdan commissioner for arts and culture, community, engagement. Co-chair. Thanks. Thank you for having me tonight. I'm Laurie Bogdan. As you mentioned, I work with the Community Engagement Committee and you see my face a couple of times this summer. I was the project manager for the Go Outdoors project and this year's round of utility box painting and we would like to celebrate that with all of the people that supported us, funded us, and all of the various artists that participated and we'd like to have a short event on Saturday the 25th with a rain date of the 26th. The event will be from three o'clock to four o'clock in Uncle Sam Plaza and it's pretty straightforward. We need a little extra time to set up and break down if anything is brought there just to leave it as clean as we found it. Great. Sounds great. Thank you very much. I'll turn to the board. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. Move approval. Thank you very much for the work that you do for this event and everything else and no questions. Okay. Mrs. Mahan. Excuse me. We'll tickle. I'm certainly happy to second this and I want to thank Laurie and everyone on the ACAC Community Engagement Committee for the various events that you've brought to Arlington and that's one of the things I think is really a common denominator for everybody who's in the town or comes through the town, so it's very appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Herd. Okay. Thank you and I just want to reiterate too that I really have really enjoyed for years the painting, the utility boxes as everyone else does and I walk by the door every day and that's another really great idea that I think next time it would be nice to see doors all in more than one random place in Arlington I think people would enjoy it so that's been a success as well. The only thing that I generally say when we have something at Uncle Sam Plaza is just whether it's some sort of physical barrier or just have people mindful of the fact that Uncle Sam Plaza is right next to the bike path and there's sort of a blind turn there so just make people aware that people aren't kind of drifting out to the bike path and causing accidents but we put it in your good judgment and I'm happy to support this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Mr. Diggins. Yes, and I'm happy to support this too, Ms. Bogdan and I love the door. I love the door. I have resisted going through it but someday there's going to be someone there with a camera and we'll get a picture of me going through it before it goes down so I'm really happy again to support this and thanks again for all the work that you and your colleagues do. Good. Thank you, Mr. Diggins and yeah, I support this as well and thank you, Ms. Bogdan, for all the work that you've done and the newer utility boxes down by Lake Street, I know one of them was being worked on recently, looks great and the door has, I wasn't sure how that was going to work but it's been really impressive so thank you for that as well. So, on a motion by Mr. Helmuth, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Heim. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's unanimous three. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Nice evening. You too. Okay, next is the Consent Agenda which will be items five through nine. Item five is Minutes of Meetings July 19th, 2021, August 9th, 2021, August 16th, 2021, which was a joint meeting with the Ellington Board of Assessors. Number six is a request for a contractor drain layer license, GCS paving. Number seven for approval, Ellington KidCare Group leaders, special municipal employees. Number eight is the appointment to the Transportation Advisory Committee, an associate member to a full member, Tycho Nightingale. Number nine is a request for an extension of parking for Whittemore Park, Phase One Construction, Allie Carter, the Economic Development Coordinator. I will turn to the board. Mrs. Mahan. Move approval. Thank you. Mr. Hurd. Second. Thank you. Mr. Diggins, any comments, questions? No comments, questions. Mr. Helmuth. Nothing for me. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, on a motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Hurd, Attorney Hime. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Helmuth's vote. Thank you. Okay. Item 10, under appointments, we have a number of appointments to the Ellington Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Trustees, Benjamin Bradlow, Mary Ann Donovan, Karen Kelleher, Neil Mongold, Jacqueline Paseo, Calpurnia, Roberts, and Phillip Tedesco. This, as people know, the Housing Trust Fund was created this past year. There were a number of appointments that were to be made by the Select Board. We still have one more appointment that I will put on the agenda for our next meeting. And with our number of individuals here, I'm going to turn it to the board for any comments or questions and then ask for one vote. But I do want to thank all the prospective trustees for their willingness to serve and for being with us here this evening. So I will turn first to Mr. Hurd. We'll move approval of all the appointments listed and just thank everyone for the willingness to serve. It's a new committee and it's a little bit unknown. But I think we have a really qualified group of people here and we know that you guys will do well with something that's very important and there's a lot of attention to and a lot of excitement for. So I look forward to working with you all in the next few years. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins. Yes, I'd like to echo my colleague and I'm sorry, did you make the motion, Mr. Hurd? And so I'll second it. I was focused on something else because I was looking for one of the appointees and I'm not seeing her. Is it Jaclyn here? No? Oh yeah, there you are. Okay, great. So look at me. I read through all of the resumes and CVs and every single one of you is very impressive. I mean for Phil, is Phil here? Phil, I really appreciate all your hard work. And I gotta tell you, I don't know if you can walk half a mile around here without running into someone from New Orleans and Phil and I have that in common. So it's been really great working with you, at least trying to help you and support you with the ADU project that was very successful in the last town meeting. And to Ms. Kellerher, it's really great to see you involved in this. You know that have just tremendous respect for you and I'm happy to see you going for a position that I would have begged you to take. So thank you once again. It's been a pleasure working with you on the Housing Planning Implementation Committee. Ms. Donovan, I mean your personal story is really compelling and I admire your tenacity and just your efforts to just contribute and make the best out of a tough situation. So thank you for being willing to be a part of the first set of trustees. And to Mr. Mungle, ACA 20 years plus being enough set with that, huh? So you're definitely qualified.  So it's been great having him for her neighbor.  And to Ms. Roberts, and I'm sorry. Yeah, Ms. Roberts, you're on your list of publications. Oh my goodness. The range. One of the best things about doing this is that you get to see what people have done. And I look forward to reading some of your papers then. And finally, to Ms. How do you say your last name, Pacheco? Pacheo. Pacheo? Okay, thank you. So actually for you, I have a question. I mean, I'm really impressed with your work, but you've done work out in the Berkshares. Are you familiar with Berkshares? Only a little bit. I never dealt with them personally. Okay. All right. Because I was wondering about the possibility of using those as a source for funding and providing some funding for the trust fund. And it seems like a way to kind of help businesses meet and also maybe get some money into the fund. So just an idea. I mean, if you were familiar with them, I'd be interested in your thoughts about it. But if you're not, well, you're not. But maybe we can talk about that. So thank you all very much. And thanks for your indulgence, my colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmle. Thank you. Well, there's no way to follow that up. But I don't need to because Len really captured just how strong of a class this is. Thank you for being willing to serve. I've had the opportunity to work with a couple of you as well. And I know just how good you are and how dedicated you are to this. And I know that you walk into this with open eyes that you know that this is a brand new entity. It is going to be a challenge to really give it the funding that it needs to reach its full potential. But I couldn't think of a better group that will seize the chance to be creative, to think big, to think how to communicate the opportunities and the possibilities of this fund to tell meeting to other community leaders into residents. So that it'll be so wonderful to have some concrete plans and suggestions so that when we come to the community to ask for support for this fund, that we'll be able to show some real vision. And I know that you'll work really hard for that. So thanks for being willing to serve. Thank you, Mr. Helmle. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you so much. My previous colleagues touched on just about all of my points. Some of you I know. Some of you I recognize your names and have seen you do great things in town. And some of you, I'm so impressed and thankful that you came Arlington's way and bringing your individual areas of expertise to this newly formed committee. I would say I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit about you each individually. But as you go forward, I can tell by the CVs and the resumes that you're going to explore every avenue possible of funding twice, whether it's CDBG or CPA, or going to the town, going to town meeting, the APRA funds. So thank you for all that free experience and expertise that the town of Arlington is getting. We couldn't afford to pay you all. I know that, but for the jobs that you're about to do. So I'm very appreciative. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Yeah. And I want to thank you all for your willingness to serve. And just for clarification, there are six appointees by the select board. Mr. Bradlow is the town manager's appointment to designate the ex-officio member. We still need to select a member of the select board, which I will put on our next agenda. And then the trustees will, the trust, and the trustees will begin their work. And I'm sure they will be back before us. So I want to thank you all for the experience that you bring to this and for your willingness to serve. I want to recognize Ms. Keller for her contributions to the town meeting discussions on affordable housing. These past couple of years, you really added a lot to that discussion and brought a lot of knowledge to the table. So thank you. Unfortunately, we'd love to hear from each one of you tonight, but we are rather solidly booked on our agenda. So we want to recognize you. Thank you for your service. And we will have you in once your work begins. And we'll have more time on that occasion. So thank you. And on a motion by Mr. Herd, seconded by Mr. Diggins, attorney Heim. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. I'm seeing a thumbs up from Mr. Diggins. Yes. Sorry. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. This is Mohan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Great. Thank you. And we will see you soon. Thank you. Item 11, the grants committee of the Allington Commission for Arts and Culture. Brian McMurray. Is Mr. McMurray here tonight? Just promoted Mr. McMurray. And I will go back to changing everybody else back to an attendee. Okay. Good evening, Mr. McMurray. And thank you for your interest. I understand you've already been attending a lot of meetings. And we received the information asking or recommending you for appointment. So we're to one individual if you want to say a couple words about your interest. And then I will turn it over to the board. Good evening. Thank you. I'm Brian McMurray. Lived here in Arlington for about four years. My spouse is a practicing fine artist. And I have a background in interactive media. So when I saw that the grants committee was seeking new members, I thought this would be a great way to get involved in local arts scene and help support other artists. Great. Thank you very much. I'll turn it to the board. Mr. Diggins. I made a motion to approve of Mr. McMurray in forwarding position. And I'd just like to say that 2009, 2010, very interesting year for you. You could just go to George Harrison or Fish or someone in the Dillon Foundation, ask for some money and we'll be all set. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helman. Thank you. I gladly second the motion. Thank you, Mr. McMurray for stepping up. I'm always impressed when someone just starts getting involved, just starts attending and shows a real interest. And that's what makes Arlington such a great town is that so many people do that. And I think your collective background, what you do for your day job and your past and your spouse and all that will make you actually just expand your horizons and your critical thinking and your creativity about how to use these funds to promote public art and arts in the community. So thanks for stepping up. Thank you, Mr. Helman. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, I'm happy to support this motion and you're obviously well equipped to do this job because you sort of volunteered yourself on your own and went and saw what the facets of it were and learned all about it. So I don't really see any learning curve for you with your previous experience. And even the engineer side, I think you're going to be able to fit that in somehow, not an analytical thinking or something like that. So I want to thank you very much. I'm so happy that once again, we have someone here in Arlington that is willing to give their talents just to make this a better place to live. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurst. And again, just thank you for your willingness to serve and so much what my colleagues have said. Every time we do an appointment in Arlington, for any committee, we are just baffled by the quality of candidates that we have at our disposal in Arlington. It's really amazing the people that we have that come out and serve and the experience and qualifications that they bring to the position. So thank you for your willingness to serve and I look forward to working with you. Thank you, Mr. Herdy. And I want to echo my colleagues, Mr. McMurray, and this is an example of an individual who found an interest.  So congratulations for taking the initiative on that and we really appreciate your willingness to do this, to serve. So on a motion by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Helmuth, Attorney Heim. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. It's unanimous vote. Great. Thank you very much. Have a good night. Okay, licenses and permits, item 12 for approval, food vendor license, Anthony's Eastside Deli 159 Mass Ave, Given Shrestha. I believe I promoted Given. Let me see. Hi everyone. Good evening. If you could just tell us a little bit about the application and we received some of the written materials and I will turn it to the board for any questions or comments. All right. This is Given Shrestha trying to bind Anthony's Deli. I'm into the business, food business for like 17 years and my partners are, they are being more than 20 years. So we try to do our best to the town. So, you know, we're on the same business and later on we try to add new variety of the food as well. Actually, I'm from the Shrestha business for 16 years and I'm working as a district manager for five years for Genji Yalilchi. This is located at the Whole Food Market. We have almost 178 districts in the United States. Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you and I will turn it to the board. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I'm happy to move approval and thank you for your interest in doing business in Arlington. We wish you the success in the endeavor. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mahan. I'll definitely second that and I know how, we all know how difficult studying any small business is and then when you add the restaurant component, that's a little bit more of a hill to climb up.  So I am confident you'll do well here in Arlington and we look forward to seeing and visiting your business often. Thank you so much, Will. I think thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Herd. Thank you and welcome and thank you for investing in Arlington and choosing Arlington to start a business. I have a history with Anthony's side, Deli. My father-in-law is Anthony. He was a former owner. He's not the current owner of the business. So we do love Anthony's and we do often go in there. So good luck with the business. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Mr. Diggins. Yes, and I live close by me. So you'll see me. And just to be clear, you're going to be a seven day a week operation from 10 to 10? Yes, seven days a week. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. I also support the application and I wish you the best of luck with your business on Mass Ave. So on a motion by Mr. Helmuth, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Heim. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney Heim. Okay. Next is Open Forum, except in unusual circumstances, any matter presented for consideration of the Board shall neither be acted upon nor decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the Open Forum was established. It should be noted that there is a three-minute time limit to present a concern or request before we ask for hands on Open Forum. I just want to remind people who may not, or to say again for people who may not have been here at the beginning of the meeting, we are going to take separate comment on the re-precincting Article 13 on Article 14 for the discussion and vote of the Mass Ave. Appleton for Article 15 for the proposed removal of trees and for Article 17 on the ARPA funding presentation. So if you want to talk on any of those four, you will be recognized time permitting for each one of those items when we get to them because of the way Open Forum works. We're not going to act on anything that's brought up during Open Forum. So if it's something that is not on the agenda, that is what we would look to hear from you tonight. I also want to point out before we get to it, under the re-precincting and the ARPA funding, there are going to be continued common periods that the town has, particularly for ARPA funding another week or so, the town manager will get into that later in the meeting. The town clerk is having a forum next week on re-precincting and there are still opportunities to hear on that. I will repeat that, but just in the interest of time and in the interest of subject matter. So with that, I may have taken longer than the forum is going to last tonight, but I just wanted to be clear for people who want to participate. So I'll ask the town manager, is there anybody who wishes to be heard on Open Forum? Mr. Chair, there's one hand raised, Beth Malofchick. Okay. Good evening, Ms. Malofchick. Good evening. Select Board and Zoom viewers. Beth Malofchick, 20 Russell Street, town meeting member for precinct nine. I would like to suggest a request that the select board consider doubling the number of trees that are planted each year by the tree warden. I think that in light of the recent UN report that that would be one of the essential things that I hope the select board will consider ramping up in terms of mediating climate change and in terms of protecting and invigorating our tree canopy, which as we all know and recognize, I hope, is essential to the community's health and well-being. So I'll keep that remark as I think pretty much everyone knows I'm a big tree advocate, but I think reminders are always useful. The other thing I'd like to speak to is I am curious as to what the select board is doing to save money and address the overspending. I am aware that there's I think a $40 million deficit. I know this was addressed at town meeting on the final evening by the chief of the financial committee. And so I would like to know and I look forward to hearing from the select board and from town announcements how the departments are spending money and what what initiatives are in place as to prioritizing spending and what each department will be doing. I've been frankly very alarmed at mentioned by the town clerk about economizing on elections. I think we need to support democracy. We don't need to be saving money in that department certainly, but there are many others where perhaps that could be considered. So I look forward to hearing that and most especially again, the trees. Please let's double the number of trees we are planting since across town. Many come down for health reasons or they're lost unfortunately in the increasing event of storms due to climate instability. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Miloftrack. Is there anybody else, Mr. Trappelline? Let me just verify. No, there is not. Okay, that closes open forum. Item 13 is a discussion for the repressing thing proposal and we had heard earlier this summer as a result that there are two things that are going to be before us as we go throughout the fall and perhaps into certainly into October, maybe even into November and beyond because of the federal census, the population in Arlington has changed. That will result in at least some changes to the precinct map because of changes in population. Because of this every 10-year process with the census, it is also an opportunity to take a look at how precincts are laid out and the number. The town clerk, Ms. Brazil, has made a proposal to reduce the number of precincts from 21 to 16. What I wanted to continue this evening is to hear from her, hear from any members of the public on how they feel about the number of precincts. I am planning on putting this on for a future vote at our second meeting this September to maybe take a more formal position as to what the board feels about the appropriate number of precincts in between tonight's meeting and the meeting on the 27th. There will be a forum. I think Ms. Brazil will reference that in her comments. With that, I will turn it over to Ms. Brazil to provide additional information that she wants to provide in support of that plan. Good evening, Ms. Brazil. Thank you very much. I want to just quickly clarify some details and provide an overview of my recommendation to draw 16 precincts instead of 21. I recorded a 12-minute video explaining my recommendation in more detail for 16 precincts and my goals to expand services to voters. So I'll provide the briefest of summaries and not take up time tonight with slides. Just to clarify, the draft maps are based on the preliminary data from the state. Normally we wouldn't even likely publish maps that weren't prepared using the actual data. But because of the timeline this year, we did in order to allow the public to engage while there was time for substantive feedback. I did receive the actual data files from the state very late this afternoon so the working group can start on revisions soon. We are following a process and deadlines established by the Secretary of State. Our responsibility is to do our local review and to draw the best lines that we can. Normally the legislature would use our precincts to construct their district. If the legislature passes legislation to change that order, I have been told that most likely we would have the option to resubmit our map if we had finalized one that is now incompatible with their district lines. The law sets the standards for how to draw the precincts and I don't want to sort of review all of them but I want to draw attention to the rules that speak to we have to draw precinct boundaries that do not result in the dilution of minority group member votes and the Voting Rights Act prohibits any voting practice which results in denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color or membership in a language minority group. As the working group looks at the maps our goal is to avoid situations where a small number of households are very different from the rest of the precinct. Feedback from residents can draw attention to areas where we need to look more closely and of course we'll revisit all the maps now that we have the actual data from the state. Represincting working group thinks it's important to go where the data takes us. We can take advantage of new mapping software that makes it possible to adjust the lines as we look at the demographic data. I know residents are very curious about the process so we will continue to add information to the represincting link throughout the month. As Mr. DeCorsi mentioned our timeline includes a forum next Wednesday, September 22nd, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Arlington and the Election Modernization Committee. That forum will allow for small group discussions so people can really engage with some of the complexities. So just quickly summarizing some of the information from my presentation video. Sixteen precincts is a compromise between the minimum 12 precincts required and our current 21 precincts which are fairly small compared to most communities. Having close to the minimum number of precincts does increase the risk of having to add a precinct in 10 years and so a lot of communities build a cushion in for a few extra precincts. The working group believes that we can draw a map of 16 precincts that is more reflective of Arlington's population and more equitable. Fewer precincts make several reforms easier to implement and allows me flexibility in how I staff precincts or central tabulation to accommodate high volumes of mail ballots. I have requested capital funds for new equipment and I can see the need for new spending on local elections as we implement vote by mail and early voting at Town Hall. Increased efficiency in investing in new programs and cost effectiveness by not over staffing on election day is more achievable with 16 precincts. I share the concerns raised about the impact on the number of members for the finance committee. That is a problem we can address by drafting a change to the town manager act for town meetings approval. It takes time for such changes to be enacted so I think we would also need a short-term solution to get us through the preparation of the next budget if the composition of the finance committee is changed by adopting a 16 precinct map. Some feedback has come directly to the select board members, but of the data that we've been, the feedback we've been getting through the Google form, so far we've received 18 comments that speak specifically to the issue of 16 or 21 precincts. Of those, only four comments are opposed. One person was concerned about the distance to the polls being larger. One wants fewer residents per town meeting member and two are opposed to reducing the number of town meeting members to 240. On the other side, there are town meeting members who support 16 precincts despite the impact on them and residents who think 21 precincts is too many and that the smaller lines divide neighborhoods. So I think it's great that we are having the conversations as a community and that we have time to consider the tradeoffs and the variety of perspectives. I want to thank you for your time tonight. I don't propose a change like this lightly, but it is my strong belief that 16 precincts is overall better for Arlington and worth the short-term pain as we adjust. We are used to our current map because it's been that way for 50 years, but population and demographic changes over the past 10 years are shared interest in promoting equity and changes in how elections will be run over the next 10 years. I mean, it's a great time to consider making a change and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ms. Brazil. So before I turn to the board, I was going to open it to comments from the public. We did hear from Mr. Foskett earlier today. I believe he's on the list and I will recognize him next. I know he's an attendee if we can promote him. Good evening, Mr. Foskett. Mr. Foskett, if you are with us, you need to unmute your microphone. Sorry. This is my video. Oh, here it is. Let's see if this works. Yes, thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening and thank you to Town Clerk Brazil for having the initiative and energy to propose this change that we're discussing. The current proposal to reduce the number of precincts from 21 to 16 is to me deeply troubling for a number of reasons. Respectfully, I suggest that this proposed disenfranchisement is not one which should be undertaken without broad input from citizens and town meeting itself. A reduction of citizen representation in our most cherished town meeting heritage brought forward in the middle of the summer vacation period has no broad mandate from the town. In my view, changing it can only serve to increase citizen frustration in the long run. The proposal to reduce the number of precincts to 16 from 21 represents a significant 24% decrease in the number of precincts and neighborhood representation in town government. While the proposal suggests that the increase in the increase in town meeting members per precinct from 15 to 21 dilutes this effect to only 5% impact. This change also means that town meeting candidates and town meeting members have to reach out to 31% more voters over a larger geographic area in a manner that can only serve to make voter representation communications more cumbersome and complicated, essentially diluting representation. In some discussions and the town clerk alluded to this tonight that there might be some financial savings or some efficiency savings and I looked at this based on some numbers presented by the town clerk earlier in the year and my understanding is that the effect is about $18,000 per year at best. This is about 100th of a percent of our annual expenditures. In subsequent discussions, including tonight, the town clerk implied there would be not necessarily financial savings but a repurposed manner of more efficient use of personnel. But what is this more efficient use and does this really justify the disenfranchisement that we're dealing with? And finally, I am concerned as chair of the finance committee, and by the way, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself, Charles Foskett precinct eight, Grant Wood Road, and also chair of the finance committee. Very troubling to me is the impact on the finance committee for a number of different reasons. Many town boards and committees put in a tremendous amount of work, especially the select board and the school committee, and they make the members of these committees make enormous contributions to their personal time and effort. But in the light of this proposal, the reduction of representation for voters, increased burden on the town meeting members and lack of financial benefit. This proposal also moves to impose a much larger workload on the finance committee members who already put in a huge amount of effort with respect to the work that they do with only a part-time executive secretary has support. Each year we deal with 76 budget categories and numerous warrant articles for a budget that you know is $180 million a year. And the finance committee meets twice per week from the end of January to the beginning of April, and that's about 26 meetings reviewing all of these budgets on a line item basis. The budgets and warrant articles are divided over several working groups so that members can become subject matter experts in individual budgets. And these working groups meet three or five times each. So now the members are meeting maybe 30 or more times for this process. And then in addition, they meet each night of town meeting, another eight to 12 meetings. So we're getting into the 40 to 50 meetings a year range. And if there's a special town meeting in the fall, then you need to add another two to four meetings. So as you can see, the burden grows. My concern is that if the number of members are reduced, the work that each member has to do is going to be substantially increased probably by about 30%. It's already difficult to recruit citizens that join the finance committee. Even though there's tremendous personal and emotional reward from civic participation, the work is heavy and long. This proposed change will make the workload heavier and recruiting much more of a challenge. And I would hesitate to think that at some point, the committee would be pushed in the direction of seeking more professional paid support, which to me and most committee members would be an anathema. Our representative town meeting system is vibrant, exciting, successful. It's nurtured Arlington for almost a hundred years. The current configuration has been operating successfully for more than half a century. It's been led by a series of dedicated town moderators and guided by the policies of thoughtful select boards. I submit to you that this process is not broken. So there's no need to fix it. I strongly urge you to take no action on this proposal. Thank you very much for your time. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Foskett. Mr. Chaptolin, is there anybody that else that wishes to be heard on this matter or this agenda item? There are right now four hands raised. Okay. Would you like me to keep Ms. Brazilian, Mr. Foskett? Sure. Okay. The first name is Roderick Holland. Okay. Good evening, Mr. Holland. Good evening. Roderick Holland, precinct seven town meeting member. I want at this point just to briefly comment on what I regard as the virtue of fine-grained representative town meeting precincts. The fact that we have a representative town meeting means that we're already one step away from the sort of direct town meeting that much smaller New England communities still practice. It's a valuable democratic institution and it is the sort of best way to get bottom up input into the processes of town government. And I think most everyone in this room, with some exceptions, has been a town meeting member at one time or another. The thing that I wanted to point out is that the current precinct size is actually very manageable from the town meeting member perspective. I've found when I first ran for town meeting that I could canvas the precinct seven on foot in two or three days. How long it really took depended a lot on how many people I managed to find and talk to. But this is a scale that is actually workable for town meeting members who are ordinary citizens. Beyond that, the size of the precincts allow for relationships to grow up so that people know who their town meeting members are and can go and talk to us when they have some question or something that they want to do with town government. So it's a useful scale and that's what I wanted to add. Thank you, Mr. Holland. Next speaker is Don Seltzer. And for the people who were listed, I said this in an open forum and Mr. Holland was well within the time limit. But if you could try to limit your comments to 3 minutes or less, that would be great. I will now recognize Mr. Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I've sent the board some detailed comments regarding the plans that were submitted for public review. I hope that you have all had a chance to read them and I'll be glad to answer any of your questions. I'll just summarize my main points. The two precinct options that were created by the committee are claimed to be fairer or more equitable than our existing precincts. Other than a passing reference made to race, age, home ownership, household income, no explanation has been provided as just how equity is achieved in all of these categories. I have no idea if the committee's goal is to provide an even balance throughout all of our precincts or if it means the opposite, a deliberate gerrymandering of precinct lines to create precincts where certain groups or interests have greater influence. If that is the case, we should know about it. Second, I am concerned about several of the equity maps that were shown in the video presentation. A close scrutiny of some of them suggests that they were drawn up with flawed data and that are not an accurate depiction of Arlington neighborhoods. I have compared them to the official census data that was released last month and some of these maps are seriously incorrect. Finally, I share the concern of many in town that the committee did not even consider pursuing the goal of finding the least disruptive solution to reprecincting. They have only presented options in which every town meeting member must run for a real election next year. This is a real burden both financially and on the time of these residents and it's not necessary. Only five of our precincts are out of balance and it is possible to draw up new lines in which only eight or nine precincts are affected. These minimally disruptive options should at least be on the table for the public and for this board to consider. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. Just one brief comment before we recognize the next speaker and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Brazil, but the maps that you presented today are more illustrative of what, whether it's 16 or 21 precincts. At the end of the day, whatever the number is that's decided, the select board will determine that number and will certainly will look for input. So to the extent that what's being published that people believe that is what is being proposed, that is not the exact outline of any of the precincts. I think it was for discussion purposes and certainly needs to be much more feedback on that. So if you're nodding your head, so I think that's you're in agreement with that. But thank you, Mr. Seltzer. Next person on the list is Alan Jones. Good evening, Mr. Jones. Just need to unmute yourself. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members and Ms. Brazil. Alan Jones, precinct 14 and Vice Chair of the Finance Committee. And of course, I share the same concerns as Mr. Foskin about the impact on the Finance Committee, which we know can be potentially resolved with a change of the Town Manager Act, but there is the transitional year that Ms. Brazil mentioned. But my question is actually more general about precincts and voting. The process of voting has changed a lot in the last few years and will continue to change with things like extended voting, vote by mail, possibly online voting in the future, a lot of innovations about voting. And my question is about how that has impacted the thinking about precincts and voting and voting locations and such. So I'll leave that as a question. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mr. Seltzer, I don't know if you have a brief answer to that or you want to refer to your materials or? Yeah, I mean, certainly I'm happy to speak very briefly. Yes. The more we dig into looking at election and election planning and understand the likely changes to election law that are going to come, that's been a big part of the entire process studying that. So Mr. Jones is correct. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Next speaker, Robin Bergman. Good evening, Ms. Bergman. Hi, good evening. Robin Bergman, Park Avenue, precinct 12. I want to say first that I agree completely with the remarks given by Mr. Foskett. I also feel that town meeting isn't broke. So why do we need to fix it? I like the idea of smaller precincts. They are much more manageable. You can walk the whole district fairly easily. It lends itself to much more interaction with your neighbors. I'm in favor of keeping the 21. A question that I have is, I mean, is there any reason why the budget has to stay the same for elections? Because I don't think that saving money on democracy issues is the right place to save money, even though I would be in favor of looking at where the budget could be cut. The other specific concern I have in looking at the maps, and I know they're not final, but I'm looking at my own neighborhood. I'm on Park Avenue above the water tower. And there's a little carve out taking my neighborhood out of the Brackett school area and putting it in with the Dillon school area. But I don't know anybody in that area. And it's kind of separating our little part of the neighborhood that's part of the Brackett school neighborhood out separating us out and putting us in with Dillon.  I would have to then drive to vote to the Dillon school. So I'm not so great in favor of this change. Those are my comments. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Bergman. Next is Judith Garber. Good evening, Ms. Garber. Hello. I'm Duke Garber, 130 Mass Ave. and Precinct Fortown meeting member. I am still learning wing the pros and cons on this issue. I really appreciate the discussion. Something that Ms. Brazil said I was wondering if I could hear more about that. Something I hadn't heard about was you were talking about how having larger precincts sort of accommodates more growth in the future. Can you or I'm not sure if I heard that right, but can you talk a bit more? Does that mean that by having larger precincts, if we grow as a town, we won't have to do the repressing thing over and over again? Because I think anything that can help us get into a growth mindset for welcoming more people in the town is probably a good thing. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garber. Go ahead, Ms. Brazil. Okay. So, no, what I'm trying to do is provide a cushion. If we were to take the smallest number of precincts, if you do the mass out, they would be very close to, all of them would be very close to the 4,000 person cap. Obviously, with 21 precincts, we don't have that problem at all. So, but I think a cushion, some cushion is a good idea. And so 16 felt like a reasonable compromise for a couple of different reasons. Two polling locations, two precincts at each polling location, since we have eight right now. Just sort of things like that led to the 16 number. Okay. Thank you. And Kevin, another question. Would you say that more, for more people, it'll increase their distance to a polling location because they're having fewer polling locations? There aren't, we're not proposing fewer polling locations. We're proposing that we stick with the ones that we have. And that it's, and actually some people are, right now, some polling locations serve three different precincts. And so there are some people who are currently traveling a pretty good distance. You know, the, I think we can do better with the 16 precinct map on getting people, if we adjust our polling locations. And out of the select board would want to look at that very carefully. That's their decision as well. So the reprisings may or may not change people's distance to a polling location? It shouldn't make it worse. I mean, someone's always going to be at the edge of a line. There's no perfect map. Yeah. Was that it, Ms. Carver? Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Next on the list is Beth Milovchuk. Good evening again, Ms. Milovchuk. Hello again, Beth Milovchuk, Russell Street. I wanted to support the remarks of Mr. Foskett. I'm very alarmed at the notion of disenfranchisement. And I would like to ask the select board to consider a 21 precinct version with the least amount of disruption, as suggested by Don Celcer. I think that's an avenue that should be examined. I never did follow the town clerk's reasoning for requiring everyone to run in every precinct. I just never saw the logic there. So I'm very concerned about democracy. It's participatory. And I'm just very alarmed at notions that have been raised from the beginning of this discussion regarding efficiencies and saving money, profoundly alarmed. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Milovchuk. That is it for the number of people wishing to speak. So I said at the beginning, I put this on the agenda tonight to hear from the public to provide Ms. Brazil an opportunity and anybody else who wanted to speak. I knew Mr. Foskett wanted to speak in this, but I would like to turn it to the board. Again, not looking for a vote tonight on the number birth. There's any questions or comments that board members have. And I'll start with Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you've outlined in the town clerk, there are going to be future opportunities and a couple of other forms. We're not going to vote anything tonight. I will say, as of right now, I'm in agreement with Mr. Foskett and others along those sentiments, but I want to keep an open mind and see what else comes out in the town clerk's form any other time. So thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you. I want to thank our wonderful tongue clerk for the presentation and all the work on this and from the members of the public that provide comments both tonight and via email. I also, in one thing, I think about this process that the town clerk has done very well and I appreciate is the amount of opportunity for the public to be heard. And I do look forward to participate in the forums and continue to hear public comment on this as we get towards the end of September and start to formulate an opinion at this board level as to where we'd go from here. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins. Thanks, Chair. Yeah, I have a lot more thinking to do about this and I definitely have an open mind. I will just say philosophically, though, for me, something doesn't have to be broken for one to want to improve upon it. So I welcome this conversation, even though I don't think the system is broken. And I do like the fact that we are considering some possibilities. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I am really grateful to the town clerk for looking for opportunities. I agree with Mr. Diggins that there's nothing wrong. In fact, there's a lot right about looking about how we might be able to do things better. I maintain an open mind about this. I'm really glad that the clerk led with the publicity effort to solicit feedback. I think that the more feedback we have, the better. So thank you for that. I look forward to the forum next week. I want to respectfully diverge from a couple of my colleagues in town meeting who have used the word disenfranchisement. I don't see that. I think that's a powerful word. And from what I understand for this plan, it does not diminish or dilute the democratic representation of residents in town. It changes the number of people and players. But to my understanding, everybody still has the same proportion that representation and power to be represented in town meeting. They would increase, an individual resident would have more town meeting members overall. And I think that going down from 252 to 240 is a change and has an effect. And I think that it is valid to disagree with that change. I would just note that the state law encourages towns to have as close to 240 town meeting members as possible. So we're not in any way diverging there as well. I think it's a function of the math. So that's the only, I have a couple of questions other than that. And I'll try to keep this brief. The first one is, if I could through the chair, ask the clerk to remind us if we, what do we have to, what's the minimum number of precincts that we know have to change boundaries, regardless whether we decide to change the number of precincts from now, just based on the demographic shifts. And I understand you just got the final data today to the best of your knowledge. All I can say is that the preliminary data and the preliminary map the state provided for the 21 precinct model had 19 of the 21 precincts shifting until we actually get the data. It's difficult to tell. And it's really a snowball effect. You know, we know there's more concentration exists extremely likely in the east. And so, you know, once you start moving those, you have to keep rebalancing across the whole map. And we've, we've had 13 and 15 precincts affected the last two times. We redrew the maps. So So if I understand that correctly, it's possible we buy I believe the phrase that you used in a prior meeting was a very exciting election. We with a lot of time meeting members having to run it run at once, which is not something most time meeting members will relish, including this one. But it sounds like that we could be very close to that, depending on how the number shake up anyway. That's helpful. My other question is, is timing. And I think the one concern I have about making a big change to 16. And I fully appreciate the advantages that you articulated in your excellent video. My biggest concern is logistical. Do we have enough time to get such a big change? Right. And there's a rhetorical question for now, not actually asking a question. I think my specific question is we know that the state legislature still we're hearing that they still would like to find a way to draw state and federal legislative districts before municipalities do. So I know that we're on a current timeline and we don't we don't know what's going to happen. And so we have to we can't send our hands. But I guess that my rule my first question I actually would love an answer on is do we to what extent do we have to kind of start over once we if we do some work now and we try to work on a 16 precinct map or for that matter 21 precinct map. And if the state legislature in next month or November or whatever, hands us new districts. What does that do to our plans? Do we start over? You know, how much rework is there? And and I guess the context of my question is like my anxiety is do we have time to to make the big change around the margins? If if we're handed new legislative districts and given I don't know two or three weeks to fix them, we don't know. We do we don't know what we're going to get. Welcome response on any of that, of course. Sure. I mean, I think, yeah, we we can do it. You have we have to do it. We can't we can't not do the work on our end of looking at the data and doing our very best to make sure that we are drawing fair precinct boundaries. The, you know, the physical process itself of taking the demographic data and drawing a new map is just, you know, a couple hours. So if there's a time crunch, you know, we can certainly do our very best. Well, you know, the re precincting working group can, you know, take all of the feedback, look at the concerns that have been raised about, you know, specific neighborhoods and, you know, awkward lines, you know, creating, you know, creating issues that we might not have considered. You know, we can, we can do that pretty quickly. So it is, it is an awkward situation created by the delay in the federal census, but I think there's nothing to do but keep going. Yeah, no, and that's probably the only honest answer you give is that we find a way, right? Yeah. So yeah, and so I think just my comment and all of that is I still, I'm open to it. I think that I do worry about this, you know, having to find a way to do it with a big change versus a smaller change. I think that's my one big reservation in this, but I, but I keep an open mind. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. And yeah, I also want to say I want to continue to keep an open mind on this. I will say I'm concerned if we did go from 21 to 16 to go from 252 town meeting members to 240 concerns me. And I also am concerned just logistically how this, what will happen with our house races and the precincts for Representative Rogers and Representative Garberley, because you potentially run into some difficulty in terms of what our precincts may look like and what the house precincts will look like doesn't, it won't matter to Senator Friedman because she represents all of the town. But that is a concern. I also want to say to town meeting members, I have heard from several, but I would like to hear from as many town meeting members as possible on this, because this really does affect them. We run on an at large basis on the select board. So it's, it's townwide, but to, to hear from town meeting members, I think that opportunity will be given next week at the seminar. I know Mr. Diggins has worked on outreach and in promoting precinct meetings. And I think it's important for town meeting members to weigh in on this, if to reach out to us or to contact us in any way they see fit. So I appreciate the presentation tonight. I appreciate everybody's comments. And I think we'll either do this at the next meeting or first one in October as I look at the calendar. But we do have to move forward with the process. No matter what we do, I appreciate the work that you've done, Ms. Brazil, to get this going earlier this summer and to provide information. And we'll see where the information takes us, as you said. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Foskett. Okay. Item 14 is next discussion and vote of the Mass Ave. Appleton Design Review Committee recommendation, Daniel Amstad's Senior Transportation Planner. Before we begin this discussion, I want to let people know that I will be recusing myself from this discussion this evening. My sister-in-law is a business owner in the block between Appleton Place and Burton Street and talked to Attorney Heim. We've also talked to with the State Ethics Commission and I have made a determination that it's appropriate for me to recuse myself from the discussion. So I will step away from the meeting. Our Vice Chair, Mrs. Mahan, will be running this part of the meeting tonight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Attorney Heim and my colleagues. I just want to sort of lay out the parameters of how I envision this going. And when we get to public comment, I'll have a couple more sentences on that. But what I'd like to do with my colleague's permission is to start off with the town manager for sort of an overview. And also I think our traffic engineer, transportation planner, clean energy guru who has so many hats, so I'm not going to get it right. Then after the town manager and Mr. Amstad's and any other part of the manager's presentation has finished, I'm going to turn to my colleagues on the board and see if they have any questions on what they've heard so far. Then not ask for out, then turn over to the public. And when we get to that part, then the public can have their remarks. Then once that has all finished, I'll bring it back to my colleagues for further discussion and any possible vote. So with that in mind, I'd like to turn it over to our town manager, Mr. Chaplain. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I will give, as you said, a brief overview. Also, as you mentioned, we're joined here by senior transportation planner, Daniel Amstad. Jason, I don't know your title, but Traffic Engineer or tell me your title. Yeah, Traffic Engineer with Green International. Perfect. So Jason works for Green International who worked on this project. And I've also brought up Mike Rademacher, who's the Director of Public Works, who will be able to answer potential questions from the board as well. In introduction, I'll say, obviously, there's been a lot of work in consideration that has gone into this issue. There's also clearly, I think, as those tuned in tonight and as board members know, lots of passion around this issue on all sides of it. I want to make clear, I sent the board a memo last week making a suggestion for how to potentially consider this matter tonight. And I know in some quarters, it's been received as a rejection of one of the options. It was not intended to be that. Rather, it was intended to be a potential path forward if consensus couldn't be found by the board given the passions again on all sides of this issue. So with that, what I would like to do if it pleases the board is ask Jason to present an overview of each of the options that have been drafted by him and his firm. And then, as you said, Ms. Bahan, turn it to the board for questions. So Jason, do you want me to share the designs or do I'm going to give you permission to do that? Yeah, if you want to give me permission, I can bring them up. Okay. Let me know if that works. Can everyone see the screen? Okay. Is everyone able to see the screen? Yeah, it seems to you're giving thumbs up from folks. Yep. Okay. Great. All right. So yeah, as Adam mentioned, my name is Jason Govan. I'm the traffic engineer who worked on this project with the town. And just a brief, you folks are probably familiar with the history here. There have been several bicycle crashes here at this intersection of Mass Ave and Appleton Street. And the main conflict is between westbound vehicles on Mass Ave heading westbound at this intersection and eastbound bicyclists traveling through the intersection. The westbound left turn has collided with several eastbound bicyclists going through the intersection. One of them, unfortunately, resulting in a fatality and several other crashes resulting in injury. So we were brought on by the town to look at this intersection and the issues that are occurring here to identify some safety improvements that could be implemented to hopefully address or somewhat address these issues to improve the conditions that are out there today. So when we had talked with the town and developed the scope for this project, we clearly and very early on in the process identified that the long-term and preferred solution here will take a lengthy process as far as design and funding goes. It will be, if a traffic signal we believe has, in the meetings that we had with the design committee, that was deemed a preferred alternative here that would eliminate that conflict potentially and provide the most safety benefits. However, that would require additional engineering, lengthy analysis, and fun in a relatively expensive cost at the intersection that needs some time to come to fruition. So what we had done was we had identified a scope to come up with some short-term improvements that would improve the conditions out there today and could be done relatively quick and provide some improvements while a longer-term improvement is designed, analyzed, and funding is appropriately assigned for that improvement. So we came up with two final alternatives and the process for this, we had several meetings, open public meetings with the design review committee where we presented several iterations of these concepts and we arrived finally at the fourth meeting to a final two alternatives here. So that's what I'll be presenting now and these alternatives took into account our engineering judgments and industry standards as well as input from the public that we received from the first three meetings as well as input from the design review committee, town TPW, and those folks. So the first alternative here that I'm showing- Jason, quick before you could you click just one or two clicks to zoom in so the words are a little more legible for those viewing. Yes, thank you very much. Great. So on your screen now you'll see the short-term option one which this option here it maintains the existing conditions as far as bicycle accommodations go in this stretch. So folks who aren't familiar with Mass Ave, there are bike lanes along Mass Ave in this area. However, the bike lanes there's a gap in the existing bike lanes from about Richardson Avenue in the west where the Duncan Donuts is near Lowell Street to the east and this is where that gap exists today in this area. So right in this area this option maintains the shared lanes while in this what benefit this provides is very early on in the process we knew that any impacts to on-street parking we're going to be sensitive in this area particularly for the business owners and residents around here. So option one maintain the shared lanes maintains all of the existing on-street parking supply along Mass Ave that's out there today. With some impacts that I'll go over really quick you can see here currently the existing conditions at the intersection there's an MBTA bus stop just before this crossing almost within the intersection. This is not preferred for safety for safety as far as bus operations pulling in and out of here so close to the intersection and almost within the intersection but also it will block the view of any pedestrians that are waiting to cross this heavy utilized crossing here. There's an existing pedestrian signal system for this crossing and it is heavily utilized for the businesses as well as the nearby school and church. So to improve visibility and safety at the crossing and to improve accessibility for the bus stop we are proposing to relocate that bus stop from the its current location to the west just out just downstream of that intersection here and what that does is that does eliminate a few on-street parking spaces right in front of the leader bank facility here. In addition there were some on-street parking allowed right in this area that I'm showing here that's hatched off where it's right at the intersection the MBTA bus stop is just to the west of there so to improve safety and bicycle visibility at this intersection in this area we are proposing to eliminate those two on-street parking spaces right at the intersection there and similarly you will see that we have some similar restrictions near the crossing at Forest Street and Burton Street with the same idea that we have for this crosswalk here just to improve visibility for the pedestrians that will be waiting to cross at that crossing but outside of those those small impacts there we are maintaining the rest of the on-street parking supply so you will see that although the shared lanes are maintained we do believe this is a safety benefit for a number of reasons one we have the green high visibility background payment markings in the background of the sharers here which will improve driver awareness and visibility of the shared lane markings which are intended to notify and make drivers aware that bicycles are allowed to be traveling and share the travel lane in this area we do have some signage improvements um warning drivers again for further further notification that bicycles may use the full travel lane some signs at the intersection that notify mainly these are geared towards that high safety issue with that westbound through westbound left vehicle with the eastbound bicyclists so warning left turns to yield to bicyclists that are crossing the intersection and then you will see we have the the high visibility sharers frequently through the intersection to highlight that crossing and further make that bicycle crossing visible to drivers as they approach so those are the the bicycle payment marking improvements that are mainly included in this issue in this improvement the other main goal that we tried to do to improve safety here is to reduce vehicle travel speeds approaching and through this intersection and in a big concern and focus there was particularly the speed of the westbound left turns so due to the uh current intersection geometry at at this location left turns that are traveling westbound on mass av going on to appleton street i'm kind of able to make it's not really a a turning maneuver here it's almost like a veer left so vehicles can make that left turn onto appleton street from the westbound traveling pretty at a high vehicle travel speed so what we wanted to do in the short term to try to improve that and slow those left turn speeds down and tighten the intersection up was to implement a a short term or temporary curb extension here which tightens up that intersection it makes it more of a 90 degree left turn so vehicles have to slow down much more than they do today and the way that we implement that in the short term without getting into curb modifications and geometry modifications which are more of a long-term solution we have the payment markings here but we also have the flexible delineator posts which should further enforce drivers to abide by these this temporary curb extension so they can't just drive through the payment markings without taking out several of those delineators which will could cause some damage to their vehicles if they choose to do that and we also have some delineators that are proposed between appleton place and appleton street here in the center which will allow prevent vehicles from being able to start that left turn and maneuver early and force them to proceed into the intersection and make that left turn at the appropriate location so these input these measures should slow down the vehicle travel speeds for those westbound left turns and I should note that the DPW did implement this geometry change over two week nights during the summer and they they did this through the use of cones where they simulated this curb extension along between mass appleton street and appleton place and it was found that these improvements and that that setup there with the curb extension did drastically slow down these left turn vehicles and it accomplished the goal that we are trying to do which is slow those speeds down in addition we do have some radar speed feedback displays that will be proposed as you are a long mass have approaching this intersection those have been found through numerous studies and data shows that those are effective in reducing vehicle travel speeds in the area of which those displays are installed and we do have a potential rectangular rap rectangular rapid flashing beacon or RFB at the crossing on mass have at four street to further improve the pedestrian crossing safety there and in addition another way we wanted to improve safety here was to reduce the number of vehicle conflicts that are that we do encounter at this intersection so one way in which we tried to do that was restrict left turns from appleton street onto mass have we did collect traffic count data at this intersection and we did find that only a handful of cars are making that turning movement during the peak periods so we do expect that that left turn restriction would have minimal impacts to traffic operations as a result of that left turn restriction in addition we did we are proposing to convert appleton place to a one-way traffic flow heading in the southbound direction so that vehicles will only be entering appleton place from this from mass have vehicles will not be allowed to travel northbound and enter mass have from appleton place at this location so that further reduces a vehicle conflict that could occur in this location and this was the preferred traffic flow if this was to be converted we did discuss whether northbound or southbound would be you know which would be the least impactful for traffic operations and operations of the church here and the one-way southbound was recommended to be the preferred traffic flow in in these alternatives so that's option one and the main difference you'll see between option one and option two is the difference from the shared lanes which we saw in option one to the implementation of the designated bike lanes in option two now from a bicycle safety perspective this is viewed as the preferred option as it provides the it provides additional safety measures for bicyclists relative to option one through the installation of the designated bike lanes the obvious benefit there is that it completely separates bicyclists from the vehicle travel lanes in this section and you will see that we are so the main concern with this option here is that in order to fit in the on-street bike lanes we will need some on-street parking restrictions to be implemented in order to fit those in within the existing pavement widths along Mass Ave as we're not proposing any widening under these short-term alternatives so the drawback to this option are the on-street parking restrictions however we did try to create you can see if you look a little closely in some of these areas through the use of shifting the travel lanes and the bike lanes we did try to minimize the on-street impacts as much as on-street parking impacts as much as we could and maintain parking you know as much as we wherever possible especially in areas where there seem to be a demand where you know certain businesses may not have off-street parking and there also may be certain businesses or residents or locations where there may be a higher demand due to just the surrounding immediate surrounding land uses so we tried to maintain parking in those areas as much as we could so in total you know if I go back quickly to option one you can see that the net loss in parking along this section was a total of five parking spaces this only accounts for on-street parking supply on Mass Ave so the option one five spaces lost results in about a 10% reduction in the mass street Mass Ave on-street parking supply option two with the implementation of the bike lanes it does result in a 22 parking a loss of 22 parking spaces which is approximately 42% reduction in the park on-street parking supply along Mass Ave however as the reason for this project was to improve safety and the optimal safety improvement that we feel is the optimal the option that does provide the optimal safety benefits that we presented here is option two with the bike lanes so through through the several public meetings with the design review committee and public participation that we had option two was deemed as the recommended option to be installed under the short-term improvements as you can see the bike lanes you know obviously improve the safety for bicyclists in this area but also at the intersection it's a much higher visibility crossing through the intersection here for the eastbound bicyclists they shouldn't notify drivers in even more of these bicycles in this area as opposed to option one the same geometry and short-term curb extensions are proposed as I went over an option in option one those are seen in option two as well and in order to address the concerns that are known to be had when bike lanes are installed adjacent to on-street parking we are proposing a buffer a minimum of two feet between that bike lane and the on-street parking to minimize and reduce the frequency of potential door crashes where you have people getting in their cars and opening the doors to those cars went in conflict with the bike lanes so that buffer should be enough to to handle that with extra width that's seen when the doors open for bicyclists not to be in conflict with those areas so in in long story short option option two was chosen as the recommended alternative to be installed under the short-term improvements and this also is in line with the town's transportation plan that does recommend to fill the gap in the existing bicycle lane network on mass av which is in this section here and as a result this is consistent with that and it is our engineering opinion that option two provides the most safety benefits here which was the ultimate goal and the reason for the project so now I think that concludes my spiel of these concepts and I'll open the floor back to Adam and any comments or questions that people may have thank you Jason madam chair do you want to give the board an opportunity before moving to public comment yes definitely I'll start with mr herd and actually I think I would like to reserve comments until after public comment thank you thank you mr herd mr diggins thank you madam chair you know just some questions and then you can give me short answers me as short as you want okay so has the mbt this is to the engineer do you miss madam chair has mbt agreed to move to stop yes we did coordinate with the mbt and they did approve the new location great and so how will it take us to get a light there um we that's a loaded question I guess there would be some analysis I mean it depends on funding right and what's available for the project okay I remember factors that could impact yeah I'm sorry interrupt eight off so so so with respect to the the um not so much to research me I guess to perm any process or whatever the really review process a let's say the fund is there and how long would it take us to do whatever we need to do to order to get the light just strictly from a traffic signal installation at this one intersection I would account for a maybe a six month construction duration um very approximate um guess that to this point but that also you know that that doesn't we don't know the whole limits of the um the uh construction yet right there could be some roadway widening depending on the design that's needed um and the analysis that's performed so I would say in short maybe one construction season would get this project done and constructed and that includes the the review and everything so no that would just strictly be construction the design would need to be leading up to that right right and so can you give a sense of how how long the design would take or maybe maybe six to twelve months okay depending on the scope I get you okay thank you uh and um and so uh with respect to the light the signal yeah I know it'll depend a lot on on what we want to do there a but how what potential effect do you think it would have on option two maybe having the light there so on option two um so the one thing that we basically what what we'll find right the if a signal is installed the maximum safety benefit that can be installed here and implemented to improve that eastbound with westbound left turn conflict is to completely eliminate it which would require the installation of a westbound left turn lane um and basically that westbound left turn lane would be need to would need to operate under protected only where there's no there's no eastbound through movement allowed during that westbound left turn movement right um so that in order to fit bicycle lanes with that left turn um with that westbound left turn there would need to be some minor widening in that area to accommodate that um so that would need to be something that would need to be worked out in um you know impacts that are associated things like that during design got you and um in the last question it involves that um atr tmc um pdf that was sent uh i guess maybe i should know this but my curiosity just won't let me go uh so um the pages aren't numbered but um when you um see if um i'm going to start from the top and scroll down one page two pages to third page i mean at the bottom there are a couple of rows devoted to am peak volume p.m peak volume i'm just not clear on what i'm reading there because i think i see like any um um 14 and then 11 a.m 3 10 7 a.m i'm just not clear on what i'm reading there so without having you right in front of me generally i the the tmc's will um the peak hour is you know the hour which require which the intersection experiences you know the traffic volumes for the intersection as a whole are at their peak are greatest so you may see you know even though it may not be the peak hour for say the eastbound volumes it it is the peak hour for the entire intersection as a whole um as far as atr goes you know that that would be the the one hour in the morning in the afternoon periods where the that um usually if we had an atr on mass apps say we have eastbound and westbound volume splits so there'd be um an am peak hour um for eastbound vehicles eastbound and peak hour for westbound vehicles and then a peak hour for them combined so you know you might see say in the morning peak hour for the intersection as a whole you might have 400 eastbound vehicles right but then say the peak hours for the intersection as a whole was seven to eight but you may have 500 vehicles eastbound that occur between eight and nine but the the other approaches experience the lesser volume so it's not the entire peak for the intersection yeah yeah sorry you know you know what me i i didn't get it me last night when i was reading it but for some reason now when i asked you the question i started scrolling back up i now see me what i was missing then and why me the the times me don't seem to line up with what i expected so it was just um brain block on my part so i get it down and so i apologize to everyone for that question but hopefully someone got something out of that so uh thank you i'm all set mr. madam chair thank you mr. Diggins mr. helmets thank you madam chair um i'd like to follow up with mr. Diggins questions about the long-range plan and i think it's really important because my understanding from a lot of folks i've talked to and and listening to people i think on different who advocate for both option one and option two um is that neither of these short-term options are going to to do the lion's share of the the prevention that we need to really mitigate the kinds of the circumstances that that caused the serious crashes but i guess i'll stop there because i'm not an expert and ask our experts if that's a fair characterization of you know what i just said yes while these do provide safety benefits it does not completely eliminate solar glare is a big issue here and there's nothing that can be done to eliminate the solar glare here right the solar glare is still going to exist under these short-term improvement options so the way to combat the solar glare issue is to completely eliminate that conflict between the eastbound vehicles and the westbound left turns which can only be done under a signalized intersection where there's an exclusive left turn lane and it operates under protected only operation so yeah that is the you know the maximum safety benefits here yeah thank you um so and also to follow up on another part of that i think that mr. Diggins you know ascertained that with that long-term plan in mind the the signalized intersection with the protected with the left turn dedicated lane the protected left turn that um we would have to widen the road to keep the bike lane if we installed one is part of option two um if if we didn't install and i'm not making a comment right now on the merits of the plans but if we did option one instead of we didn't install a bike lane is would we be looking at when the long-term solution is in place would we need to lose with somewhere else and are we looking at a likelihood or at least the possibility of needing to lose the park the curb parking that's there on one side or the other of that street to do that and i know that i'm not asking you a policy question that's already you know that's our that's our problem but i'm asking kind of a practical question does something have to slim down there and and if so would it be sort of the magnitude of a of that parking lane yeah i think that's something that can only be answered when that when the public it's going to rely heavily on public engagement and the funding that can come that the town can come up with for this project because obviously widening the road is additional you know requires additional funding right there's more impacts there um you know it could what i will say is that the available right of way here we do have the available public right of way to widen the roads to install the left turn lane with the bike lane and maintain on street parking however you will need to cut into the sidewalk and or the buffer widths that are out there today and or potentially some of the sidewalks but you know that that will depend on public engagement during the process and you know what what we can come up with to kind of offset the parking impacts as much as we can like i said if we can do the complete widening that we need i think it's possible to accommodate the bike lanes the left turn lanes and the parking um with the with that widening within the right of way um but that could depend on the number of things now that's fair and and you know the reason i'm asking these is that i think we have a short term decision and i think really important that we make one so that we can get some paint on the ground this this fall if it all possible um but we need to i think i suggest that we we do this with a long term view of what we you know ultimately need to do we cannot lose sight that these short term fixes neither of them get us comfortably close to where we need to be to eliminate that fatal conflict so that's why you know i think helping us think through what we may need to do in the future anyway with respect to losing some space there whether that's losing it to sidewalk or losing parking or or you know whatever i think we have to be you know realistic about that and think about that together um my final question is i think this madam chair this might be to the town manager to to decide how to route this question um with the long-range solutions that we currently see on the table that would be the ones that would really eliminate that potential serious conflict would that require federal or state dot funding to do and if it does what are the like what is the likelihood that that funding would would then require us to to install dedicated bike lanes anyway for the long term madam chair may i yes so i will um i'll try to answer the first part and then i i think i'll ask either jason or potentially mike rottemacher or dan if they can help me with the second part um the first part being i do believe that an outside funding source would be necessary um to be able to implement at least in a timely fashion given competing demands within our capital budget the team in the department of planning and community development are ready to begin a mass works grant application which we think we'd be very competitive for to make the longer term improvements um as have been discussed based on the recently improved myrack housing development as well as the development of the hotel that's been issued a special permit by the redevelopment board mass works grants are usually given to applicants that have provided increases in both housing and economic development so it would meet both of those criteria quite well so we see that as the probably the most likely and quickest funding source that we might be eligible for if that didn't work out we would then need to seek out whether or not there were some other grant sources or state funding sources we could we could look at to the point to the question of whether or not any of those funding sources would require um the installation of mic lands for improvements to be made um jason i don't know if you know offhand the answer to that um or and if not maybe dan or or mike could respond yeah um you know if it's added if it's funded through states and mass dot adds it to the tip program and it's included and it's funded through that program they would likely require bike lanes to be installed unless very significant justification is provided to not install them but they definitely would be looking for those for bike lanes here thank you i think you know that again for me that speaks to the long-term view of i know that we haven't defined and let alone paid for the whole project but these two options are not the whole project they can't be we cannot stop here um so i think that whatever we do tonight i encourage my colleagues in the community to think about the long-term picture and to think about how these the short-term efforts which are worth doing and worth doing as soon as we can uh we'll fit into the long-term what we have so that we do not lose momentum uh for the long-term changes but also so that we can make these short-term choices with informed by what we think the long-term solution could look like so uh with that that's that's all i have and thank you madam chair um thank you mr helmet um i'll just be really brief and then i'll outline um the public participation aspect of it um very thankful that the bus stop is going back to where it originally was um it got moved to its current site um where it's now going back to its former site within the past 10 years after we went through all these studies and did all these things and it never made any sense um so i'm i'm happy to hear that um i definitely want to uh hear from the public and then afterwards um hear a discussion from the vote and i'll elaborate more there so what i will do now is um i will take public comment on this um i would just say to everyone first off we need your name and address for the record if you live in allington you don't have to say it you just put it in as a default um if not and you're welcome to say if you live in allington allington um along with your address identification um you can have up until three minutes um that doesn't mean you have to take the whole three minutes um if your points already been made two three four five times um feel free to you know appear before us um for public participation but we also have two other agenda items which also is a public hearing which is probably going to have 20 to 30 plus speakers so um and as you get close to three minutes um i won't do it right on the dot if it sounds like you're winding up your remarks if you do go that far into it i'll try to wait to the next sentence before i ask you to move on from there so i'm assuming some people have been raising their hands why i um we're giving those remarks about public participation this is just comments for the board to hear there's um you know no back and forth or you know it's just providing us with more information to help guide us for um any vote we may take tonight so mr chapter lane do you have a sense of how many hands are up so there's 25 hands up right now and if i could ask jason to stop his sharing um it'll both be easier for me to manipulate promoting people and i think easier to see people speak thank you jason um would you just like me um try to think about how to streamline this as much as possible madam chair would you be okay if i promoted people in groups of three so that we can keep them rolling um without having to wait for people to come in that's fine and i would say to um can we stop the list to 25 because that's over an hour of comments unless do you see more hands going up now it's up to 32 okay um i think um attorney hind since there are so many can i um put it maybe a two-minute time limit on it so everyone who wants to be heard not only on this agenda item but the next one that will probably have the same amount and the one after that yes madam chair you can limit the amount of speaking time at your discretion to fit the agenda okay so if it's 30 we do two minutes we're still at an hour of comment so again uh name and address for the record uh including city or town um you don't need to use the full two minutes if your comments have been made many many times um the board has heard it that many times so um i think the town manager's going to promote three at a time and then if you could start to give me the names so the first three names are petru sofio petru sofio is first thomas proctor and linda ebsi okay let's start in that order then hi i'm petru sofio i live in arlington at eight elmore street first i'd like to thank the town staff and green international for their dedicated work on this intersection so i'm an ahs student who bikes to school every day and i have to use this intersection to get from my house to the bike path it's really really scary i don't feel comfortable riding in the same lane as cars i'm worried i'll be abused by someone having a bad day they may try to run me down or shout and gesture at me and move off the road these aren't even hypotheticals they've happened to me before and it's really scary especially as a minor i got really shaken up and it distracts me from my learning environment at school i've even been hit by a car in the section of mass avenue a year ago during my cross country practice just today i was almost hit by three cars at this intersection were crossing on foot during my all-way walk phase other ahs students agreed today i prepared a petition that 133 hs students who use this intersection every day by bicycle or on foot were demanding bike lanes on this section i heard stories from people of their close calls and even some of people being hit by cars it's shameful that this is a common issue we need infrastructure that protects and separates vulnerable people on street from speeding cars and we need to narrow lanes to slow cars and bicyclists now while reading the letters opposing the bike lane i was personally hurt it's really sad that my right to safety makes people angry arlington is a bicycle friendly community we need to act like one a bicycle friendly community does not choose parking over safety for people on the street especially not of our arlington students please do the right thing and approve bike lane alternative so we can keep students and other vulnerable road users safe on massachusetts avenue thank you for your thank you very much and then thank you for taking that extra effort and gathering no signatures for the petition okay next we have mr chapterling thomas proctor okay hi my name is thomas proctor live at 431 east 154th street in the bronx uh my brother charlie was killed at mass avan apple tin may fifth last year my family has experienced an unimaginable loss and an incredible amount of suffering since then but through it all i've been really impressed with the support we've seen from the town starting from mrs mahan's words of insurance that the town would be working to repair this intersection as quickly as possible during the first select board meeting that took place after his death uh we've been really impressed with the democratic process that the design review committee has gone through and that you as the select board quickly convened and i hope that you can follow the recommendation that they made for alternative to uh i'm gonna talk a little bit about who my brother was because i don't think that we should lose sight of what a death like this means uh there's a picture of him taken uh at our wedding five years ago it's the one the big smile looking at the camera here uh it was a constant choice of joy energy he was always going on incredible adventures he's accomplished ice climber and mountaineer he was always trying to share his adventures with everybody around us he was careful and caring during that he was the one who made sure that i was safe when i was climbing he was the one who made sure that my parents were eating and drinking enough during our family bike tours and he was the one that told me that i was biking too fast on city streets when i visited him in massachusetts uh his his death was not an isolated incident we've had two people who have nearly died there in the interview during a half and every day that we rely on half measures because proposed an alternative one is another day that that deadly risk remains it's especially urgent right now don't wait months to do a long traffic study years to install a traffic light with covid we've seen increased levels of speeding and traffic deaths and we need to do this now understand that the businesses across the street are worried about parking restrictions uh the town needs to get creative to solve these problems that means reaching out to the church across the street to try to rent portions of the lot during weekdays or mediating some negotiations with the landlords at those businesses to allow customers to park and walk the locks that are behind them i know i i know this is hard work but uh letting people die because parking is hard is not the answer thank you so much for your time and thank you so much and um thank you for sharing and talking about your brother um as myself having gone through very very devastating um loss in my family take it far too young um one of the best things for everybody involved especially yourself and your family is to really talk about your brother continue to talk about him whenever you get the chance so that as the years go by you know that place in your heart doesn't get replenished but it it gets you know easier and easier to remember the memory in such a good way not that you don't shed a little tear or anything like that but i know for myself the first few years um i don't think i could have done what you just did um and gotten the words out um so i i understand the emotion so thank you so much and i did break my two minute rule on that but that's okay i could do that on the chair all right okay thank you again mr chapter line next speaker is linda epstein followed by phil goff and then brian ristusia hi i'm linda epstein i'm um arlington resident i live in the heights and i'm a cyclist who commuted through uh has commuted through the appleton massav intersection for over 20 years and had my own uh close calls uh at that intersection and i'm also a friend of the proctor family um and i wanted to do something um when i learned of charlie's death and when the select board had voted to create the design review committee on june 8th i was immediately wrote to try and find out how to get onto the committee um i've been a little bit frustrated with the process um and that it took nine months for the committee to be assembled and convened um and also that we uh as a committee didn't have as much input into the um original design as um i was um i thought we might have at the beginning there were um options already drawn up before the committee met um and i can't imagine the frustration that the um proctor family has felt waiting um for so long for something to uh be for the design review committee to be convened um today i returned from vacation and uh read all the emails going back and forth about uh the uh decision to prevent uh to present the modified option one to the select board and that left me a bit um disappointed and and deflated um i feel that the time and effort that the committee put into carefully considering the safety of cyclists and pedestrians was once again overruled in favor of the automobile i used the laundromat at the corner i know the um how difficult it can be to find parking in that um area um but i also as a cyclist um try to be uh respectful of um the cyclists and pedestrians that are in that area um i feel that um do you think just one more sentence you're yep sure um so i would like to say that um option two uh is the is the option that the committee um voted on and that shows i'm not the answer thank you i i have to yep that's 40 speakers and yep thank you everyone's going to go two minutes um next i think was phil goff okay yep yeah thank you um madam chair i appreciate it my name is phil goff i live at 94 graffin street in arlington and i was a member of like linda of the design review community so i'd like the board to consider the short-term improvements to the intersection as a three-legged stool and the proposed you know low-cost striped bump outs with the flex post that jason talked about earlier aiming to slow the left turning traffic that's that's an important improvement to the intersection absolutely we welcome that but it's really only one third of what is needed and like any stool absence of the other legs ends in a failure the second critical leg is the striped bike lanes that provide dedicated and safe space for cyclists especially without the need to worry about the doors of parked cars opening suddenly leading to a catastrophic crash the third leg is the continuous bright green bike lane markings especially for the people riding downhill like those installed in earlington center the green lanes are at 24 7365 day reminder to drivers to watch for cyclists when either taking a left turn from mass avd appleton but also half appleton traffic taking right on mass af so i can appreciate the desire that some have referred to looking for some data related to parking demand but you know i believe it'll do absolutely nothing to change the simple physics of a three-legged stool the leg you know one leg just won't hold it up we all know that cars park on the south side of mass af between appleton and burton on occasion utilization lies somewhere between zero and 100 utilization based on my observation i'd say it's probably 25 30 but perhaps i'm wrong maybe it's 40 maybe it's 50 but are we to expect that there is a threshold for which charlie proctor's life and others who have been injured no longer matter it's this is not a hypothetical argument about head and bike safety that it's actually real this is all happened this is a dangerous one more sentence in that city because i i have so many to speak and we're going to so thank you i appreciate it i really highly recommend option two is the way to go let's keep that three-legged stool stand thank you very much um brian thank you madam i apologize don't worry so i live in town at number 73 ryancliffe street and until the pandemic i work near the intersection in addition to biking to work in erins i bike through this intersection for three years of preschool with my youngest daughter when she gets to middle and high school she'll be traveling through here on her own just like her two older sisters do today for us the hazards here are not theoretical tonight you've heard from the fatal crash victims family um you've also heard from the past his partner friends co-workers you'll hear from a man who was maimed in a crash here after our town's failure to act with urgency back in may of 2020 countless folks will tell you about crashes and close calls they've witnessed or been a party to at this intersection you'll hear from parents like me will tell you how they're worried for their children walking or biking to school here will tell you how it's not fair to force our townspeople most notably those who aren't able to drive a car because of youth disability or poverty to choose between their personal safety and their right to get around to life's essentials like school work church or erins you'll also hear from the other side the folks who will try to convince you that as a town we need to value the privilege of close and convenient parking over our children's right to travel safely to school and to all of those other things i've talked about they'll argue that people like me and my children should face a higher risk of injury the risk of being maimed crippled even killed so car drivers can park a little bit closer to their destination is an argument that boils down to won't somebody please think of the parking spaces and while i'm just going to come out and say it they can't be serious and if this committee if this board votes against option two you're not serious either you're not serious about the right of our townspeople to travel safely not serious about respecting the public process which led to the design review committee's recommendation you're not serious about our town's complete streets or sustainable transportation plants not serious about striving for vision zero not serious about tackling pollution traffic violence or climate change if you vote to delay or to do less you are not serious about protecting me or my family and let me be frank you are not serious about keeping your seat on this board please do the right thing and put people before parking vote yes on option number two thank you very much um i believe next i christopher pass on hi thank you so much to the chair and to the board for such a thoughtful treatment about this and also to the engineers involved um i am at 103 gore street in cambridge and i've been working as a volunteer to try and work on the cambridge bike lanes which we actually have a public meeting about tomorrow that will be part of the critical massive network so this area is a key gap in the critical route of mass av for people who bike and walk and it's a it's just one chunk right now that's missing out of a really long part that's going to be developed by the cambridge cycling safety ordinance which will get people who bike all the way to boston so you know it's really critical that we have bike lanes that form a continuous network and make them safe for people of all ages and abilities so the public meeting about the first stretch that actually abuts alewife brook parkway all the way to the arlington border on mass av is actually tomorrow night um i just wanted to add one last thing which is just that this isn't a fluke this is outdated infrastructure these are old road designs that we would never make again now um and one death is too many but watching this repeat itself with two additional serious injuries means we need to take bold action parking can't be prioritized over safety on this corridor thank you so much for your consideration thank you mr fowler um next if i breathe that's right it's kevin fowler it's kevin fowler then bill kappa thorn okay mr fowler hi my name is kevin fowler and i live at eight nomen way in arlington and i'm happy to participate in this discussion and i want to express the support that i have um more than 200 people from my clinic who have signed a letter of support for our position i'm a lifelong resident of arlington and i've already sent a detailed letter to members of the select board um i'm a small business working here for more than 27 years in the same location and we see 60 to 75 sometimes 90 people a day we are very concerned how the option two will affect my business i support big time a comprehensive and thorough study of this area that includes all parties affected rather than this piecemeal approach and um the safety of my clients and pets is a serious concern forcing clients to negotiate with longer walks encountered by carriers and lease pets many of our clients are elderly and would greatly be challenged the proposed option will be devastating to my business um there is no evidence that putting this new bike lane in will increase safety at the intersection and i disagree with what with jason said you know that i i have been riding on mass air for more than 65 years at this intersection i grew up on florence af and i've been flying down this road my whole life there's no way that if you put a bike lane in that i'm going to go slower that that safety concerns i think are more the left hand turn on to ampelton and the people who never stopped on ampelton street when they're merging onto mass out um i'm uh uh very concerned that option two will affect my business um to a point where it's going to be economically unfeasible for me the forcing clients to navigate with longer walks encumbered by carriers and lease pets okay um i'm i know i go online you're repeating now when you get well over two minutes so thank you so much and i do appreciate um everything you do for the town thank you guys so much with i go and i think i i'm happy to work with you guys i'm fixing it okay i got i probably have 40 more people i gotta go to so i have to move on i'm sorry that um next i believe is bill carpathorn correct good evening um my name is bill carpathorn i've been a lifelong resident of our linkedin and i am the owner of the properties um on mass have 1189 to 1195 mass have the building with the awnings as well as the leader uh leader bank branch at 12 12 1 mass have tonight i am speaking not only for myself but for my tenants that rely on this free parking for their customers and clients and speaking with the fuel my tennis they've indicated the proposed plan this option two which eliminates you know 22 parking spaces 42 of the parking between you know forest and Richardson um what as kevin had just mentioned potentially put them out of business so force them to relocate and you know the result is that it's going to end up leaving empty store fronts which is you know a better chronic problem in town for a while especially down in the center and that's something that no one would like to see uh including the town i i fully agree i i've been working out of this building for over 40 years now and i agree that safety measures are necessary at that intersection i disagree that you know you know short term solution some of them may help for a short term but that is it and that we should be you know looking at longer term solutions and i think one of the key ingredients to that is having a you know a different set of signals there with the dedicated left hand turn up to Appleton that's going to prevent these issues or should help prevent these issues with solar glare which is one of the main issues there so you know we're all for safety everyone every one of the tenants in these buildings here and you know i'm not a traffic expert so i would definitely leave that to others to come up with the design but taking into account not only the bike safety and safety of the children coming and going to Audison but the needs of those of us that live and work in the area you know i respectfully ask that's uh the you know plan option number two uh be voted down and that we continue to work forward on this and work on the long-term solution thank you thank you Mr. Papathon i appreciate it i'm sorry i feel bad people off next we have um Scott Mullen mr. Mullen great thank you uh madam chair and for the opportunity to speak to this very important matter Scott Mullen 68 Henderson street where i live with my partner and our daughter seven-year-old bicycle rider who goes to first grade at Thompson now very excited about that we ride even in the rain because we're not we're not made of sugar we won't melt for many years from 1999 to 2003 i worked at the corner of forest and Mass Ave in a small office at 1173 i know that intersection well fast forward a dozen years i'm a member of work bar and i'm going up to the heights sometimes on my bicycle sometimes in my car sometimes on the bus right we we we use the mode that's appropriate for the trip i agree with the design review committee's recommendation for design two with the bike lanes i also agree with select member helmet that this plan goes nowhere near far enough this is a starting point more needs to be done but this has to be done now and i urge the select board to vote in favor of option two this is an on ramp and an off ramp especially coming westbound the sweeping turns down forest and up appleton and down low that needs to be calmed and what i saw in jason's renderings here most of the the parking that is being taken away as far away from where the businesses are look to me like it was up where the break to low street is i was seeing things like from richardson street all the way down to appleton everything is retained except for seven or eight spots or something and on the other side it might only be two keep in mind these businesses are not high traffic foot traffic retail restaurant stuff right very low traffic and there's four parking lots behind those buildings there's 30 spaces back there so and there's also spaces on forest streets so come on let's get through this we got to fix this we have to make it safer for all road users motors pedestrians cyclists and transit riders thank you for the opportunity and please support option number two thank you very much um next i believe we have allison fiasseki and if i said it wrong i apologize that's fine um thank you mr chairman members of the board time manager and those that have worked with this intersection thus far my name is allison fiasseki um i was formerly of summerville mass and i currently now live in uh nourish vermont um i was charlie proctor's partner and the person that was killed at this intersection on mass out in appleton and i was there 15 feet behind him when it happened charlie proctor was the kind of person that i knew and every day that i spent with him made me feel incredibly lucky whether we were adventuring the mountains or couldn't get in our home or going for a bike ride and you're planning for a future can you just slow down if you go over the two minutes i won't interrupt you i feel like you're rushing i don't want you to have to do that i apologize start so please please stop wherever you want to stop um on may 5th 2020 around five p.m we started our ride up past the mystic lakes through bedford and then finally back to arlington along mass av we were headed to local business to pick up takeout as the pandemic treat um as along the grocery store had been too long we were coasting through the busy street center as our effort was over as we approached mass av and appleton intersection he pedaled ahead the car came it was unclear where it was headed it took up the entirety of our lane heading straight at us he swirled one way and then another in the lane but he couldn't avoid the car as his walking or path forward and he screamed and then the car struck him and then he rolled over the roof landed in the middle of the street and the car sped up the hill to go towards route two not realizing what had happened i dropped my bike and i rushed to his side to hold his hand on may 5th charlie was killed at the intersection of mass av and appleton he was on a bright yellow bicycle he was six foot three he was wearing a bright blue jersey that matched his eyes and he was obeying all the traffic laws and he wasn't seen the car was driving too fast to make a judgment if charlie was there with option two with the intersection changes the car would have to have slowed down for more appropriate speed to the narrow width of the road with the extended bike lanes giving the driver more time to see charlie in addition the presence of these explicit green painted bike lanes that are only available in option two would have reminded the driver to double and even triple check before entering the intersection finally the acute angle of the modified intersection would further have reduced the driver's speed by implementing traffic to his common measures to reduce speed of turning vehicles through this intersection of road most importantly through this excuse me through the road and most importantly through this intersection section further tragedies can be avoided making the streets of arlington safer for all who travel on them please vote to implement option two bike lanes through the intersection of mass av as well for future changes that makes us make the streets safe for all pedestrian cyclists and everyone in arlington thank you for your time and attention thank you and thank you for somehow getting the strength to take the time to share us the tragedy that unfolded in front of your eyes i'm sure continues to do so so i'm definitely along with my colleagues sending you a present strength and consolation so next i believe we have talker walk talk wise how we say that thank you madam chair um i'm grateful for the chance to speak i'm park will be i live at amherst street in prec five and then 18 year arlington resident um i appreciate the sense of democracy and the diligence with which you're considering all of this including um hearing from people who feel adamantly opposed i have four quick comments um the first is the safety should be the overriding consideration the second is that i think we can honor the process you've appointed people to a committee and we have a long-standing um transportation plan both of which really essentially favor option two and i think that we can honor honor that best by proceeding as quickly as possible um the third is about the parking concerns i just read all of the comments from the business people with a lot of sympathy i hope that over time we can come together more even than we have i feel like the real challenge for business people in arlington is the car culture that drives people to malls in the suburbs rather than keeping them in town and i just feel like the pedestrians and cyclists who are loyal supporters to the businesses that are closer by um maybe a point of conversation at some point and fourth is we all voted together for the declaration of climate emergency it had unanimous support from this committee and it included a commitment to consider whenever there's a judgment between one option that's more favorable to protecting the climate and another that's less that we lean on the side of favoring the one that's more protective and i think this gives us an opportunity to do something great and upbeat for arlington during the challenge that we face thanks so much for your attention thank you so much um would i put my list one side next i think we have jim darty it's mr darty you need to unmute yourself thank you i apologize you're on thank you thank you madam chair thank you um members of the board i'll be very brief um as you know i'm i'm the owner of the site where the hotel is going and i have a few comments first of all i'd like to say um i've been a biker for many many years many few will remember years ago there was a bicycle shop one of the first ever at the corner highland down the mast out i was um i was a big spender down there as a child i appreciate the safety and i i will say i um i was unaware of this process taking place um and just became informed of it less than a month ago and i was um one of the local business owners reached out to me there so i think as the consultant said public input is key two um i just want to say i don't think there's really any sides on this because i did attend a meeting in the last couple of weeks with this group and there are about a dozen people there i didn't hear one of them um suggest that they didn't have a concern i think all of them um understand witnessed experienced in one change up there in a safe manner secondly i'll say i i have a son who um wrote across country a couple of years ago over 3 000 miles for a charity um my wife and myself were deeply concerned for bike safety so um no one more concerned about that then you know video um second secondly um i would just say that i'm a proponent of option one i think it's the right thing to do i i agree with mr helmeth um but you know comment that we need to get to the end game quicker and i would just like to say and i i really appreciate how adam um the planning department and other departments always try to find free money um for the town to do some of these services and i think we should applaud that but i think is again everyone on um collectively interested in this and not sides um agree that this needs to get done permanently sooner rather than later i will say that um i don't want to tell the town um how to spend their their their money but i know there's a lot of okay mr darty i'm gonna have to stop here at two and a half minutes now i'm sorry but i give one last sentence and just finish my final sentence that's not repetitive go ahead it's not repetitive i was about to say that i think we should use out of the 34 million dollars that we just got free from the government and get this thing done now okay thank you very much next i think we have robin greenleaf and i apologize to everybody it's just that um we still have quite a few people want to speak on this and then we're going to have another 30 40 on the next two agenda items so my apologies um miss greenleaf thank you identify yourself thank you i'm robin greenleaf i live at eight sweet grass lane in weyland and i'm also ceo of architectural engineers which is the company where charles proctor was working at the time that he died in the accident at massav and appleton street yesterday i submitted an email to the select board voicing my strong support for auction to i've voiced my confidence in green international as your consultant and i i am strongly in favor of their recommendation especially after listening to jason's presentation while i was writing my email i realized i've been practicing engineering for 40 years now and during that time i've become very familiar with the public process of how engineering design happens and the bumps in the road that can happen along the way and these kinds of things are never easy you have the choice of doing the eq