Good evening. The open meeting of this open meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. In order to take transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we've been advised and directed to suspend public meetings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirements to the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to kbradley at town.arlington.ma.us. This meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is convened by Zoom app as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join in comment. Please note, the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. While supporting materials that have been provided to members of this body are available on a town's website and less otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the chair knows otherwise. Let me permit me to cover some ground rules for an effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks to chair and vice members to provide any comments, questions or motions. Please hold until you are recognized and your name is called. Further, please remember the mutual phone or computer when you're not speaking and please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair gives the floor to you. If members wish to engage in colloquially with other members, please do so through the chair. Due to the size of my laptop, I may not be able to see all members at once. If someone has raised their hand and I have not noticed, I hereby request that Tara Bradley or Randy LaCourt please bring this to my attention. Permit me to confirm that all members are present and the persons on the agenda are also here. We'll check that right now. Please, when I call your name, please state any affirmative that you are present. Grant Gibion, Shane Vlindel. Here. John Ellis, Makaya Healy. Sorry, here. Here. Brian Beck. Here. Arif Padaria. Here. Sophie McLean. Here. Here. Jonathan Wallach. Shayne Crawford. Darrell Harmer. Here. Annie LaCourt. Here. Alan Jones. Here. George Koser. Here. Bill Keller. Here. Al Tassie. Here. Juan de Nascimento. Here. Christine Deschler is not here. Dean Karman. Here. And David McKenna. Here. And Tara Bradley. Here. Thank you. Persons who are expected to be here tonight include Sandy Pooler and Clarissa Rowe and some members of the Community Preservation Act Committee. Are any of those individuals here at this moment? I see an Alexander friend, Zosa, here. Hi everybody, I'm with Clarissa tonight for the seat back. Thank you, Alexander. I think that Sandy and Ida or Ida will be here at 7.50. Okay. So a couple of comments here. Tonight we're going to have a presentation of the Community Preservation Act Committee whose acting chair is Clarissa Rowe. Many of you know that she's been a town meeting member for many years and served on, I believe, the select board for five terms. In addition, Clarissa was a prime mover, not only in getting the Community Preservation Act accepted in Arlington, but she was a prime mover at the state level getting the legislature and the government to accept the act in the first place. So I'm expecting from Clarissa and her colleagues we'll be getting some extra special expert information tonight. Keep in mind that the Community Preservation Act Committee presents its proposal to town meeting directly, not via the finance committee. However, by the bylaw, they are supposed to coordinate with the finance committee and we generally review their proposals. And if so inclined, we endorse it or not. So following the presentation and any discussion that we might have a motion to endorse or not to endorse or if someone thinks that we should endorse that a motion would be in order at that time. As you know, last meeting we postponed the capital budget vote. We'll take that up on Monday evening. The reason that it's not on tonight's agenda is that we have a working group looking into some issues and they haven't had time to pursue the questions that came up at the last meeting. And in addition, there was no time to put it on tonight's agenda while being in compliance with the open meeting law. We'll also hear from Sandy Pooler and likely Eda Cody on the revolving fund issue raised by David McKenna and Sophie Magazzel. So, Darrell sent some emails out about the police answers to questions about the police budget. And I think that John Ellis also sent some emails out with respect to questions from the DPW. If anybody has any questions about those or would like to hear commentary, we can do that after the presentation of the Community Preservation Act Committee and the budgets that we are gonna be considering tonight as a section on the agenda for old business and we can take it up there. Also, Makaya Healy has some changes that she wants to make in the personnel classification vote that we took several weeks ago. There have been some updates and she would like to address that. So that having been said, I think that it's in order to consider minutes. Tara, do you have minutes to present on the screen? Yes, and just a quick note is I forwarded the piece from John Ellis about the DPW. I haven't forwarded the responses from Chief Flatterty from Darrell, but I can do that in just a moment. But yes, I have meeting minutes from 228 and 32. And I can... Okay, so start with 228. So I have not received any requests for edits, although it has been less than 24 hours, but I have not received any requests for edits for this set of minutes. Is there a recommendation on the minutes for February 28th? Move they be accepted. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion on the minutes from 228? All those in favor, Grant Gibbian, Shane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Ankaya Healy? Okay. Brian Beck? Yes. Ari Padaria? Yes. I'm sorry, but... I wasn't present. Just saying, okay? Sophie? Yes. Jonathan Wallach? Shailene Crawford? Darrell Harmer? Yes. Annie LaCourt? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. George Kosher? Yes. Bill Keller? Yes. Al Tosti? Yes. Wanda Nacimento? Yes. Christine, I'm here. Dean Karman? Abstain. Ian, David McKenna? Yes. Thank you. So there are two abstentions, and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 affirmative. There are three abstentions. Abstentions? Who do I miss? Healy Padaria-Carman. Oh, Ankaya, you abstained. I didn't hear that. Can you confirm that? It is confirmed. Thank you. Okay, then the next minutes, Tara, please. So the only comments I received from these, and again, sent out less than 24 hours ago, were from you, Charlie, I have here in red. So, are there any questions or comments on the minutes from free two? Motion is in order to move they be accepted. Second. Then moved and seconded. Shane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Kaya Healy? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Reeve Padaria? Yes. Sophie Magliazzol? Yes. Jonathan Walik's not here. Shailene's not here. Darrell Harmer? Yes. Andy LeCourt? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. George Kosher? Yes. Bill Keller? Yes. Alan Tosti? Yes. Juan Dena Cimento? Yes. Christine's not here. Dean Carmen? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. Unanimously accepted. Thank you. So, before we go on to the next item, I just want to note, Dean, you said in some questions about the capital budget. I know you weren't able to make the last meeting. Just want you to know that they were raised by members of the committee and discussed by the capital planning committee. Thank I appreciate it. So, we are early. Is Sandy here or Julie? No. Okay. Can we start? Can we do the inspections budget? Who is that? John, is that you or is that? No, it's me, Darrell. Yes, let me just share the... We probably can get through that pretty quickly, I think. Tara, can you let me share? Okay, try again. Okay. So, the inspection budget is pretty basic. On the 1,500 line, the reduction in salaries from fiscal 22 to 23 is accounted by the fact that a couple of senior staff had left, including the Mike Burn, the former chief inspector. And so the replacements are cheaper. So that really accounts for the difference there. Any questions on salaries? And the same with longevity, but... Any questions for Darrell on the personnel expenses in the... Yes, Annie. Yeah, I'm just wondering are they talking at all about adding in positions in the future? It seems like they're really stressed down there. I'm gonna get to that in a minute, Annie. All right, I'll wait until then. You have a question from Sophie. Yes, can you just explain line 5102 quickly? They have historically had to bring in temps to cover either cover vacancies or peak activities. And as you'll see further down, they've got pretty half their staff, half their positions are vacant. So as they're filling those, they've had to bring in temp help. Any other questions on the personnel budget and inspections? Go ahead, Darrell. Then on the expenses side, the only activity is moving $1,000 from the 5949 vehicles account to the office supplies account. They've freed up the money from vehicles due to their use of electrical vehicles, which have been cheaper to maintain and operate. And they've added the money to office supplies to account for their increasing production of information packets and materials on various issues that they want to increasingly produce to help navigate some of the inspections issues. I have on the next slide, I have some of the topics that they're publishing information on. Any questions on the expenses side? I have a question, Darrell. What are the contracted services for? Sorry, did not ask that. And you might, when you're looking into it, you might find out if they really, if they're spending that money in the year, because there were no funds like that allocated in prior fiscal year. Go ahead, please. Okay, so they're in the bottom here. There's the topics they're producing information packets on erosion, the tree bylaw, good neighbor policy. So then on the personnel side, the lines that are highlighted in yellow, positions that are highlighted in yellow or vacant. So as you can see, that's pretty much half their staff. They are making progress in filling those, they fill the plumbing and gas inspector position in between the time the budget was published. And when I talked to Mike Ciampa, they're considering two applicants for the building inspector position. And then the final one, the record keeper position was posted in his closing. I guess it's close today. So as I said, Mike Ciampa is new to the position and he wants to get fully staffed up before they assess, before he can accurately assess the department's capacity and needs going forward. The, this past couple of years, like everybody else, they have been impacted by COVID. They have had to, one of their responsibilities has been to enforce job site masking and other COVID requirements. It's been a challenge for staff to work at home, but with all the inspection records back at the office. And then they've obviously had increased emphasis on job site safety concerns. So they're hopeful that they'll be fully staffed up to their full budgeted compliment, at least very soon. And then he'll take stock of whether they need, whether he needs additional resources. Any questions on this? I don't think so. Go ahead. Okay, then on the permit revenue side over the five years from 2017 to 2021, revenues have increased by about just under $600,000. I've got the five years here and then this chart on the right goes back to 2011 and also plots out both the revenues and the number of permits issued. So under the projections, their permit revenue increased by 23% from fiscal 2019 to fiscal 21, even though the number of permits issued actually decreased. Basically that's these large projects like the MIRAC project was generated 354,000 and permit revenues have accounted for that. They had expected, I think like everybody else, expected significant reductions in construction during the COVID lockdowns, but whatever slowdowns there were, were more than offset by dramatic increases in home renovations over the past couple of years. So you can see the permit revenues actually increased. At this point, it's not clear if they'll be able to sustain revenues at the 2021 level post COVID. They're really just gonna have to see. It's a pretty volatile time right now. Any questions here? Looks like you're cleaning that one. Yeah. Okay, then on the issues, I think everybody knows that their records are primarily paper-based and also I'm pretty sure everybody knows that they're in temporary quarters. And so a lot of their records are in crates and things. Mike is pretty committed to starting digitizing records as soon as they can. He understands that he needs to follow whatever standards are issued by IT for the document storage and management systems. Again, he wants to fill his vacancies first and he expects that that new record keeper position will be heavily involved in the digitization. His current plan is to digitize these records incrementally using in-house staff. I did have some questions about that. Having been involved in projects like this in the past, they can be pretty resource intensive. And I did get a look at some of the records. A lot of them are folded up with multiple pages, double-sided staples, paper clips, probably stickies and things. So getting those all set to actually be scanned can be pretty time consuming. So that may be something that needs some further thought about how they should go about doing that. I think a couple of years ago when I talked to the previous director, he told me that a director prior to him had mandated that all the records be organized by year, which you can see if anybody wants to get the history of their property. For example, my house was built in 1929. So if I were to ask them for that, that would require them to look at probably though that was 89 or 90 files to compile that. So obviously if their records were digitized, depending on how they set up their indexes, they could get at their records in multiple ways. So I don't know if that's something that they would need to submit a capital request for. But I do have questions about whether they really can deal with it incrementally using in-house staff given that they don't have a whole lot of staff to begin with. Then on the zoning violations issue, he was clear that their priorities enforcing safety violations, the enforcement process is very labor intensive with a lot of paperwork. They have to write up violators daily. Then they have to allow for appeals. And then the process apparently has to start over if they don't get a response from the violator. They have been limited both by resource constraints and COVID that he was also equally emphatic that they do fully intend to collect all past due fines within the time periods specified in the applicable bylaw. Then they plan, at this point, they look like they're gonna be able to move back to move to the new Grove Street building in about a year and a half. Their new space is a little larger than the old building. And apparently they have a more efficient storage area. But, and then getting back to Annie's question about the resource constraints, whether they're adequate given the scope of responsibility and the volume of nature of their work and the department is a revenue generator. So when I've talked to both Mike Byrne and then Mike Ciampa, they've been a little ambiguous about whether they really think they need to add resources or not. It's probably a difficult question from a budget perspective. But I think that's something we do need to keep an eye on. So any questions on any of these issues? Alan Jones. Two quick things. One, just information. The $4,000 for contracted services has gone back at least to 2000. I looked at the old budgets but it doesn't look like it's been spent. And the other thing that's probably no answer to at this point, but there is an article in the draft warrant about increasing code enforcement and putting some code enforcement into the planning department. And I don't know how that would impact the inspections department or whether it would, but because it's something to keep our eyes on. Well, we will have a hearing on that. Yeah. So there may be a discussion about inspections department come up with that. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Any other questions for Daryl? Daryl, would you like to make a motion on this? Yes. I move that the inspection budget as printed for fiscal 23, 499,072 dollars be approved. Second. So it's been moved and seconded for 499,072 dollars. Is that the right number? Looks like it. Okay. Grant Gibion, not here. Shane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Micaiah Healy? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Marie Podaria? Yes. Sophie Megliazzzo? Yes. Shailene Crawford? She's not here. Darrell Harmer? Yes. Yenny LeCourt? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. George Koser? Yes. Bill Keller? Yes. Al Tassie? Yes. Juan de Nacimento? Yes. Dean Corman? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. The budget is passed unanimously. Thank you very much, Darrell. You're welcome. So I see Sandy Puller here. Sandy, are you alone or do you have someone with you? I'm here as well. You're here as well. Okay, thank you. So the subject is the Warren article on the issue of revolving funds for private ways. So you, David and Sophie, brought this up. There were some questions. And if you would like to speak on it, Sandy, our deputy town manager and finance director, please go ahead. Thank you. Eda and I will be happy to answer questions.  This, just to be clear, this is a request to the finance committee to increase the spending cap for the revolving fund for private way repairs. It's just, by the way, it's not a Warren article. It's just a mid-year request, which is allowed by state law. There are two reasons that we're asking for this. One is that because we had a very large project on Mt. Galboa Street that was $221,000 this year, it exceeded the $200,000 limit that town meeting last spring had voted for spending here. So what we're asking is that the finance committee follow the lead of the select board in their vote on Monday night to increase the limit from $200,000 to $275,000. So it's just a cash flow issue. It's a technical issue, which leads to the second reason we're asking for this is that we need to pay the contractor who did the work. And we are not allowed to make those payments legally until we have an increase in this authorization level. As the memo explains, this revolving fund is there so that when the town makes repairs to private ways, which is different from converting or accepting a private way as a public street, it's just simply repairing a private way. If a majority of residents on that street petition the select board for permission to do this and pay one third of the construction cost upfront, they can then hire a contractor from a list approved by the engineering department. The work gets done, then a final bill gets sent out. Many of the residents pay the full amount right away. Some small percentage of them typically will put this on as a betterment assessment and get to pay it off over five years. We do have the cash coming in from residents to pay the contractor and just need this authorization in order to be able to write the check to the contractor. I will also say, just to anticipate the question that may come up, we are looking at town meeting for the article on revolving funds generally and are trying to figure out what the best number would be for FY23 for a spending limit, given we know that we have at least one more $150,000 project that's coming. Frankly, typically these projects are usually in the $25,000 or $30,000 range. So I think as people have become more aware of their ability to repair their private ways, they become more active in petitioning the select board. With that, I and Eda would be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you, Eda. Alan Jones, is your hand up? No, it's not. Shane Blundell. Yes, thank you, Charlie. And thank you, Sandy. Can I just make sure I understand this? So the residents pay one third up front. I guess how does the money flow? Does the town pay? And then, I guess, so how does the town sort of pay the money first and the citizens or the butters, I guess, pay the town back, either in a lump sum or? And then the second part of the question is, sorry, I'm just going to both out there. Is the increase to reflect the entire cost or just the one third or the two thirds cost? I guess, yeah. So yeah, I'll leave the floor to that. Thank you, Sandy. So just like when we pay for a contract, we pay that the contractor gets paid once the work is finished. So the bylaw requires that residents put up at least a third up front so that we know that they're really serious about doing this.  The second part of your question was, what does this increase do? It will cover the cost incurred both for Mount Goboa Street and a few other smaller projects that were undertaken in FY22 so that we can pay all of those projects. And Ida, correct me if I'm wrong, please, but I don't believe that we pay the contractor until we have so we can't really pay the contractors until we have sufficient funds from residents in the Revolving Fund. There is a balance that carries over in this Revolving Fund from year to year so that if there's enough money in that balance, we are able to write a check for something like this big Mount Goboa one, we really need enough residents to pay up. If I could just add one more thing, I know you didn't ask about it, but if residents elect to put this on their tax bills as a betterment, we don't have that money going into this Revolving Fund by law, it goes to the general fund as revenue, it comes in under code for betterments or special assessments. From time to time, we have had to pre-fund this Revolving Fund with general fund funds. We did that last in 2016 where we had town meeting vote $100,000 to go into the fund so they'd be for a cash flow perspective. We may need to do that again, given some of the big projects that are coming up, but you and I are working on that now and you'll hear from us on that for the warrant articles. Thanks. That is accurate, C&D. We're not allowed to deficit spend. We never spend more than we have in the fund, but because there is a timing issue here, well, it's not an issue, it's a good thing because people have to pay up front a third. For example, currently we have a project for which the residents paid or Tona, but we haven't done the work yet. So there's always a cash flow. However, we always reconcile these accounts and we keep an eye on them and make sure that if we know that a certain project if a certain project is large enough that people will not be able to pay the whole amount and we know that it will be added to their taxes, then we have to evaluate and we have to eventually come up with the money, the seed money to fund the project. And this particular case, in the past, most of the projects were already paid. So people chose to pay the full amount. We actually had some people overpaid because they paid the estimate and the cost came less than the estimate. So for the most part, in the past, people paid for the projects. There's now a large project, Gilboa, that will go to the taxes for which we are looking into it and possibly we might need some money to fund it. Thank you, Ida. Thank you, Sandy. Sophie. Yes, thank you. Sophie, I froze, Sophie.  I have to. You lost, we didn't hear what you said. You lost you. Sorry. This came up with the select for budget briefly just because they have to publish legal notices about private way, these private way projects. And they're anticipating that these projects go up in the next step. They've been going up and they expected to go up for another year or two and then they think they'll level out. And I think they told us that these. We lost you again. Years, do you know how long these betterments are for? The betterment by bylaw can be on people's tax bills for five years. I mean, how long will the public street be good? I mean, how often does a private way have to redo their private way? That's somewhat depends on the tolerance of private way residents for potholes. So when you pave a street like this it should probably last 20 years, but then it's up to the residents whether they want to just patch it or actually go through this process again. I think it has been less frequent that people have been taking advantage of this revolving fund, but as the town has made an effort to publicize it more, I think we see more residents coming forward and asking for this fund to be used to repair their roads. And it's really up to them with the approval of the slack board to go ahead and do that. Is there a site somewhere on the website where people can see which roads, which private ways have been done using this project or which ones are in the pipeline so that if they notice a street they can see if it's already in the pipeline. I do not know the answer to that question. Thank you. Probably should check with DPW selfie. Okay. I don't know if it's on the website, but select board's office has a list of all the projects approved and then they communicate with us and we coordinate all the work and the payments. Right. I just think it'd be nice to know I don't know, show off the work public information. Any other questions for Sandy or Eda on this subject? So I have a question and Eda obliquely referred to this when she was speaking before. So we're being asked to raise the limit on the revolving fund for fiscal year 22 and future years will be considered a town meeting. But if we have to raise this limit, have you collected enough money to handle the vendor demand in fiscal year 22 or are you gonna have to come back I guess to the finance committee for a reserve fund transfer or how do you plan to fund the increased limit? Let me put it that way. Yeah. So the fiscal year 22 is done. We actually gonna have a surplus of $1,900 in the fund. No more bills will be paid out of this fund this fiscal year. We had two projects this year. We have Elmhurst and Gilboa and they're both done. So fiscal year 22 is done. We just needed the authority to spend this money because we did have the money but we couldn't spend it because of the cap of 200. Okay. Thank you for that. I understand. So if this fund doesn't have it if the fund for the fiscal 22 projects don't have enough money in fiscal 23 in any event that'll be covered by whatever you propose at town meeting. Correct. We propose the seed money to cover whatever projects are not, but we don't know. So one more question. So let me make the assumption you have a $200,000 problem right now but let's say a $100,000 problem right now and then you've got a couple of big projects coming up next year. Let's say that that's worth $200,000 or $300,000. So probably we're talking about $300,000 in the aggregate. If we have to increase the, let me use the term float or the working capital in this fund. Yeah, the cap, yeah. Is that an expense or is that an asset? In other words, does it affect our balancing the budget? No, it doesn't affect anything because people will be paying. It just gives us the ability to pay it because normally the reason why we have this cap is although you have let's say you're collecting a $400,000 but because the town meeting voted only $200,000 you cannot spend more than that. So it's not- Eda, my question is, I understand that the people will be paying. My question is the rate at which they're paying. However, let's assume that 99% of them decide to go on the five-year payment plan. Then you don't have the money in the fund. So if we have to vote to put additional money in the fund so you can pay the vendors, does that, is that an expense or is that an asset? That would be an expense and that would be a problem but hopefully we'll not have 99 people deferred because the law says that they have to pay a third. So the problem is that we would have to come up with the other two thirds. We could be able to manage because let's say the cash flow, let's say some people already paid in full. We did actually have some people who overpaid. So it's just juggling the cash flow. So I would like to ask that Sandy and you and the team there carefully consider this going into town meeting because it's going to, it could affect how the budget gets balanced. Yeah, we already thought about it. So we know of two projects and we anticipated that people are gonna pay a third and let's say we would have to come up with two thirds but we also discussed whether we should go for more just in case there will be another project that we're not aware of and people will not be able to pay like they used to in the past. And Charlie, we'll take a look at the, we're looking at a couple of different ways possibly to fund this. We haven't made a final decision on that and we will be back to you about our recommendation. Thank you. Okay. Wanda, question. Well, I guess I had a similar question because you said that when people elect to have it, what is it, a tax assessment that you never get that money? It's that goes- The revolving fund does not get the money. The general fund does. It comes in just as if people were paying their taxes or people were paying a fee for buying a map or something like that. It's just general fund revenue. It's spread out over five years and people are charged by bylaw a 5% interest rate on whatever they don't pay. It's unpaid from year to year. So the general fund, the taxpayers get made up, get made whole, but that money going into the general fund cannot be used to pay the contractors. Only the money in the revolving fund can be used to pay the contractors. So just in sum, the end of the day the taxpayers are held harmless by this activity, but how and when the residents decide to pay their bills whether it's writing us a check or putting it on taxes determines where the money goes and the cash flow issues that we have to deal with. I hope that's clear. Thank you. Yeah, but I just said it was an expense. It was somewhere. And then the offsetting revenue goes into the general fund. So it just seems strange. Well, let's wait until we deal with the Warren article. I mean, I think we focus on the issue that we want an answer to and find that answer when the deputy town manager in need to come back with the Warren article. Okay, so I think any further questions? Yes, Micaiah. So Sandy, you said that if we keep the cap the way it is, the limit the way it is, you're still trying to figure out how to pay the vendors. So is that correct? If you vote no, we cannot pay the vendor. So we need to devote yes so the vendor can get paid for the work it has already done. That will be paid for by money from the residents of the street. They've given us the money. We just can't write a check unless you vote yes to raise the limit. Thank you, Sandy. Any other questions on this subject? Sophie, I think it's perhaps in order to make a motion to raise the limit to $200,000, $275,000 for the Private Way Repair Revolving Fund. Yes. Did you just make that motion? Yes, I just made that motion. Sorry, second. It's been moved and seconded to raise the Private Way Repair Revolving Fund limit from $200,000 to $275,000 for fiscal 2022. Any further discussion? Okay, we'll take a vote. Shane Blundell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Makaya Healy. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Arif Padaria. Yes. Sophie Maglazzo. Yes. Shailene Crawford. I'm here. Daryl Harmer. Yes. Andy LaCourte. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. George Koser. Yes. Bill Keller. Yes. Al Tosti. Yes. Juan de Memento. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. Thank you. The vote is in favor of increasing the fund for fiscal year 22, it is unanimous. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you, Ida. We appreciate you talking to you. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Good night. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is the presentation from the Community Preservation Act Committee and we're 18 minutes behind schedule here. Sorry, everyone, but we appreciate your patience. And we have with us tonight, let me see. Ken, we have, I think we have Melissa Rowe and Alexander. Alexander, I can't see your- Franosa. Franosa. Franosa, thank you. Is there anyone else from the committee here? No. Okay. Well, then Clarissa, I did report to the committee earlier that you were responsible in addition to being a select person, was it five terms that you were on the select board? I was elected for two and I was appointed twice. Okay, so well- But no more. I know what we call that, but in any event, extensive service as a member of the select board. And also the one of the prime movers in getting the Community Preservation Act established in the first place at the state house. So, and plus your many years of service in town meeting. So let me turn it over to you and to Mr. Franosa. Alexander. Alexander. And- Alexander did this slideshow for me, which I'm very appreciative of because I am good at PowerPoint, but I'm old and he's faster than I am because I believe he's younger. Anyway, it's nice to see you all. I just wanna say a couple of things before Tara starts the slideshow. This has been a banner year for the Community Preservation Act in Arlington. The state fund not only reimbursed us once but will reimburse us again. And we had more money this year than we've ever had.  And you will see them, I'm gonna go through them. And then we can sort of stop on the spreadsheets and then I can take questions. If you have questions about the projects, it probably would be good for you to write them down and then I'll answer them all at one time if that's okay. I think that's the right thing to do, thank you. Okay. Okay, Tara, take it away. This is our fiscal 2023 budget. Before we go to the next slide, I wanna tell you besides Alexander, the people on the Community Preservation Act Committee are Joanne Robinson, Joanne Preston, Dave Swanson, Leslie Mayer, Ken Lau, Sue Doctro and Pam Heidel. They come from a variety of backgrounds which is very helpful. Okay, next, the Community Preservation Act for you new people on Finance Committee is an act that funds historic preservation, open space and recreation and community housing. Next, by law, each of the spending areas, housing and open space and recreation and historic preservation, each need to have 10% of them yearly money allocated to them. We always spend more than the 10% and you can spend up to 5% of your money on CPA expenses. That money is spent partially on the salaries of Julie Wayman and Jim Feeney and a minute taker and they are worth their weight in gold. Next, this is the beginning of the projects. I'm gonna start with the community housing. This is going to be a long-term project. Some ARPA funds are being spent on it as well. It's replacing the windows in monotony manner and you'll see the conditions of the windows and the caulking and unfortunately the residents of monotony manner pay their own heat. So this is a really important project and we believe that we should be funding it. Next, the next one is, although it's the Somerville Homeless Coalition, their leasing differential program is for apartments in Arlington. And they, as the rents go up, they make up the difference and it's a very good program. The Somerville Homeless Coalition has worked well for the town. They have helped deal with the homeless situation in the Mugar Woods and they are a great organization. Next. And we are funding the Arlington Affordable Housing Trust Fund which is in its first year. They came to us last year and we wouldn't fund them because they weren't underway, but this year they have a Board of Trustees which is full of very competent people and we felt that we really should put some money in their pot. We, as you know, don't have a lot of money, but we do, we think that their work will be very valuable to the town. Next. And this is Herdfield. This is the second phase of the work and you can go through the next couple of slides, Tara, to see these are the same slides you saw last year. It's in very bad shape and in fact, you can go to the next one. The Conservation Commission has been working with them and they may have a third phase next year to deal with some of the issues with the millbrook that goes underneath the field. Next. These are obviously the open space and recreation projects. This is Robin's Farm playground and as most of you know, I'm sure, and Alan Jones of course knows, this is a regional resource. People come from all over surrounding towns to play on this playground and it's out of code and it really needs help and it's a wonderful asset for the town. Next. And we have the Mount Gilboa Feasibility Study. What the Conservation Commission and the Planning Department are gonna do is really look at what kind of use should be occurring in that house. It's an historic house. It has been rented to Pam Hallett in the last little while and had one of our head planners there for many years and it really should be, it should have a town use but I think it's a very good idea. It's not to look at the land, it's really to look at the house. So next. And another wonderful resource in town, the Cooks Hollow Restoration Feasibility Study was brought to us by two individuals and we told them that they couldn't be funded and they had to find a partner. So now the Planning Department and David Morgan will be overseeing the work and we've over the years had a lot of ideas for this area. You can see in the left hand picture the water is not high but at times the mill broke gets up so high that the water goes up to the bridge. So it really is, it's a complicated project. It needs to be thought about and I think this is just one phase. Next. And this is one of the reasons that we passed the Community Preservation Act in Arlington because of the Jarvis House Preservation and Restoration work. This town asset that we have our legal department in it has been falling down for years and they're gonna get a good start on it with this, they're gonna do some painting and some replacement of Rottenwood. We actually raised their request because working with Ken Lau who's an architect we felt that they needed to have more money in their request. We don't usually do that but we did in this case. Next. And this is one of two projects that when I was listening to the Inspectional Services report from Darrell I realized that this one and the next one the Dallin Museum Collection Preservation is a wonderful project and one as you can see the price tag is pretty low but they've had, they've been storing their collections in the following conditions. This is not unlike, next one. Oh, it's not at the next one. I'm sorry it's down in preservation but there is also a planning department conservation and preservation project for their documents and we're hoping to use that as a model for the rest of the town whether it's Inspectional Services. Thank you, Tara. And or the clerk's office, the select board's office this is something that needs to be done with all our own files. And the best thing about it is both places Dallin Museum and the planning department are hiring outside experts to come in and deal with it and or not they will use their staff to some extent but it's not as staff intensive as the Inspectional Services people were thinking. So I think we missed one Tara, can you go back? Yes, the Covenant Church is in the Heights at the foot of the Mount Gilboa Historic District and it's right across the street from the new Housing Corporation of Arlington buildings. It's as you can see it has accessibility issues getting to the front door and also a couple of restrooms on the first floor are not handicapped accessible. We went back and forth about this because there has been a lawsuit about churches using CPA money but that is mostly because of the religious elements of the church. This is not religious elements. This is ADA accessibility. So we felt we could go forward with it. And the church has one of the requirements we have in our committee is if we're doing something like this the entity has to be one that works with the community and this church does. In fact, they do an awful lot of outreach programs to the surrounding neighborhood and to the senior buildings. So we were very impressed with it. Next, and these are two of our old favorites. The Old Schwab Mill doing the North and West sides. We've done some of the other work and we've done some of their outbuildings and then the preservation of the Jason Russell house which is probably our most important historic resource. They are also doing some other work on the other side of the house and these are wonderful resources. Next, one of the things that happened after we got our 13 projects is that there was a fire at Chestnut Manor and the head of the Arlington Housing Authority wrote to see if there was any way we had any extra money to do some electrical repair, electrical panel upgrade. They found after the fire that the cause of the fire was these electrical panels and the electrical system in these buildings does everything, it does the heat, it does your cooking, it does the elevators. So we know there is some DHCD money coming through the state, they've set it aside that they haven't yet come up with a way for communities to apply for it and because of the death at Chestnut Manor we felt that this was something that we needed to fund right away. So this is gonna do I think about 300 panels in the Houser Building. So I think that's it. Let's see, is the next one the spreadsheet? Yes, one of the things that I noticed in the spreadsheet about half an hour ago was one of our total, one of ourselves is wrong. And basically the big, the yellow that's highlighted you can see we have $3.6 million this year. The 79,000, which is the second state match we're gonna get. We aren't actually gonna get in this and until the next fiscal year. So we're not spending that, but we're spending 3.449.05 and I know four in this year that's what our totals come to. The historic preservation subtotal is not 17,000 it's 517.601. So we left out a five and I apologize for that. But that is what we're doing and maybe this is a time I can take some questions and then we have another slide at the end which is our five year plan which I can talk about after this. But I'd love to take any questions anybody has. Allen Jones has a question, Charlie. Yeah, I'm sorry it was on mute.  Hi Clarissa, you mentioned ARPA funding, some ARPA funding and I don't see it in the spreadsheet. No, it's not, I'm not in charge of ARPA funding. I'd like to be. Oh, is it like code? So the CPA fund isn't getting any ARPA funding directly. No, I wish it was. I have a lot of ideas. That clarifies it. Thank you. Thank you, Allen. Gotta get reappointed for that. No, thank you, Annie. It's your turn now. Questions for John Ellis. I think at last year's presentation or maybe it was the presentation the year before, there was some concern about the state fund that's used for matching, running out of money and this can happen here. You mentioned that you got a lot can you give me an update on that? Yeah, absolutely. The state fund is funded by real estate transfers. There's a certain percentage of your deeds fee that goes into this state fund. And although we've been in COVID and in a pandemic, the housing sales have just gone through the roof. So when there's very strong sales of housing, the fund goes up. If there were a decline, which there doesn't seem to be in Boston, then the fund would go down. Does that make sense, John? Well, as I thought there was sort of more to it that more towns are passing CPAs and that, you know. That had been a worry. We, at the beginning, I think the smaller towns that accepted it first were very anxious that the cities not come in and eat up all the funds.  Well, it hasn't happened. So, you know, the cities, I mean, it was, the legislation was meant for all 100, 300 and whatever number, 46, 40, 50 municipalities. So it's, you know, that was a worry at the beginning. It's not a worry anymore. Fantastic. I have a problem, maybe a big problem with the Covenant Church. All the other places that you're giving the money are either public entities or private non-profits sort of open to everybody serving a public need. But to give one particular or one church for accessibility and bathrooms, I mean, there isn't a church in this town that doesn't have accessibility issues.  I'd much rather, you know, get the monotony manner window replacement going faster. I don't think that, I don't think the Covenant Church is reasonable or appropriate. Every other church has to pay for their own accessibility and bathrooms. You know, we've got a lot of other public needs that could use the money as opposed to opening this Pandora's box of every church in the town coming in, looking to have you redo their bathrooms. Helen, I understand that. This is the first church that's applied, number one. And number two, we probably got 12 letters of support from the community members that they do outreach to, which I will forward to you so that you understand it is a private entity. They're putting in a third of the money. We're doing two thirds. One of the requirements that we have in our application is that if it's a nonprofit, it's not going to be a, and that's not gonna be allowed if it's not, you know, there's a school. As part of the church, they really do an awful lot of outreach. They have done a lot of work with the Housing Corporation of Arlington. I agree with what you're saying, but this is an application that came to us and we felt that we could do it. But I will send you the application so you can see the letters that we got. A lot of churches in this town, High Rock Church in Arlington Center is the most handicapped inhospitable church in the entire town, and they do a ton of work for the town. From tutoring kids in the high school to supporting AYCC social worker. I won't beat on it, but I just think it's inappropriate. Okay. No, you're, I mean, we discussed it ad nauseam. We got Doug Hyam to weigh in. We got the Community Preservation Coalition to weigh in, so we felt we made the right decision. Annie? Amy LeCourt. So just to follow up on what Al was asking, if I understand correctly, you didn't have anybody you turned down this year, correct? No, no, we had a couple of applications that didn't come to the final round that we asked them. We have two application rounds, a preliminary, and at times we ask a lot of pointed questions to people, and that's one of the things we did with the Covenant Church, for instance, to say exactly what Al Tosti said, and said you have to prove to us that you really are a community-based organization, and that's when they got all those letters. So there were some other, a couple of other things that didn't come to fruition. I don't need to go into who they were though. Okay, so, I mean, I guess where I'm going is, you know, although I think Al's concern is well taken, I also think it's a question of prioritizing what's in front of you when you get applications. Yep. So, given the scale of what you were able to do this year, it doesn't seem like a huge chunk of money to me, and it seems to me like you asked the right questions, which is, okay, is this really just to benefit your members, or is this going to benefit your local community because of your activities? I rock came to you and asked you for money. They would certainly qualify on the same basis. Exactly, they certainly would. They would. Exactly. Okay. Sophie, Sophie, I can hear you. Yeah, thank you. Did you turn down any applications then that could have gotten the funds instead of the church? No, I mean, that's a complicated story. There was, there were a couple of, it was at least one preliminary application that we asked a lot of questions of, and they didn't come to the final application round. We didn't turn them down. We just said, these are the requirements for you to come to the final application. And I'm not going to go into who that was. Okay, that's fine, thank you. One more question. On the open space and recreation for the feasibility studies for the Mount Gilboa. What, who gets hired to do those studies and is there, what kind of? It's basic. Well, for instance, the Mount Gilboa feasibility study, they will probably hire a preservation architect and an engineer because of the, there's structural problems in both, mostly in the garage that's up there, but also in the building. And with Cook's Hollow, this is, although it has a name, it's really a feasibility study. And it will be mostly public outreach for people's ideas for what happens at Cook's Hollow. And at the moment, it's just the planning department. Thank you. So, Clarissa, I have a concern with your answer to Sophie about not naming the projects that were not passed. My understanding is that the Community Preservation Committee operates under the open meeting law and all these, all these applications have minutes and, yeah. Right. Oh, you know, all right, Charlie. Was the Housing Corporation of Arlington came forward with a project and we asked them for some financial information that we couldn't get. And we asked them for a understanding of what had gone wrong. They wanted to capture some overrides of the previous projects. And it was a lot, it was sort of backtracking on their projects. They had, it was a very complicated, very difficult. Okay. I mean, we don't have to, I just want to record as to what, which ones were, were there any other? I don't think there were. I know I'm old, Charlie. I can't remember everything. It was a long time ago. I can double check and get back to you. Okay, that'd be fine. Thank you. Any other questions for Clarissa Rowe? Oh, Al Tassie, no, that's not your hand. Charlie, would it be appropriate for me to ask a question as secretary in this case? I just, I have a question, like as a resident, I guess. My question, Clarissa, is- I don't think so, Tara. So- Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry. Okay. You can email me, Tara. John Ellis. I'll ask the question. Are there diversity and inclusion standards for the, for the people applying those specifically related, I think to the Covenant Church, but are there diversity and inclusion? There haven't been in the past, John, we'll look at it. I think that's a good suggestion. One of the things I haven't shown you yet is the last slide, which is our five-year plan. I don't know if you, we could look at it quickly. The, I believe the finance committee has asked for this and we have asked our usual applicants for ideas of how much they would spend. Mostly it's the parking recreation and the preservation people. You know, the biggest missing element in this estimated balance is the housing corporation of Arlington didn't have a new project this year and the, we don't get on an annual basis anything from the Arlington Housing Authority. So the money, the biggest money we spend is on community housing. And so we did spend a lot of money on monotony manner we will next year as well, but that is, it makes us look like we have a lot of money. We don't, I mean, we're usually, this is a really unusual year that we had enough money to fund everybody. Arif? Yeah, I have a question about the last statement that you made, which is monotony housing. You spent a lot of money on it and you expect to spend again. Can you explain that? And how do you know already why you're gonna be spending? And so, yeah. Very, thank you Arif. Very often large projects come in with a multi-year budget and the monotony manner total budget I think is $6 million, we're a small funder. So they don't usually ask us for that. They are gonna get some ARPA money through the town to do the windows. They're gonna do it in a three year project. So they are gonna ask us next year for another 500,000. But that's why, that's unusual for them. Usually they come in a one year increment. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Gerald. Yes, picking up on Al's concerns about the Fund in the Covenant Church project. I have the same unease, but, and I thought Clarissa, I thought you said that they were the first church that had applied for community preservation funds. So my question is, are you ensuring that whatever animal processes and questions you asked of them that you've documented so that if you do get applications in the future from similar institutions, you can be sure that you can never be accused of treating them any differently than Covenant was. Yes, absolutely. I completely agree with you, Darrell.  We have one in East Arlington that's got a tower designed by Bullfinch. If that was falling apart, I would love them to come to the community presentation coalition and ask for money. I mean, I just think it's a, it just was one incident and I can, I think what I should do is send all of you the application, the full application. So you can look at what we ask and if you think, can think of other things that we should add in the future, we would be delighted to do that. Okay, thank you. We basically, we get funding from, you know, we decide on these things by who applies. Hey, Blundell. Thanks, Charlie. Question, you talked about sort of who applied and it sounds like you're, I guess, and I know you're subject to the open meeting law, but how do you sort of invite the public, you know, or sort of invite applications? Do you do any sort of affirmative outreach to the community or what does that look like? We have had before COVID, we have an annual public meeting. We have, the public comes to our meetings often. We have certain people that have been coming for years and now one of them is on the committee. And, you know, I think post COVID we'll probably have another real public meeting where we get new ideas. We're supposed to under the law, we're supposed to do that every year. Thank you. So are there other questions for Larissa at this time? So I just have one question, Larissa. You mentioned that with respect to funding churches or religious buildings or whatever, that there was a nation. What was the result of the litigation? The litigation found there was a Washington group that brought suit against the church in Acton. And eventually the Acton church was found to be, you know, the suit was dismissed. And, but it has put a damper on applications from churches to CPA. One of the reasons that this application came from the Covenant Church is one of the leaders of the church is a preservation architect. He does a lot of work in Boston and he's getting a lot of CPA money from Boston. So that's why he applied to his local CPA. Thank you. Any other questions from for Clarissa? Well, thank you, Clarissa. And thank you, Alexander, for your excellent presentation. Is there anyone who wants to make a motion on, remember my admonition earlier that we can endorse, we can choose to endorse or choose not to endorse, do nothing with respect to the Community Preservation Act Committee, but the Community Preservation Act itself or the committee's projects themselves go before town meeting with or without Finance Committee approval. Mr. Charlie. Yes. It's Dean, I moved that we endorse the 2000 fiscal 2023 Community Preservation Act Committee plan as presented currently on the screen with the caveat that there are some clerical numbers that Clarissa described that need to be cleaned up. Second. Is there a second? Second. Annie has seconded the motion. Do we have further discussion, questions or comments? Seeing none, we'll move to a vote to endorse the Community Preservation Act plan for 2023. Greg, Gibby, are you here? No. Shane Blundell. I abstain. Thanks. John Ellis. I will also abstain. Tia Healy. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Arif Padaria. Yes. Sophie Maggiato. Abstain. Daryl Harmer. Abstain. Annie LeCourt. Yes. Alan Jones. I abstain because I'm too close to one of the potential recipients of the Historical Society. George Koser. Yes. Bill Keller. I abstain. Al Tosti. Yes. Wanda Nascimento. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. Thank you. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 in the affirmative. And we have one, two, three, four, five, six, six abstentions. So the endorsement has passed. And Alexander, thank you very much for your time this evening and for an excellent presentation. And keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your time. Take care. I'll send that Covenant Church over. Take care. Have a good evening. Covenant. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the Public Works Department budget. Is that John Ellis? Well, I had been hoping that Christine was going to present, but she's away. So it is going to be John Ellis. Yeah, she's not as tough as a reef one. A reef was over in Asia. You know, he got up at six in the morning and came to the finance committee meeting. Thank you for recognizing that. I appreciate it. Okay. Just so you know, I am safe. She's on the ground. I'm not a hostage situation. I've just banished to the basement because my family thinks I'm too loud. Everything's okay. All right. Okay. We can hold up today's newspaper to prove it's proof of life. You want to go ahead, John? Sure. So George is going to help me when I make mistakes. Will someone bring up the natural resources budget, which is the first public works budget? That's in the managers budget book, Sarah. Page 85. Okay. So the big picture is that this is level funded, basically a few details to draw your attention to are five to one one rider energy. This is a new line item because the apartment is spending on energy costs at rider. And I think that the Sandy pool or requested or they decided to have a separate breakout for what the energy costs were there. Other details to point out, five to eight nine is tree planning. They didn't plan as many as they were planning to in the previous year, but planted more this year. So they're on their plan from the tree management plan. And then there's line five two nine zero, which is the tree pest management. This is mainly to treat Emerald ash borer. It turns out that's probably not enough money. So they're thinking about other funds that they could use to do pest management. One of the questions that came up when we did the review ahead of time, I think Al Tosti asked about reimbursement when gas leaks killed trees. The town has gotten reimbursement for leaks that they were able to demonstrate that the gas was the most likely killer of the tree, specifically the ones in front of the library and town hall, but it's not always easy to prove why did a particular tree die? But in those cases, they did get money from the utilities. Then the other detail that's not actually on this budget is that there are two other funds that the town can use for tree planting. One is called the trees please fund. And that's up to, it was in the memo for Mike earlier today, but I think it's around $300,000, maybe 280. And that's a growth of $90,000 over the last year. And that's money from the tree bylaw and tree removal fines and fees. So that's a source of money that they're trying to figure out how to spend. And the second part of money is money that was in a request to the town about 10 years ago called the McKecker state, it's $150,000. It's an account that doesn't bear any interest and really hasn't been spent. And apparently the department is talking to the tree committee about spending that money on kind of a big project. They've been hesitant to spend it because outside contractors charge a lot to plant a tree and keep it watered and the town feels they can do it much more efficiently internally. And then if you scroll down to the actual salaries here. So their tree climber positions are almost never filled. It causes a number of operational problems because you need several people to have a crew to do trimming and other work. So they really can only ever have one crew and some of their tree staff is older and has been unable to work, has had more injury claims, I guess. So that's a recurring problem. Mike noted that in the past a man did have kind of a forestry program. They just have a horticultural program now according to the superintendent talked at the last meeting but we'd very much like to have a relationship with one of the vocational schools because he feels he could basically guarantee tree climbing jobs to recent graduates of those schools. So those were my notes from that particular budget for Street George. Did you have anything or natural resources? I should say natural resources. Did you have something to add or other questions? Nope, I think you covered them. Thanks. Helen Jones. Thanks, Mr. Chair. John, roughly how many, what's the cost of plant a tree? How many trees can you plant for $280,000? Have any idea? Well, if you hire an outside contractor, they'll charge about, I don't know, $1,000, $1,200 per tree. So if the... It's like 250 trees or something like that? Well, yeah, the macaque are, yeah, 200 trees if you're talking about the trees, please. But the expense is the tree itself that the town buys costs about $125. But then the contractor will charge another, you know, two or 300 to put it in the ground. And then to water it every week for two years costs another, you know, $5 or $600. So that's how the numbers get big. But if the town is able to use their staff and now they have two watering trucks and it's already kind of baked in because they have the staff then the marginal cost can be a lot less. But if you hire an outside contractor, which is what Cambridge does, it's like a $1,000, $1,500 per tree. Thank you. Shane? Thanks, John. The maintenance line item, what is that? Funds for having staff. I mean, what is it for contractors, private contractors? Yes, I believe that is that they spend, I know they spend, so yeah, they spend about in 2021, they spend about 200,000, I think 2020 was about 300,000. They, you've seen them around town, I forget the contractor, but they, because in part, they don't have enough tree climbers and because there's so many trees that need maintenance, either removal or trimming. They have an outside contractor, one that they've used for several years. I can't remember which one it is. And they do a lot of tree removal work. And I think they may also have certain kinds of equipment that maybe the town doesn't own for bigger trees. So yeah, that's that outside contractor for mostly tree work. John, doesn't DPW pay for half of the field maintenance? That's a different thing later. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Any other questions on natural resources? Do you want to make a, we'll do all of these DPW budgets in one vote at the end, John and George. Appropriate, that'll save time. Altosy? I just was curious about the Historic Sculpture Maintenance Program. It doesn't look like anything's been spent for 2021. Do they have any future projects to maintain our outside sculpture work? Yeah. So that's a vote from Kara centered around late this afternoon, but I'll just read what Mike wrote. We used funds to clean and preserve persons of the wall around town hall and the gardens. We plan to continue that work as well as perform preservation treatments to the Uncle Sam statue, Anatomy Indian and the base of the town hall flagpole. So that's the work that Mike. Okay, thank you. Okay, let's move on to the next department, sub department. Okay. This is that the thing you asked about, and this is kind of page two of the previous one. The next department is actually engineering. Okay. Might as well move on to the next one, John. Yeah, engineering. Yep. So I don't really have anything to say about engineering. There aren't any significant changes to talk about. There were no operational issues that came up. It's fully staffed. We didn't really spend any time talking about engineering in our meeting. Sophie. This is just maybe more for the new people for benefit. The mobility improvements on five, three, five, the actuals are a lot lower than the budgeted. What is that actually? John, I can perhaps help a little bit. So the mobility improvement this fiscal year was funds in the heights to repair tripping hazards in the brick sidewalks. In fiscal 23, the funds are gonna be spent on improvements to the crosswalks at Chestnut Street near Mystic. And what you'll see if you look, Julie Wayman put together sort of a better actuals versus what's in the budget book. So in maintenance, which is heavily, sorry, rather in mobility improvements, the actuals in 2021 were $45,000, not 1,000. So there's a fair amount going on in that budget. And again, consistent with what the future looks like. Thank you, George. Any further questions on the engineering budget? Okay, let's move on. There's the next one is administration. And this is one of the only budget that has a change. There's the $80,000 salary increase. And that is the person who, I believe used to be part of the IT department, but I didn't check the records that that was Adam Karowski. And so that job, which isn't gonna be held by Adam Karowski is GIS and other sort of systems work, including a lot of jobs and, you know, software development tasks and just IT related tasks that are gonna help DPW run more efficiently. So I don't, to me it's a moving from one department to the other of the position. But when I looked at the budget book, I didn't see a decrease in the IT department. So I'm not sure about that, but the job is this IT support for DPW. Mike wrote a little bit of it, was positional responsible for leading technology related modernization projects such as better order tracking, vehicle maintenance, management software and asset management using GIS. So it looks to me, John, like that's not a replacement for the GIS systems analyst in the IT department. Is it a reef? Is that you or who did the IT departments now? Actually, Bill and I did it. Oh, okay. And I don't remember this coming up. Do you Bill? Bill had to leave early. Oh, I don't remember that. I don't remember the conversation about somebody from IT going. I know that some of the work in the IT expense budget was for GIS, but I don't remember any change between here and DPW. And you go to the, but you're in a public works. It's 33, it's the IT budget if you want to. You go to page 33. I think you actually want to go to page 35. Yeah. Okay, maybe the next, the detailed personnel. There we go. There was no change. Yeah. So the systems analyst project manager, I think that is, that's open there is, that was Adam Kurovsky. Yeah. So we voted that budget with that position in. Yeah. And so that position in the DPW is new, it's a new position. Seems to be right. Okay. So any, any other questions on the DPW administration and public works administration? Well, I was just going to comment that, yeah, Adam Kurovsky was basically doing two jobs and I think those have been split up. So the GIS function is going to DPW and the system analyst function continues in IT. I see. So it is a new overall, a new position. Basically the biggest atom is irreplaceable. Right. Any other comments on the DPW and the public works administration?  So there's some more enforcement, labor and part time positions, which doesn't have a direct return on investment, but if the positions didn't exist, there could be a risk of negative impacts with higher disposal costs and, you know, from the trash contracts. Altosny. I don't have a calculator to add up these numbers, but when you look at the budget book numbers from 22 and then you look at the base numbers for 23, they just don't make any sense.  So there's a $20,000 drop. The rest are pretty identical for a couple of thousand. And yet down the bottom, they add up, you know, to that they're increasing. Those, like I said, I haven't added them up, but they just don't make any sense. May I take a shot at that? This is George. No, it's a 2022 budget book. The 98, 967 is a position that didn't exist in 2022, but because this line came in and there's a number filled in, so that's really a zero functionally. And in 2023, the new position comes into existence, which gives us the $75,000 increase. So that's one of the quirks of how these budgets are presented is what was explained. We can check the numbers, but basically that position for GIS didn't exist in 2022. Okay. So basically the base numbers probably add up, but the budget book numbers don't, and there should be a zero. Yes. Yes, because they probably transferred it from IT because we just had this discussion of whether it was a new position or not. And they took his budget from IT, just crossed from IT and put it there, but... Okay. So I think the question is whether we think that additional person is valuable or not. We should support her to not. Annie LeCourt. Well, when we comment on that, which is that I think that position is really valuable because it's going to increase the efficiency of the DPW department. You know, somebody who's worrying about the quality of their systems and only has to worry about the quality of their systems will improve their efficiency. But I also wanted to comment on payback on reducing the waste stream. And I think those positions do pay for themselves because anything that doesn't go into our waste stream, we don't pay for. So any materials that we're diverting elsewhere are not costing us money. Thank you, Annie. George or John, do you want to move forward? Sure. Very little changes on this budget. Well, there is a salary reduction of $46,000. So that goes one way to offset the other. Any questions on highways? The one thing we talked about operationally was that the National Grid and ENSTAR had been tearing up a lot of the streets. And the DPW needs and does try to coordinate with them because in certain circumstances, you can get the utility to pay for the full regrading of the street. And in other kinds of situations, you can't, they'll only patch the trenches that they dug. And so there's a bit of a dance that happens. No cash exchanges, hands generally, but some of the street work will be paid for by the utility if they tore up the road so bad that it's really unpatchable. And this is George. Let me add one other thing. Should anyone have insomnia tonight and look at Julie Wayman's true actuals versus the actuals in the budget book? You'll see that the other supplies, item 5224 and the 2022, 2021 actuals were $610,000 rather than $227,000. The department spent surplus funds that were available on the Arlington Center sidewalk improvements. So all of the costs from that project just went to this one line item in highways. So that was a large project. There were funds in the budget and that's where they all went. So, but I guess the bottom line here in the highways is that it's gone down by from last year's forecast or last year's current year's budget. It's forecast to go down by $50,000 in the aggregate. Sophie. Just were there any comments on the several vacancies on this one? Are there three, four, four vacancies? We didn't talk about those specifically, but in terms of his long run concerns about the department of recruitment is the biggest concern and turnover is the biggest concern. And he would like to think about opportunities to be more flexible into how he's able to hire, like give people Fridays off or Friday afternoons off or other kinds of compensation that's not always cash compensation, but might incentivize people to go work in the public sector because it is such a challenge to recruit and fill the tree climber and highway type positions. Annie, you have your hand. Yeah, I just did a quick glance at the difference between in-base pay and it looks like most of that $45,000 that he's saving on salaries is a result of turnover. But he's reset a whole bunch of positions to a lower budget level because they were turning over. So. This is George. Can I respond partly to that? So the director mentioned that they had done a informal comparison of pay rates and that we might be about 10% lower than some of the adjoining towns. So he is going to be looking at that. So he points out that it's his biggest issue is competing with the private sector, which simply pays a lot more for these positions. But in the discussion, it was noted that don't wanna be paying 10% less than adjoining towns that turns out to be the case. Cause whether you lose somebody to an adjoining town or to the private sector doesn't really matter. You lost that person. So that's an issue that the director will be looking at this year. Yeah, then I wish he would not have reset those positions in the budget to their lower range, George. I mean, I know we always encourage departments to do that, but if he's really having trouble hiring, I wouldn't have set them back quite as much as he did. I mean, if you just look at the individual lines, you'll see what I'm talking about. He set them back $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a year. Annie, let me remind you that you can't, the finance committee can't ask the... No, no, I get it. We can't ask them. I'm not saying we should ask them. I'm just saying that this is usually a practice we encourage, but if it's causing turnover and allowing us to, and meaning we don't can't compete, then it's counterproductive. We raise the issue and the director will pursue it. Thank you, Annie. Any other questions on the highway budget? Okay. We move on to the next DPW. Oh, there's our favorite book. Are we over yet this year? I don't have any answer to that. There was some snow events weren't sure answer. Yeah. So there's been some snow since February 14th, including tonight and so a few I see nice, but we'll just have to, we'll have to catch up on this later during our sessions. As in the past, we looked at the five and 10 year averages on the snow and ice budget. Anybody see that? Christine looked at that. You have her. George. We're budgeting at about 85% of the, of the running average. Okay. Let's move on. Oh, sorry, Annie, you have a question. No, no, I just forgot to take my hand off. Sorry. Okay, solid waste. Solid waste. Well, we got a presentation about the new contract. Commodities have done better since, since we had that fear a few years ago that the costs were going to go up by a lot more. So there is a 9% increase, but that's a lot better than at one point it seems. It seemed was likely. So I don't have anything to add beyond what Sandy presented to us. So one of the first meetings more years. Tassie, you've been working on reviewing the solid waste collection expenses and costs. Do you have any comments that you want to make while we're at this budget? But I think when we have some time and I could put our spreadsheet up there and maybe review it in more detail, I think the new contract that we've managed to sign both for collection a couple of years ago and for well, no, the disposal a couple of years ago and collection now have been great. We've avoided some of the things that we feared. And I think what my spreadsheet will show is that our diversion or recycling programs are definitely paying for themselves and saving some money. I think with a few more pieces of information which right now I have not been able to get or we have not been able to get, we could fill that in more, but I can go into more detail when we see the numbers. I think Annie had asked at this point when we went over the budgets at the beginning about the questions about paper throw and what was, was that on the agenda? And we did talk about that a little bit. The director was kind of partial to get one can but then additional cans or additional bags you would be charged for if we were going to do a poor charge system. They've also been investigating a program that would give everyone the same kind of trash can and then they could use the truck that picks up the trash can and dumps it and they have, you know, side loading ones and back loading ones. Some are better for not knocking down tree limbs than the others. There's a concern that, you know some of these things have wheels and Arlington's very hilly and if you gave everyone trash cans on wheels things would lie down, you know pile up the bottom mass app. So, you know, there's a lot of discussion of, you know solid waste and opportunities to improve it but from a financial standpoint, you know we did well with this contract as Al mentioned. Okay, let's move on then.  Sorry. Sorry, it's okay. I just, so just thanks Charlie. The solid waste collection so the 9% increase is it gonna stay at 2.8? And for how long do we know? What's the term of the contract? This is George. Three years is the negotiate the term and it hasn't been signed yet. It's almost signed. There are a couple of details still being worked on. But it would be the 2.8 or you think or? There's a small percentage escalation for years two and three. Yeah, for years two and three. Okay, thanks. Sophie. Thanks. I'm not sure if this is the right to ask this but when I saw recycling it reminded me someone had told me that when you recycle in town sometimes they collect money or you have to pay something when you go to the recycling center. I'm wondering, do we have any information about how much is collected from the recycling center we run in town? Yeah, that cost of the person who runs their program was in the administration and you have to pay for things like TV, recycling, you know, computer monitor. I didn't see a trust fund. Is there a trust fund, George? A lot of that is probably somewhat break even because the town has to, the town sells you the $10 ticker for your monitor, but then they have to pay somebody else to recycle your monitor. The fund balance in the recycling, revolving fund is $51,000. So that kind of gives you a sense of the scale of what these expenditures and revenues are. Thank you, George. Okay, any further questions on the solid waste? Thank you, jump ahead. Equipment repairs. I don't have any particular updates. The budget is not changing much. The operational detail that was interesting was that they've tried but haven't been successful and are looking forward to the new billing where they think they will be successful. At having tools that when a truck is refilling for gas, there are tools that are reading the check engine system and getting system reports about the trucks. So there's this software that's available and communication protocol that's available for the fleet to communicate with fleet management software. I think that's the kind of thing that will be worked on by this new position, but hopefully would make them more efficient at repair because you could get the data that the car or the truck is spitting out every time you refilled. And that was a operational thing I thought was interesting. Questions on motor repair. Oh, yeah, Shane. Thanks, Charlie. So just, there's another, again, a maintenance line item here. So we have folks that are doing repairs is maintenance for like the more, like what's the purpose of, I feel like the staff are there to do the maintenance repair, but there's a maintenance line item for 55. Any more detail about what that is? This is George.  So that's, you know, you tend to replace components. So that's simply the stuff that you buy that goes into all the equipment. The director, yeah, the director mentioned, by the way, back four years, those expenses were 63,000, then 33,000, 38, 35. They are declining in part because our fleet is newer now. And the director hopes that both that and the overtime, which is in the salaries, part of the budget up above have been declining and he hopes they will continue to decline again with a newer fleet that we've had and also with the system that John mentioned of reading the vehicles diagnostics every time they come in to be fueled, which will be a partial savings attributable to the new systems analyst position that is there because without a person there, that system wasn't gonna work. Thanks. Sophie. So Nicole, if the actual declining and we expect it to be declining, where are we funding at it? It's the same higher, 55,000 for the maintenance, for example, or the overtime at almost 40,000. All right. The answer was that the building will be done for another year and a half and it'll take time to get the software and the equipment in. Okay. So we should note this for a year or two down the road to make sure we're not just funding at a higher level based on history. I guess. Great. Any other questions on the motor and equipment repair budget? Okay, let's move on. Cemetery. Cemetery, don't have special updates. They're running out of space, but they're hoping to make money through other kinds of burial methods. There's sort of an ecological burial that doesn't require as much space and has become more popular. So they may find more space for burials and memorials because of that. The fund went up by over a million dollars last year. I asked at the last meeting in the treasure how much of that was investment gain and how much of it was sales. And I didn't really get an answer to that, but it's a combination of both. I don't have in mind notes why maintenance went up to $30,000. Notice that, George. It actually went down. You know, if you look at Julie Wayman's true actuals, 2020 was 134,000, 2021 was 150,000. Again, many of these DPW budgets having funds that carry over from one fiscal year to the next, which the budget book misses, but Julie's analysis, which she shared with all of us a month or so ago captures. So there's a lot of questions every year about why is the budget higher than the actuals? And this is the first year and many, many thanks to Julie that we have accurate actuals for the DPW. Actually, I'm looking at the 20th. George and John, why is the, why did the offsets increase by $30,000 when I just scanned some of the other budgets and they don't vary by that much? Why did that jump in cemeteries? That's a one-time project to work on the gate to the cemetery. So that's a one-time offset to cover one project. Okay, thank you. Other questions on cemeteries? Okay, let's move on. Is that it? Street lighting. Oh, street lighting, okay. Well, we're gonna take some time on this one. Shane, go ahead, fire away. No changes. Okay. They've replaced most of the traffic signals. They're still replacing more. No, no change in the budget. I feel like we missed the one thing about water, didn't we? Different budget, isn't it? Yes, but it falls under, I guess it's- Well, it's an enterprise fund. Yeah, enterprise fund. But it comes back through the offsets into a large degree. So, we don't have a summary page here, right? John or George? I believe we have to vote each of these individually, although I hope we can just do it as one vote with a motion for each. I think what we'll do is to, we'll just go down the list, starting with the first category there, natural resources, yes. Okay, so what I'm gonna suggest here is that you make a motion for voting on one million, the total of one million 746, 760 for natural resources and we get a second and then we move to the next budget, make a motion and so forth and then just take one roll call vote unless we have an objection from some member of the committee. Okay, so if George, if you make the motion, then John, you second it, we can get through those holy pages. Ready? I move that we approve the natural resources budget of one million 746,760 dollars as printed. Is there a second? Second. It's not a second, okay, so that's been seconded. Let's go to engineering. Now we have to do maintenance of townfield separately, I believe. Yeah, but engineering is first, right? Oh, no, no, this is on the budget. Okay, so go ahead, George. I move that we approve the maintenance townfields, appropriation of $60,000 as printed. Is there a second? Second. Okay, now categories, the engineering. I move that we approve the engineering taxation total of $173,728 as printed. Second. Moves and seconded, next category. I move that we approve the public works administration taxation total of $316,396 as printed. Second. So that moved and seconded for public works administration. I move that we approve the highway taxation total appropriation of $1,760,041 as printed. Second. Public administration is removed and is moved and seconded. Snow and ice. I move that we approve the removal of snow and ice appropriation of $1,172,013 as printed. Second. I move that we approve the solid waste total appropriation of $4,272,212 as printed. Second. Move that we approve the highway motor equipment repair taxation total of $445,252 as printed. Second. I move that we approve the cemetery taxation total appropriation of $283,810 as printed. Second. I move that we approve the street lighting total appropriation of $115,000 as printed. Second. I move that we approve the traffic signals total appropriation of $115,000 as printed. Second. That's all of all of them. All the DPW budgets have been moved and seconded. Is there as and presented as printed? Are there any further points of discussion or questions or any member objecting to voting for all of these categories with one roll call vote? Hearing none, let's move to the vote on the public works budget. Ian. Shane Glendale. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Micaiah Healy. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Arif Padaryan. Yes. Sophie Migliazzo. Yes. Shailene Crawford. Shailene Crawford's on here. Daryl Harmer. Yes. Annie McCourt. Yes. Allen Jones. Yes. George Koster. Yes. Phil Keller is not here. Al Tosti. Yes. Wanda Nascimento. Yes. Christine is not here. Dean Carmen. Yes. David McKenna. Yes. Thank you. So the vote on the DPW budget is unanimous as presented. Thank you, John and George for all of this work. That's a huge budget and a lot of issues. If I could make a request, I would like the letter from Mike Rademarco, the director, to be added to the minutes as an addendum. I would get his permission first, but I thought there was a lot of good information in there that wouldn't necessarily be reflected in our minutes, but I think it's useful for the public to know and explain how the department- We can do that. No problem. Yeah, okay. I just wanna make sure he's okay with it. I don't know why he wouldn't be, but I'll tell you tomorrow. Okay. You're gonna check with him? Okay, so yeah, let me know. Thank you. So, let's see. So let's go to the subject of old business. The first issue would be Makaya Healy. You wanted to take us through some changes in the personnel and reclass budget. Yes, but I just reviewed the numbers and it doesn't match. Basically what the issue is that Karen Malloy, when we left out one of the positions from her totals and that position was the park supervisor. So, which was, you know, the addition is in the amount of 2,769, but I need to check with her numbers again. Okay, we'll just postpone it till Monday. Thanks. Was there any other old business, something's in the back of my mind here that we wanted to... Oh, Darryl, you brought back some questions on the answers and questions that we raised on the police budget. Did you wanna make any comments about that or that those emails stand by themselves? I think they stand by themselves unless... Okay. Anyone have any further questions? Thank you, Darryl. Any other questions on those? No, okay. So, are there any other open items that anybody wanted to bring up? Yes, Sophie. So I'm gonna try and remember what my question was. I think that you, Charlie, and I think it was regarding software costs and how they're done through the departments because I was noticing on the meeting we had in Monday the capital planning for the school. It seems like the school software costs are being put through capital planning, but I know in the budgets I reviewed, software is taken on by the individual department. So I don't know across all the departments if that's the same or not. Well, I can say that I'm not sure which software you're referring to, but the general accounting software and immunosystem is in the budget of the IT department. And there are some, I can't think of the terms of art, but there are some school management software programs, not apart from academic, but software management programs, which I believe are carried in the school budget, right, Dean? Yes. So power school is a big one. That's the one, yeah, power school. Okay. Charlie, I think we're in a transitional period where we're going from paying a big chunk of software, big chunk of money to buy a piece of software, which would be at a capital expense versus subscription software, which becomes an operating expense. So I think you'll see expensive purchase software in a capital budget and subscription software in the expenses that will head that way for everything. Yeah, I don't think we capitalize maintenance contracts or ongoing subscriptions. We just capitalize the implementation projects and initial purchase. Okay, but I think you're right in principle, Annie, but maybe Al, you and Bill could just clarify that with the new IT department head, just generally advise us on what, because I think there are maintenance software maintenance and software licensing costs in the IT department in addition to what may show up in other departments. But I think some departments have a software that applies only to their department and is not a general based software that everybody uses. So if it's just general based software, I think it's an IT, but if it's just for the only people using it as one department, like say the assessors in their revaluation through Patriot, they have it in their budget. So I think it varies that way. Yes. That sounds professional. You agree with that, Annie? Yeah, police has got a special application, fire department's got a special application, I think planning and community development has always carried the GIS software, assessors got a package and they're usually sort of very specific single use pieces of software that only apply to a particular department. And they all come with maintenance costs and upgrade costs. Okay. So do we think in the capital plan under IT when it says school and software licensing, that's part of a larger project? I believe so, yeah. I mean, the capital plan folks are pretty good about not capitalizing something that's not capital. Well, we'll see about that. That's the best guy I've ever been. Really? You think they're trying to pull one over on you, Charlie? I'm sorry, I missed the number.  Yeah, I was busy trying to destroy the entire town of Arlington at the ARB, Okay, so in any event, there is a discussion about what they are trying to call capital, it's a little late to get into it tonight, but maybe Wanda or someone else give you the background. Okay, anything else to bring up this evening? Charlie, did you wanna go over the treasurer's budget? But I'm sure we could do it pretty quick. Yes, that would be great. Let's do it. Okay, can you pull up the treasurer's budget? I believe it's on page 42. Like everything else tonight, the reduction is due to turnover in the treasurer's office. There's a number of new openings and so the actual amount of salaries has dropped. The deputy tax collector used to get paid. This is a set fee. This has now been turned over to a vendor who actually takes a portion of the fees when they collect it. So that is gone. Everything else is the same. The only thing is you're just having the discussion about software, the data processing expenses is the invoice cloud, which is the online payments software. The general reimbursement is basically for mileage and parking to the staff. They expect the travel to start beginning again this year and so they're gonna have in-state and a little bit about a state travel next year. Aside from that, this thing is flat. Actually it's reduced. So I would move that we would accept the $703,320 as the total for the treasurer collector budget. Second. So it's been moved in second. Are there any questions? John Ellis. I don't see postage. I thought postage was usually in this budget. No, postage is a separate budget, which we'll do next. So the other questions. Do you want to do the postage and the parking and vote them all together? Well, no, let's just do this one and we'll go next because they're pretty disparate. All the public works budgets were really under one department. Okay. So are there any other questions? Okay. Seeing none, let's vote this treasurer's budget. By the way, just as a comment, I hope at some point we need to have a discussion as to whether or not what the staffing level is in the treasurer's department. We actually had that discussion throughout. We can have it a little bit later when we have more time. Okay. Good. So it's been moved and seconded for the treasurer's budget. What was the amount? It was $703,320. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Makaya Healy. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Aretha Daria. Yes. Sophie Migliazzo. Yes. Darrell Harmer. Yes. Annula Court. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. George Cozer. Yes. Al Tossi. Yes. Juan de Nascimento. Yes. Dean Corman. Yes. David McKenna. Yes. The unanimous vote as presented. So, postage. Okay. The only change here is a reclassification for in-state travel to auto allowance of the 2626. We did speak to the treasurer and I said, I asked about the increase in the postage rates and she said that the postage should be adequate. One last thing, again, the data processing, data processing is the actual Pitney-Bose machine. John Ellis. I would move the $185,869 for the postage. Second. So it's moved and seconded. John Ellis. I'll just say what I said last year, which is I've been a low income tax person since 1999. I've gotten four tax bills a year. I'm sorry, I can barely hear you. The last 20 years, I've thrown out every tax bill that's been mailed to me because my bank pays my taxes. When can we expect to see reductions in the postage for sending bills that nobody really needs to get? They're moving to the new system and supposedly that's when people can opt out, but they can't do that for water bills yet. Apparently they can do it for real estate and I'm not sure about excise. After this conversation last year, I was able to get my bill emailed to me and save the town. Right, but you have to go online and actually request it. Yeah, it's a real pain. I think you need to educate the people in town about that and then if you want then we'll have to spend for the advertising, if you think that people are gonna do it. But I think from what I heard from the treasurer's office is that they have a large following of people that like to come in for whatever reason. Hey, thank you, John. Are there any other questions on the postage budget? Okay, hearing none, we'll go move to a vote. Shane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Kaia Healy? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Areve Padaria? Areve Padaria? Maybe we lost her. Sophie? Yes. Yes. Shane Lee's not here. Daryl Harmer? Yes. Annie LaCorte? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. George Cozer? Yes. Al Tosti? Yes. Wanda Nascimento? Yes. Dean Kerman? Yes. David McKenna? Yes. So is there a reef here, Areve Padaria? Yes, yes, yes. You have the postage budget is passed unanimously for who said 185,869. Thank you. Okay, we're at the magic hour. We've got a lot done tonight. Thank you very much for all your time, especially John and George. Great job on the DPW budget. And I guess, Brian, are you doing parking? I have it if you wanna do it now. Or we can save it for the next time. We'll save it for the next time. Thank you. Motion to adjourn is in order. Moved and seconded. Hearing no opposition, we're adjourned. Thank you very much.


15 NATO and two partner nations are participating in the 44th iteration of the multinational maritime exercise Baltops 2016. While the exercise is being led by the U.S. Navy, the United States Air Force is working in a joint environment to accomplish exercise goals and bolster partner relations. U.S. Air Force assets include KC-135 Strato-Tankers from the 100th Air Refueling Ring, RAF Mildenhall and 434th Air Refueling Ring, Grissom Air Reserve Base, Indiana, showcasing total force integration capabilities. The KC-135's mission is to provide dynamic air refueling for U.S. and Allied aircraft involved in operations. Air Force Reserve KC-135 pilot Major Micah Jones says building effective communication between allies and partners is a vital part of refueling operation and exercise success. I talked to Polish fighter pilots on the radio, talked about the kind of brevity in the terms that we use when it comes down to getting fuel off the aircraft, and they were able to see the way that we communicate and the way that we fly. That's about as important as it gets when it comes to extending their ability to have the tactical reach they need to have as well to accomplish the mission. Baltops 2016 ensures regional security, enhances flexibility and interoperability and demonstrates the resolve of Allied and partner forces to defend the Baltic region. From Povet's Air Base, Poland, I'm Staff Sergeant Nathan Tucker.