All right, I think we'll get started. Good afternoon, everybody. We've, the number of attendees seems to have flattened out. So I think we can get started and people can continue to join as the event progresses. My name is Adam Chaptoline. I work as the town manager here in Arlington and we're here this afternoon to provide a virtual town forum. Some of you may know that we provided a series of these back in the spring and early summer as the pandemic was really sort of coming upon us at that time. They seem to be good opportunities to provide information and take questions and try our best to provide answers to residents in an interactive fashion, as well as documenting this meeting, recording it and making it available for people to watch later. So that's what we're here to do today. We're joined by a team of department heads who are each gonna talk a little bit about their focus and again, try to answer questions as best possible. For my part, I wanna welcome you. I really wanna thank you and those in the community for your amazing cooperation over the past six or seven months. We've truly all been in this together and though there's definitely a number of restrictions that are in place that I know are frustrating to some, I think the proof is in the pudding that the compliance of people in Arlington, the restrictions that have been put in place and really are in this together spirit has it as a community that has not been in the red and continues to have though, we see slight upticks, a community that's done very well in terms of transmission over the past several months. So again, I think though I know it can be frustrating at times and we can feel limited in what we can do, the restrictions that we've put in place and we'll talk more about over the course of this session, we really feel are in the best interest of the community. I do wanna remind people that most town offices are still currently not open to the public and we're doing that to keep both the public and town employees safe, sort of a protection of force, so to speak, so that we can maintain town services over the long haul, especially as we enter a season where infection rates could start to rise again. That said, town staff is working, some in the office, some remote on a rotating basis. We are trying to provide town services either remotely over the phone, over the internet and by appointment as necessary, definitely interested in hearing from any folks about where we could do better in that regard. We continue to provide and conduct all of our meetings remotely, our town meetings, town committee board commission meetings. Many town staff and town committee members have become very adept at Zoom. Hopefully, we've had some Zoom bombing early on, but that seems to have subsided in recent times, not at the Jinx myself. So we continue to do that. Seems to have actually expanded the amount of people who participate in various board committees and commission meetings, and I think that's been certainly one, if not one of a few bright sides of this pandemic that we've enhanced community engagement through the use of remote meetings. As some of you may know, we're also planning a virtual town meeting that will start on November 16th. We're working with a program that Lexington has used.  So we have a whole group, again, of staff and volunteers working hard to make virtual town meeting happen, starting in November. And then I think the final thing I'll talk about before turning it over to our panel is about our library services. We have received some questions today and I'm sure there'll be a dialogue about this during the Q and A about the libraries. And we are aware that there are some libraries in the Minuteman library network that have opened for browsing, but much like we've done with almost everything else in town, we continue to be as protective as possible, protecting both staff health as well as community health. And when we do think that based on the metrics and based on the public health data, that allowing more expansive access to the library will be possible. We certainly want to do that. I know the library leadership and library staff is looking forward to doing that, but we do feel what we're offering today is the most and safest we can offer. But again, we continue to monitor and when it is safe, we will be opening up the library for further services. With that, I want to introduce our first panelist, Christine Barangiorno, our director of health and human services who's going to provide an update on the work of her, both her work and her team, both looking back currently and looking ahead. So take it, Christine. All right, great. Thank you so much, Adam. So as Adam mentioned, my name is Christine Barangiorno and I'm the health and human services director here in Arlington. I have a little presentation. I'm going to pull up in just a moment, but just to give you a little background, I've been working here in Arlington for a number of years and over the years, we have, you know, through the CDC and the state have had opportunities to practice and plan for pandemics. And so, you know, when this was initially, you know, when COVID was initially tagged as a pandemic, it was something that, you know, we have practiced for. And so I'm just going to pull up, I'm going to pull up my presentation to share with you. So I'm going to go back to, I'm going to go back to the first slide. Sorry about that. You know, so a lot of people have asked, you know, what's been going on in the health department since March? And so what I can share with you is that, you know, our team is made up of about eight staff and in just the health department side. So health and human services includes a number of other divisions, including health fund aging, the youth counseling center here in town, as well as veteran services. And we work with a number of community partners, but specifically in the health department, we've been quietly working behind the scenes pretty much around the clock since the beginning of March. So as you may remember, the World Health Organization on March 11th declared this a pandemic, a global pandemic. We saw our first cases here in Arlington, our first positive cases on March, I believe it was March 8th, which was that Sunday. And then we began working again around the clock to start really kicking our plans into action. We subsequently shut down our schools. We have a team that meets, as Adam had mentioned, we have a team that meets every single day, Monday through Thursday at this point. And we discuss sort of where are we at? What are our numbers? Where are some areas that we need to sort of focus on? So that was one area that our team made a decision on that, that we would be closing our schools. And then following that, the state closed schools. And then of course, the state stay at home order began on March 24th. You know, so what started around that time was just really trying to get out community education, really evaluating. We spent a lot of time evaluating best practices, both in the state, across the country and around the world. We really look at what's happening. So like we see, you know, other countries maybe in Europe are a few weeks ahead of us. So we're always looking to see some best practices that we can implement here to cut down our cases or to sort of prevent cases from happening. So, you know, so between the beginning of March and about June, we were working really around the clock on case contact tracing, which I'll get into a little bit further along, really looking at where our cases are coming from, how to prevent future cases and just trying to work to prevent additional cases from popping up. And then in June, we began opening up some of the sectors in our communities across the state. So Governor Baker began a four phase process whereby various sectors would open up with restrictions and guidelines. And so essentially our team in our office each week would receive, usually on a Friday from the governor, we would receive a guidance document with the next sector that would open.  So we would work directly with those groups to make sure that they had everything in place to be successful and to prevent the spread of COVID within their networks. So that's really what our department did a lot between June and I would say, up until just recently, the most recent sector guidance that came out about a week and a half ago. Our department is continuously evaluating whether it's with sports user groups, various businesses just evaluating where risk remains and how we can continue to tighten that up. And those ideas are brought then to the leadership team, which is made up of the other panelists on this call. And we make decisions and try to determine what we can do to prevent, again, the spread. So as of this morning, we had 378 positive cases of COVID-19. I know that we just had a few more come in this afternoon, so that will bring us up a little over 380 and to date we've had 52 Arlington residents pass away.  And then the state takes those data points and they actually are tracking every community in the Commonwealth. And they're determining based on the numbers that are coming in each day where communities fit within the statewide map. And they have gray, green, yellow and red. They've sort of broken out the numbers based on those colors. And so a green community is sort of still has cases but is starting to see some activity within the community. Yellow is sort of like a few more cases, a little bit more attention should be paid to slowing the spread. And then red is the high-risk communities. And so as you can see from this map, I just took a little screenshot. Arlington, and these are posted at six o'clock every Wednesday. And every Wednesday at six o'clock I'm online just trying to figure out where we're at because we look at our data. We're always looking at our data but I just wanna make sure it matches up with what the state's putting out. And I also wanna see what our neighbors are doing. So I'm always eager to get that map. So as you can see from this, we've actually gone down. Our numbers have gone down over the past few weeks which is really a good sign. But it's also, I feel as if based on the trends we're seeing, it's just a temporary decrease. We're seeing that over the past 14 days, 4,700 people were tested and we had over the past two weeks we've had nine positive cases, which is a really good rate. And you can see some of our neighbors are becoming going into the red. And those are pieces of data points that we're using to make decisions on businesses, schools, preschools, daycare centers. So these are all pieces of the big puzzle that we're looking at as we make our decisions moving forward. So one piece I wanted to really just kind of go over quickly is what is contact tracing? So this is like the term that we've brought up a lot in, you're hearing it on the news, you're hearing it in your neighborhood meetings or whatever, I just wanna make sure people are really up to speed on what we do here in Arlington. So contact tracing is not a new concept. It's something that we've been using in public health for over a hundred years in order to control disease. And so some of the examples of contact tracing in the history of public health, we've used it for tuberculosis outbreaks, measles. And so we obviously we know what we're doing in that area. So we just apply that obviously right to controlling the spread of COVID. And so that's our primary way that our public health nurse team is working to control the spread within Arlington. So what happens is we're given reports every day. It could be multiple times per day depending on how many cases are coming in from the state. We're getting the cases and then we're contacting the case. We then interview the case to determine who they've been in contact during the infectious period. So that is typically 48 hours prior to the onset of their symptoms or 48 hours before the test was taken. And so with that list of all of the people they've been in contact with, we hope that list is short. We hope people are staying away from the general public. But if we have a list, we're in immediate contact with those contacts and we're discussing the quarantine orders. And that's what a quarantine is, is we are asking people to stay in for 14 days from the last date of contact with the infectious person. So it could be that they were in contact with them last Wednesday. So it's 14 days from last Wednesday that they would be quarantined for. That's an official legal order from the local board of health. And so there is a lot of public health law that comes into play here. So if someone violates a quarantine order, we technically could go to the courts for an injunction. So we try not to do that. We try to really work with people, provide them with resources to our community partners, whether it's the council on aging, Arlington Eastwood to make sure that people have food and access to medication. So we're really working to sort of support people to be successful in quarantine. And then just going back to the infectious person, that's a positive. We're also then issuing an isolation order. So we're asking them to stay in and away from everyone in their family, their household for the 10 days from the onset of symptoms, 24 hours after the symptoms subside after that 10 days is over. And then obviously 10 days from that test. It can be extremely overwhelming, the dates can be all very confusing. That's why it's really important that if you are positive case that you're answering the phone, you're having this conversation with our team. If you ever have concerns about maybe feeling that you're being scammed by someone call our office and obviously talk to our team. We've got an amazing team. They're very dedicated and obviously we wanna make sure you feel comfortable speaking with them. So feel free to give us a call if you're ever concerned. Anyone that the biggest takeaway that we are sort of struggling with and really wanting to get across to people that anyone showing signs and symptoms of COVID-19 do not be in denial. You are very likely possibly a positive. And so so many people that we talked to were like, I just didn't think that it was COVID. And so they were out and maybe going to the grocery store or doing whatever they needed to do and they just really didn't believe that they could possibly have it. And so it's so important that if you have symptoms that you isolate immediately. And if you are able to get a test that you stay away from others until you get your results. Obviously, if you're positive, you'll be contacted by our team here in Arlington. If you're negative, then you can go about, obviously you wanna stay out of the public. If you're still sick and making sure that you're not spreading whatever it is that you may have if it's not COVID. It is important. This is another piece. It's just really important that you keep your circle small. And one of the biggest, another big takeaway is that face covering. So face masks, we have seen tremendous success all across the world with populations that are wearing face coverings and then just staying six feet apart, particularly as we're seeing an increase in cases across the country. So that's another really important point. So I've got my face mask graphic. Again, I cannot say enough the success we've seen with face coverings and making sure people are using them.  So here in Massachusetts, the governor established the mask order. So one of the orders that the governor put out in early May was that all residents ages two and over are required to wear a face covering when they're inside public spaces at all times.  Of course there are exceptions and we work with people that they have medical conditions in order to make sure that they're not targeted and that they're feeling uncomfortable within their communities. If someone has a medical condition and they need to access medication at a pharmacy, the pharmacy will likely work with that individual to bring that to the curb. So we're trying to work with establishments to make sure that obviously issues such as that are addressed so that people aren't denied access to services that are crucial to their survival in our community. We also asked that masks are worn in an area with individuals that do not live in your home. So people that are from maybe their cousins or neighbors. If you're with those people, we're asking that you wear masks. It may feel awkward to wear a mask around people that you're familiar with, but it's important because we're seeing a lot of spread from people that are familiar with others that are just not wearing masks. And then when you're outside, we get a lot of complaints about seeing various people walking or running and they're not wearing the mask. We do require masks be worn when you're unable to stay six feet apart. So that is the state requirement. And I know that Chief Flaherty, so the Board of Health enforces this order. And then obviously we work closely with the police and the police have been very instrumental in helping us with this because we've given the police their 24 seven. So it's so helpful to have them as partners in this effort to make sure people are aware of the mask order. So we provided the police with a thousand face coverings and they were able to pass those out and do a lot of education. And it's been really helpful. And we have not issued any tickets. And so we have really taken the approach to do education. And so that's been really helpful to have the police as partners in that effort. So a lot of people ask, I'm bouncing around town and people are saying, where are we going? What's next? So here in Arlington, we will continue to push for testing opportunities. I know we get a lot of complaints or lots of questions about where do I go for testing? Like I think I'm positive, I think I might have it, where do I go or I need a test. I cannot say enough about the mask, stop the spread sites. You have access to a computer and you can Google that and you need a test, go to one of those sites. It is an amazing resource that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has for Massachusetts residents. The closest ones around here, I know there's one in Saugus, Everett, Chelsea Revere, they're located in high-risk communities. That's why we don't have one here in Arlington. Don't, I mean, believe me, I asked and I was told with the low number of cases in Arlington, we're likely not going to have one here. But we do have access to those communities and I would definitely suggest that if you feel the need to go to those, those tests are turned around in 24 to 48 hours. I know that some of people are getting the back sooner than 24, but those are the most accessible sites. If you're sick, you should be contacting your physician. That's the other point as well, because your physician may have access to testing more local if you need it. And then if you have no way of getting tested, if you have no way of accessing any of these sites or locations, we just ask that you stay home until your symptoms subside in at least for 10 days to prevent the further spread. And then just sort of shifting gears, a lot of conversation in the media about the COVID vaccinations. We have received guidance on vaccination distribution preparation and we're considering all the scenarios in our planning efforts. Obviously, as I mentioned previously, our department has been preparing for and has been working closely with our regional partners, our state partners and our federal partners to develop, we call them emergency dispensing site plans. And those are ways that we distribute a medication or a vaccination to large numbers of people over a short period of time. So for as long as I've been here, we've been developing those plans and we've been exercising each year using our flu vaccination plans, our flu vaccination clinics to plan and to prepare for this type of distribution. There are a number of pieces within the CDC guidance that came out a few weeks back that were obviously areas that we haven't prepared for. So we are trying to incorporate those pieces into our plans. And then we will, what else is next? We will continue to evaluate statewide case data to determine what our trends are and our best ways to control the spread. I know that the manager had mentioned, we're always looking at what next, like what can we do to prevent future cases and that really is our ultimate goal. And then just real quick, I know my time is running out, what can you do? I cannot say it enough.  One big, we're entering like a very busy end of year celebration season. Do not host indoor gatherings. This is an incredibly important piece. We are seeing the biggest spread is within the home. So people spreading within their family unit and then people coming into the home for birthday parties and gatherings. So do not host large family gatherings. It is extremely important that we focus on that as a prevention strategy, as a community and just find alternatives to celebrations. The CDC has put together and it's linked on our website strategies for Halloween, Thanksgiving, the other holidays. So just making sure that you're following those steps. Another big piece, get a flu vaccination. There's no shortage of flu vaccine in Massachusetts. We're incredibly lucky to be in a state that has a lot of flu vaccine available. So get a flu shot because we cannot be entering a season with co, two viruses circulating and having to deal with an increase in hospitalization. So it's important that you get your flu shot. The last point is just be patient. We are in this new normal for a very, it could be for a very long time. And so I think it's just important to understand that as a team here in Arlington, our health and human services team, we are working around the clock to make sure we're doing the best we can for you and for the community at large. And so I think it's just important to keep that in mind and just try to do the best you can with what we're faced with. And I know we had a lot of community, just a lot of virtual community coming together. And I think that seeing that is exciting to see. And I hope that we can continue to embrace that. And that's all I have. And I think I went over and I apologize for that. Stop sharing and turn it back to Adam. Thank you. No, thank you, Christine. That was great. I think that was a great, actually a ton of information in the amount of time you use. So thank you for that. Our next speaker is our fire chief, Kevin Kelly. Also our director of emergency management who's going to give an update on the status of operations and preparedness in the fire department. Thank you, Adam. And good afternoon to everybody. Again, my name's Kevin Kelly. I am the fire chief of the town of Allington. So what I thought I would start with today is let you just know how we're doing here at the fire department. First of all, right from the beginning of the pandemic, nothing has changed here in the fire department. Staffing levels have stayed the same. We've been able to maintain our 15 man minimum every day. All three of our stations have remained open. All of our firefighters have remained safe and healthy. Our car volume has decreased a little bit, not much, but mostly due at the beginning of the pandemic when a lot of folks were just reluctant to go to the hospital at all. So we're doing fine. We're doing great. Some things that have changed operationally for us since the start of the pandemic and we've been maintaining up till now when will for a while is we screen all our employees twice a day. So when an employee comes into work in the morning, before they come into the building, we take their temperature, ask them some COVID screening questions, and then we do that again at around 5.30. We've been training in smaller groups. Normally when things were normal, we get together all of us that day and train. Now we try to kind of break out into smaller groups just to kind of practice some social distancing even amongst ourselves. Some other things that have changed operationally for us that are new is when you call 9-1-1, you might get a COVID screen or you will get COVID screen questions. So please be patient with that and answer the questions to the best of your ability. We've been adopted a kind of a one-in approach before COVID. You have a fire engine and an ambulance show up and all five of us would walk into your home and evaluate and assess. Now we're just sending in one person first in kind of full PPE to speak with the patient and evaluate, ask some COVID questions. Just to again, eliminate exposure, one to protect you, the patient, and one to protect us. And then another thing is we've been placing a mask on all patients, no matter what the nature of the call is. Again, COVID, there are a lot of people that are asymptomatic, so we just don't know. And again, we've been fortunate, I think it's working. No one on the department, as far as we know up till now has been affected by COVID well in duty. So it's been working. People have asked in the past about our PPE, how we're doing with that PPE. As of right now, it seems like supply chains are starting to slowly loosen up. We are able to get PPE from vendors that not the volume we're used to, but we are able to get some stuff trickling in. However, through using agencies like FEMA and MEMA and private donors, we have been able to build up a cash or a little stockpile of PPE. So, you know, there's some anticipation that there might be another spike coming. Very confident that we have enough PPE to effectively protect our first responders in you. So we should see no change in how we respond to any of our calls. We're also been able to obtain a well over $125,000 worth of PPE at no cost to the town through again, private donors, FEMA, MEMA, those kinds of things. So we're doing very well there. And then the last thing I want to talk about is with the fall approaching and people wanting to do some social distancing outside. We've been getting a lot of calls to the department about open burning. Can you have a fire pit in Allington? So, Allington has been designated by the Department of Environmental Protection as one of the 22 communities, primarily inside the 128 belt, that open burning is not allowed. However, a couple caveats to that. So simply, there is no burning of wood in Allington. No burning of wood, if you start there. However, if you have a device that was primarily designed for cooking. So for example, if you have a patio built and you had a pizza oven installed, you may burn wood cooking your pizza. So NOP does popular pizza because that was primarily designed for cooking. However, you cannot use a fire pit for cooking.  So it is illegal and we will ask you to put it out. However, what we are allowing is if you have a fire pit that is fueled by propane or natural gas, we will allow that. The spirit of the DEP is because of the smoke it generates and the embers and those kind of things. If you have a propane or naturally gas fueled fire pit, it produces none of that, so we will allow that. So again, if you have any questions specifically about that, I'm certainly gonna be staying on for the call for later you can ask or you can contact the department and we'll answer them directly. That concludes my portion. Again, Adam, thank you for having me here today and look forward to hearing and I'll speak. Thank you. Thank you, chief. Much appreciated. Next, we have chief Flaherty from the police department to provide an update on the operations of the APD. Thank you very much, Adam. Good afternoon and thank you for joining in today. I'm Julie Flaherty, the chief of police and I think I just would like to start by saying thank you very much to the residents and the business owners in town for your support of the police department and your continued generosity. We're very grateful for your kindness and our offices are very much appreciative of the cards and notes that continue to come in. So thank you.  We have continued to take steps to ensure the safety of all of our staff. Our offices continue to conduct briefings outdoors and follow new protocols for distancing in and around the police station. You may have noticed that we are all wearing masks any time we were out in public and inside of the station. We have found innovative ways to conduct our trainings as we're still required to keep up with our certifications. Jail diversion clinician has continued to be available and co-respond with our police officers when needed. A homeless outreach team has still been very active in the community, working with our homeless population. At this time, similar to the fire department, staffing levels haven't been affected over the past six or seven months and the Allington police officers have remained healthy. And I'm very grateful for that. And I think it's because of some of the protocols that we do have in place. We are out in the community to ensure your safety. If you call the police department requesting an officer come to your house, if you call a dispatch center, the dispatch may request that you come outside to see the police officer if you're able to. If you're not able to, of course, we will come in to respond to whatever emergency or call that you may have. If you call to file a police report, the dispatcher might direct you to our online reporting system where you can file your own report. And we're seeing that a lot with a lot of the scams, a lot of the identity theft and employment theft that's happening. And usually if you file an online police report, an officer will follow up with you within 24 hours to discuss the case or get any answers to questions that they might have. Our records room has been opened. We had shut it down for a few months. It's open now by appointment. So you're able to take care of any firearms licensing business that you might have, request reports in person, I'm sorry, online or on the phone and the records department will have them available for you at the front desk. We are offering our fingerprint services again to town residents and that's taking place on Tuesdays between 8 30 a.m. and 3 p.m. So if you call the police department, we'll be able to schedule an appointment for you. The front lobby to the police station has remained open during the pandemic. There's a police officer stationed at the front lobby. If you wanna walk in to discuss any concerns that you might have, and it will remain open as long as possible. We are seeing an increase in gatherings in the community since the end of the summer or later in September when school started back up. And I'm really calling on the community to keep doing your part to keep everybody safe. We're receiving calls from concerned neighbors about gatherings, indoor gatherings and people's backyards, outdoor gatherings. We're receiving reports of youth gathering around town both on town property and on private property who are not social distancing and not wearing masks. We've been working with the Health and Human Services, the Board of Health and the schools to get this message out. When we do receive a complaint for a violation, an officer will respond and investigate and educate people about the mandates. As Christine Bonjono had mentioned, all offices out on patrol have masks that were provided to them by the Board of Health. And we offer them to people who they encounter who do not have masks. It's very important that I mention if you come across somebody in public that's not wearing a mask, you should not approach them. And you definitely want to avoid this. We've seen some physical altercations occur over this and we want to avoid this. So if you have any concerns or questions, I encourage you to call the police department and we can assist. Our goal is to keep people safe and avoid getting sick unnecessarily. We want people to stop the large gatherings and follow the mandates and we're looking for voluntary compliance with this. We're grateful to the people who have been wearing masks, who have been social distancing, practicing good hygiene and looking out for one another. And at the police department, we're really looking forward to a time when we can safely gather and return to meeting in person with the community. And until then, we really are into this together. So please do your part. And thank you for this opportunity to speak with you all today. Thank you, Chief. Next, we're going to hear from our director of recreation, Joe Conley. Thanks, Adam. So I'm primarily here to talk about what the rec department is permitting in our parks and open spaces right now. We are permitting organized youth sport events in park activity that is compliant with the current state guidelines. All of the youth sports that are adult sports that are using our parks facilities have adopted their own COVID safety plan. Those COVID safety plans are reviewed by myself with certainly assistance from the Board of Health to make sure that they're meeting all state recommendations. So although we took off certainly in the spring and summer months, beginning latter summer early fall, we do have youth sports and some adult sports using some of our facilities. The other thing that we're permitting and this is certainly in cooperation with the planning department. We're calling it businesses, state of emergency businesses in parks program. So this is to help out some of our local businesses that finding it difficult for one reason or another due to the state of emergency. So we have opened up various open spaces in our parks for fitness and arts programs. We have issued about 38 different permits to about 21 different businesses. That program was originally gonna end November 1st. However, it's been so successful. We've extended that to continue until at least the first snowfall. And then we will end the program and then reconsider the program continuing again during the spring. All other recreation offerings are really have been minimized with COVID safety guidelines from the state and from the Department of Early Education and Care. The Ed Burns arena is open. However, the capacity is certainly lower than pre COVID days. And that is in accordance again with the state guidelines. And we are offering certainly public skating but again, the number of users on the ice facility has been drastically decreased and you must pre-register for the event. So otherwise it's still very busy here in the rec department. But right now we're kind of moving forward the best that we can. Thank you, Adam for giving me a chance to speak today and I look forward to answering any questions that may come up. Thank you, Joe. So next, we're gonna hear from Jenny Rae who is the Director of Planning and Community Development. All right, go ahead, Jenny. You're still on mute, Jenny. That always helps. I'm Jenny Rae. I'm the Director of Planning and Community Development and I'm gonna walk you through a number of different things that we've been working on to support the community. I'd say that there really have been two roles. Our primary role has been to really keep business moving and that's both short-term and long range planning activities, coordination of boards, committees, commissions, working groups. Some of you on this call might know that we do, we have a lot of different groups who meet and we've been able to maintain those meetings virtually and then managing a wide range of town capital and planning projects, securing and administering multiple grants and funding for the town. So we're trying to keep that as our main role and primary activity. But at the same time, we've been participating in the response and recovery efforts in a number of ways with this primary goal in mind, which is to address and both address and improve the health and safety in our local business community and for residents as well as for our local nonprofit organizations, many of which are providing really critical support services in our community. And our department has done this in a number of different ways. Really by applying, I would say a culmination of best practices, which we've learned from our regional economic development partners. Of course, we always learn from what's happening in other municipalities as well as even other states where other states have applied different planning ideas to make sure that people can safely participate and continue to have good quality of life even during the pandemic. And that's meant also including the input from the community as a result of really primarily our economic development recovery task force, which was formed by the select board. We work in close relationship as well with the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. Significant coordination, as you may have heard, really happens among this town team, the departments that are participating in this call in particular, but we've also had a really great suite of volunteers. But we primarily work closely with the Health and Human Services Department, DPW, recreation, police and fire. And there's been a crew of what's called the Amazing Arlington Volunteers who've also provided a lot of support when we needed it just in time. So I'll put forward the few different activities that we've applied to, for example, the business community. The first one is that we really tried to ensure as many safe options as possible. That started with creating safe dining options. As many people know, we had limitations for reduced capacity for indoor dining and limited opportunities for outdoor dining because of the nature of the infrastructure in our business communities. And what that meant is we needed to repurpose space, public space for that to happen. And it involved a lot of different steps, but ultimately led to repurposing parking spaces in many cases, as well as repurposing other public spaces that are mostly adjacent to an existing business that has a restaurant, but in some cases is also just nearby to provide for safe outdoor eating options with proper social distancing. This handles both a safety issue as well as supports our business community. And we think that's very important, particularly our restaurants. As Joe already mentioned, we've been working closely with Joe and the Recreation Commission to allow for outdoor classes in the parks. And that is as a result of reduced indoor capacity to frankly, no capacity for some of our operators of fitness facilities and other exercise options. And that's allowed for it really, it's been very popular. And I think there's been a lot of usage of the outdoor classes in parks. It has not just been for exercise though, we've also had some art classes. And again, I think that that's also critical for the community at this time to continue to engage in those types of activities. And then I'll mention shop Arlington first. It's a new campaign that was launched really with the Chamber of Commerce. And it's intended to demonstrate to everybody that the business community is not only open right now, but it's ready for people to come and be going to those businesses in a number of different ways though. I think it's both creative and responsive and it has public health at the top of mind.  So you might need to make an appointment in advance because the door is not readily open to customers. I would say that the business community has made significant investments in new infrastructure to ensure the health for all. It's been very impressive, but support has also been needed and support must continue in our local business community at this time, particularly strengthening locally owned infrastructure that we have in town. Lastly, we've been working on an initiative mostly as a result of all of these things that I just mentioned to really streamline and review our permitting processes, which sometimes can be protracted because many of the different departments that are even on this in this group right now participate in a review process. We've been able to do some streamlining of that through as a result of COVID and we're hoping that some of that will also continue and move online to make things easier in the long run. For the community at large, we've looked at a number of different things that I think are also not just about health and safety, but also about movement and quality of life. The first of those is shared streets. And actually shared streets relates to not just repurposing roadways like Brooks Avenue and Mary Street Now, where we're looking at ways to incorporate safe mobility while social distancing, limiting or restricting altogether vehicle traffic and providing basically on-street options for walking and biking. It also includes our Parklet project. And that's happening in both Arlington Heights as well as Arlington Center. The Parklet, which is basically repurposing a parking space and turning it into seating, installing bike racks and other options in spaces that currently are occupied by cars. And that is, again, just to allow for and accommodate for that distancing, especially in places where there's a high level of people who typically gather, we wanna create as many safe spaces for people to be as possible. And again, that's in support of the business community, but I see that also as being a support for people in general and in our neighborhoods. And then related to that is also for arts and culture. This has really been the most challenging area for us in part because of the restrictive nature of what we can and cannot do right now. We cannot convene indoors and outdoors. And that's been challenging in our artist community. So we've been trying to be supportive and working in concert with the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture to look at what options there do exist and that we can safely initiate. But one of those was the cheerful where you sit exhibit which allowed for people to walk through our town garden space and view chairs. It also served as a fundraiser for the commission. We're also looking at other safe ways to install public art. I think that those are when people see art and they experience art, it's a special moment in time, one that we can't experience altogether, but even if people can enjoy that independently, I think that that's also important. And something that we've been continuing to try to provide. Lastly, we have nearly $1 million in additional community development block grant funding. Some people may know that we are a community development block grant entitlement community, which means that annually actually for the past 46 years, we've received about a million dollars to program for a variety of activities. This year due to COVID-19, we received funding through what's called the CARES Act, which is the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act. And almost $1 million has been infused additionally into the community for a variety of activities. The first round we used for emergency rental assistance, assistance to micro enterprises, which are those smaller businesses in our community, and assistance to organizations who are addressing issues like food insecurity, childcare, and providing Wi-Fi hotspots so that seniors can stay active and engaged with services and programming. The second round is something that we're programming right now. And so with that, I'll say, first of all, thank you so much to everybody who's listening right now. Thank you to my peers and the department head team and all of their staff. And thank you to my team, Aaron's Worko, Allie Carter, Dan Amstutz, Kelly Linema, Mary Muzinski, and Emily Sullivan. They've, that's almost everybody on the team who has been providing as much additional services as possible in the community and to support the effort of recovery and being responsive. So thank you so much, Adam. I'll turn it back to you. Thank you, Jenny. That was great. Now for our final panelists to give updates on what's happening with public works and projects around town is director of public works, Mike Rademacher. Thank you, Adam. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Mike Rademacher, the director of public works. And I just like to spend just a few minutes to bring people up to speed on the on-goings of public works to the department during the pandemic. Aside from a brief disruption at the beginning of this back in March, public works has resumed typical operations within all DPW departments. This would include, obviously trash pickup at residential locations as well as in parks, mowing, road repair, cemetery operations and maintenance of the water and sewer system. So we're back to our typical responsibilities. And although our administrative offices are closed currently, all the services we were providing previously are still being provided with one exception, our television and electronics drop off is now by appointment. So if folks are interested in that service, they can contact the administrative office, make an appointment and get rid of televisions for electronic waste, which typically had just been by a drop by service. So in addition to our typical day, we have been able to take on some larger projects even still during these times. And most notably would be the support of some of the projects that Jenny Rae mentioned, which were the construction of the parklets as well as the shared street projects. The staff here helped install some of the infrastructure that was able to get those off the ground. And more notably, or maybe even larger than those are the construction of sidewalk replacement in the center of town, which I'm sure folks have seen. We're replacing sidewalks from Mystic Street and Pleasant Street down to the fire station down by Franklin Street. And also along Broadway, we're replacing the old brick sidewalks with a more ADA compliant concrete, the decorative border. We're also taking on improvements on Lake Street at the intersection of the bike path. And new intersection is being installed their signalized intersection, which will help guide both modes of traffic, vehicles, bicycles and motorists. We also have a significant amount of lane markings, which will be striping on Mass Ave and other major roadways through town, something that we're taking advantage of the lower traffic to accomplish. So these are just some of the more notable things going on in public works. And I'm happy to talk more or answer more questions as the meeting continues. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. So if I could ask all the panelists to turn their video back on, we're gonna go into the Q&A portion of today's session. So I've got a couple of questions in the Q&A, some that were submitted before and some that have been emailed to me while we were talking. But I think I'll go to one, two similar questions in the Q&A and I'll ask Christine to answer these. Two folks have been asking if there was a way for us to try to coordinate rides to the testing. If someone doesn't drive or can't drive or whatever their case may be, are we aware of any services or towns provided services that we could access to get people to test? So currently the town isn't organizing rides for people to get COVID tests to go to Chelsea or any of the stop the spread sites. But there are locations on Mass Ave here in Arlington. There is access to hospitals in the area. And depending on the age, if someone's connected through the counseling aging, we can work on getting rides through the COA. But in general, we're not doing rides for individuals. There's TX, there's MBTA access along the avenue to get up to Cambridge or to the Heights. So we do feel that there is some accessibility in those areas. So at this point, no, we're not providing rides. Okay, thank you, Christine. Question for Chief Kelly. Are propane heaters allowed and if so, what are the suggestions for safe use? If you could just cover that again, that'd be great. Certainly, if we're talking about residential grade, I would assume the questions get towards, someone wants one of those like tower, propane heaters, you'll see out at businesses, like those kind of things. Then the only requirement would be the same as like a propane grill. It has to be, it's 10 or 12 feet from the building, fire extinguisher in hand, those kind of things. While I would suggest anyone listening, if they do have a specific question, is to call my fire prevention officer, Deputy Ryan Melly, his number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. But I'm pretty confident for the question that the manager asks, if we're talking about residential use, backyard, propane heater, it just has to be 10 to 12 feet from any kind of combustibles and you have to have a fire extinguisher on hand. Great, thank you, Chief. All right. So question that I'll, I think I'll go back to Christine for questions today, definitely questions in the community and on social media. I know we're planning a release today, but Christine, can you talk to everybody about Halloween and what we plan to recommend for Halloween? Sure, so the town of Arlington doesn't make decisions one way or the other on Halloween, but we do provide a level of guidance, public health strategies to eliminate or kind of decrease risk. We are putting out the, there are three categories on the CDC website, which has been adopted by the state in which we're putting out, there's the low risk category than the moderate risk and then there's the high risk activities. And so, you know, a lot of questions come up, you know, is trick or treating allowed? And I think that's the biggest question people are asking and I see it on social media. My neighbors are asking, it's a big deal. And so I think what we're looking at as far as that goes, the recommendations we would have is to give out pre-package, you know, to maybe to have pre-packaged or, you know, goodie bags or something to that effect available spaced out for people to take off a surface. And we really want to limit the interactions between the people at the door and the children coming up, you know, again, it's the masks, it's the six foot distancing, it's being outside. So we're really kind of trying to give people those ideas to implement in their decision-making process. But again, you know, we will have our information on the town website, we'll put it out through social media and I know that there's a pressure lease going out on this. But again, it's just trying to reduce risk as best as we can. Great, thank you, Christine. Would you say that's what you've seen in most other communities? Correct, yes. I know that there are some communities that have made a decision to cancel. And again, like I said, you know, we're just providing the community with strategies to reduce risk. You know, a lot of parents are saying this is an important activity for kids and we, you know, it's outdoors. So I think, you know, we just want to make sure that as much as we can that we're preventing the potential for spread. So by following those activities listed, you know, we're hopeful that we can still have some kind of an event while making sure it's safe. Great, thank you. So next question, I think I'll ask both Chief Flaherty and Mike Rademacher to take a shot at is how will the town handle overnight on-street parking during the remainder of the pandemic as we head into winter and snow plowing season? So I guess Chief, if you could talk about what we have been doing and our thoughts going forward and Mike, maybe your views on the importance of having the streets clear for snow plowing operations. Sure, thanks, Adam. So the police department will continue to enforce the overnight parking by-law. We have been enforcing it since March, since everything shut down. I for one hope it doesn't snow a lot this winter, but in the case of a snow emergency, it's extremely important that we have all the vehicles off the road. So the plows can treat the roads properly and we can have emergency vehicles be able to access them. Sure, I'll just echo that in that Arlington is a very densely populated community and the streets aren't super wide and really impacts our ability to clear the roads when the vehicles are left overnight. So I would stress the importance of continuing the practice of snow overnight parking. Great, thank you both. Another question in the Q&A that I think, perhaps both Jenny and Mike could talk a little bit about, not pandemic specific, but a good question. How would one go about requesting having a walk light installed at the crosswalk by Starbucks trader, Joe's Walgreens in the Heights? This questioner is, said her husband unfortunately was hit by a hit and run driver while walking that crosswalk. And if there was a walk light, it wouldn't have happened. I know planning and TAC have studied that crosswalk and have made some improvements, but would I really care to talk about what process might be followed to consider further pedestrian interventions there? Jenny, do you want to? Oh, no, I was gonna, go ahead Mike. I think, I mean, I think TAC is a great resource in that when they analyze these requests, they usually collect a significant amount of data at the location. So vehicle speeds, pedestrian usage and then apply that data to accepted criteria for certain infrastructure, be it a light or a crosswalk or something else. So I don't know particularly what has been done at this location to date. I'm happy to follow up with TAC, the engineering department of TAC to see if there has been any kind of recommendation made, but that would be, I would guess my first recommendation is that we would look to TAC to see what they've already evaluated. Yeah, I would just add that the intersection was studied and we moved some parking spaces to allow for greater visibility at that crossing location. I think that, as Mike had stated, perhaps reviewing the results of that, the move of the parking spaces and also the visibility as well as the lighting in the area has come up previously. And then of course, working with TAC as well as Dan Amstutz, our senior transportation planner and the police department on any other measures that need to be taken to improve safety before recommending something specific but probably just evaluating what else needs to be done if there are any additional recommendations that need to be advanced from the prior study and analysis that we conducted. I think it's a great question though, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you both. And the same questioner asked what TAC stands for and that's the Transportation Advisory Committee, which is a body made up of both town residents with expertise in transportation planning as well as town staff. So it's been a group that's handled challenges like this over the years and they hold public meetings over Zoom as well. Question, will parking meters remain as they are with no charges? I'll take this one. We plan on recommending to the select board actually at this upcoming Monday to turn the meters back on with a pay by phone option that surrounding communities have rolled out. It would be the first time we've rolled it out. As we see business start to pick up in the center, we wanna make sure parking is available for people to be able to access the businesses. So right now we plan on turning them back on as of November 1st, pending the select board approval on Monday. So let's see, what else do we have here? I'm trying to get everybody involved, Joe. I haven't found one for you yet, Joe. What else do we have? I don't know if we've lost Christine, but we have a question of, are there any plans for online activities through Zoom for seniors regarding wellness and exercise? And do we have any thoughts about replacement plans for outdoor sport, adult outdoor sports in the winter? So maybe Christine, you could talk about seniors and Joe, any thoughts you have about outdoor sports planning in the winter? Okay, I'll start. I am having some wifi issues, I apologize. So yes, the counseling aging, as Jenny had mentioned, received some funds to purchase devices and wifi for seniors. We have a number of programs going on currently through the counseling aging. We have a newsletter, it's all online. So if people are interested in joining those classes, we do Zoom, Tai Chi, basically Zoom everything. So exciting news to share there and thanks to the grants that were provided through CDBG. And then Joe, I know you have a lot of information about, or maybe you have some information about the programs for the winter. Sure, it's a great question about the adult sports. Primarily our parks tend to shut down around mid to end of November, certainly for maintenance. However, they do stay open year-round for any type of a passive recreation that people might want to use the parks for, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, bird watching, hiking, et cetera. There is no plans right now to do any type of organized activity, but certainly the parks will remain open to any one of those passive activities. We do offer a virtual online fitness program and has Zumba, yoga, HIIT, any type of fitness you could really ask for. And that information is available at arlingtonrec.com. Great, thank you both. Christine, I received an email from someone asking about the testing sites. Apparently wherever they were accessing the information, they got a couple addresses and Everett went there and the sites weren't there anymore. Perhaps they were dated addresses with some of the pop-up sites that had been there in the past. Do you have a source that we can direct people to that's a surefire way of knowing where these testing sites are? Sure, well, I think we have a link from our website to the official site, but you can always Google mass spread, stop the spread sites. It's updated, it's real time updated. I mean, like there was a holiday on Monday and they even had, you know, which ones were open for that particular day. So I think it's important to go right to the source as opposed to, you know, if information was copied and put on a hospital site or another site, I think it's just important to go right to that mass stop the spread testing sites directly. All right, so if people go to mass.gov, there should be a banner for stop the spread that they can access. Exactly. You know what? Somebody's texting me the site now, it's mass.gov slash, it's a mass.gov site and then it's slash, maybe stop the spread or something like that, but actually it's a little longer. Yeah, so stop the spread is the site that they're going to want to look for. Great, great. Thank you for that. Yeah. Christine, someone probably didn't hear your answer earlier about trick or treating. Would you just mind restating our precautions that we plan on issuing later today? Oh, okay, it says trick or treat, source trick or treating, sorry about that. Yeah, so yes, I mean, the traditional trick or treating is listed under the CDC's high risk activities and we're just asking if people do engage in that activity that they look at the three levels of risk and they really focus on trying to bring it to low or moderate risk. And so one of the strategies in moderate risk activity for trick or treating is to pass out pre-packaged goodie bags, maybe having them like on a table and people can pick them up as they walk by, but everybody's staying six feet apart, everybody having face coverings. Again, it's just those strategies that we already went over in the previous presentation, just making sure that we're lowering the risk. So I would say check out those three categories. It's the same categories that the state is using and most communities in Massachusetts are pushing out as well. Great, and we'll be posting that later today via a press release town website and pushed out through social media as well. So a question that we received before the session of asking for a listing of town employees that were furloughed for fiscal years 2019 and 2020, I suppose that would encompass fiscal year 21, which was this current fiscal year. And the answer is really so far none. There were a few, a handful of seasonal employees that worked at the skating rink that were set for their seasonality to end that were let go a few weeks early back in the spring. But other than that to date, we have not furloughed any townside employees. That doesn't mean that there won't be future hard decisions to make based on both operations of certain programs as well as what the budget might hold in the future. But to date, we've not had to actually furlough anybody which has been positive for the town. We have a question about schools. I'll read the question but refer this to the school department as as the weather gets cooler, what are the plans for the schools? Please break down your answer from pre-K to grade two, pre-K to grade two, excuse me, grades three to five and then grade six, seven and eight. As I think we can see today, we have townside folks here and though the schools are certainly consulting with Christine and her team about planning, I think that question is best directed to school administration. So either the superintendent's office or potentially through the school committee, I think they can best address that question. Let's go to the library quickly. Christine, can you talk a little bit about, you know, your discussions with Andrea about why we have the restrictions in place in the library that we do? Sure, so just like in every other aspect of reopening, we do is we evaluate where, you know, every community is different, right? So, you know, when we look at what communities across the state are doing, we really have to look at what our community looks like and what our risks are here. So when working with the library director and the assistant library director, we're looking at, you know, what is the population look like? How are there risks throughout the library that we would need to tighten up? So we've been having a lot of conversations about steps that can be taken to reopen the library and to be able to provide the services that are needed. I know there's a lot of discussion about opening the library for browsing and so that's something that we've really worked to try to think about strategies on how to do that safely. I do know that we are entering a very cold period. We are entering a flu season. We're starting to see a higher rate of COVID cases. So I think our planning really has to look at that as well. And so we've been really trying to strategically think about ways to make that happen and while balancing the risks that are there. And our population is an older population here in town and our population visiting the library is older. And so we have to consider that as we make these decisions. So I do know that there will be changes coming up soon. I'm not sure if the library has announced those changes yet, but there are changes coming and we continue to evaluate.  Great. Thank you, Christine. We did have a question about whether or not this would be recorded. This session would be recorded and made available on the town website. And the answer to that is yes, we are recording it. And as soon as possible, we'll get it posted to the site. So anybody who wasn't able to watch today will certainly be able to access this and view it later. A few more questions have come into the Q&A. This one's for you, Mike. Can you talk a little bit about the Arlington Recycle Center collections? Are we still holding those as scheduled? And if we are, what precautions have we put in place? They are being held. There should be information on the town's website for the schedule. I believe it hasn't changed. And I know that we're trying to limit the amount of folks here at any given time. And there are precautions as to how many folks can be out of their vehicle at a certain time and separation and directing folks to maybe drop off things on their own rather than handing it to a volunteer. But there are protocol in place and it is being held. Great. Thank you, Mike. So I think I'm out of questions. I'll just quickly look at my email and see if anybody has emailed me any questions here. Oh, let's see. I think you just covered one of these, Christine, with a library question. I apologize. I'm getting questions from multiple different directions. I want to make sure I cover them all. With that, yeah, not seeing any new questions. I guess I'll just give it one more, you know, one more account to see if anybody else wants to. Well, someone took us up on it. Let's see. A question recently, Dr. Bode sent an email asking that school playgrounds as well as town playgrounds adjacent to schools. And for example, the North Union playground be reserved for use only by kids attending in person schools until 4pm every weekday. Please comment. So I guess maybe if Joe or Christine could talk a little bit about the reasoning behind it, and then I think we can share some messaging that we plan on releasing later today specifically about the North Union playground. Sure, I can start up the reasoning behind it. The park mission was having discussions and they were hearing from certainly numerous sources from the school side and the afterschool programming side that the whatever cohort was in school when they would go to use the playgrounds during the day for either mass break or recess, they would get to the playgrounds and there would be children and parents of children who were not in school for that day using the playground. And it seemed to go against the whole concept of not having children intermingle in where they would be going to school on separate days but I'll be playing on the playground together at the same time. So the thought process behind it was to keep the playgrounds available to the children who are attending in school learning on that day. I think some of the questions have come up with how come you have made the time at the end of the day 4pm. And that reason primarily was because of the afterschool programs that are going on in each of our schools every day. So the afterschool programs go through 6 o'clock at night. And so the thought process there was to at least give them the beginning part of the afterschool period to help sole use and then open them up after 4 o'clock certainly to generally use. One of the questions I did get was how come they're all closed on Wednesdays when no one's in school and that was maybe misleading in the original statement but on Wednesdays where everyone is remote learning, the playgrounds are certainly open to all. Great. Thank you, Joe. Christine, anything to add or? No, I think I think Joe covered it. I mean, we're really just looking to keep to keep the cohorts protected and to keep school in session as long as possible. I mean, Joe, do you think it would be fair to add that we do also we also plan on releasing something later today, trying to expand flexibility of the uses specifically at North Union and Luciano playground. Yeah, yeah, thanks. And that has been much of the feedback we've received has been because of the new Luciano playground. And that playground is just it's unique because all really accept hardy playgrounds are adjacent to schools are on our property. Some schools don't have any playgrounds of their own onsite. Some schools have playgrounds onsite but a very, very small, primarily built for kindergarten usage and where they're trying to use the outdoor spaces as much as possible. That's why the original reasons why we kept North Union in the mix, but we have, we have looked at that and there will be a statement going out today about some different time modifications that will open up North Union playground to those not in school learning in those in remote and just the general public more than currently is. Great. Great. Thank you. Okay, Christine, I got another question from the person who was expressed concern about not finding their the testing sites in every, and it seems like those sites where she wasn't able to find anything or still on that stop the spread site. If if she's having trouble or father residents are having trouble, could they call your office to try to troubleshoot where these sites might actually be. Absolutely, and then we can just we can send a message up to the to the state to get get resolution I think that that that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Okay, great. No, thank you. Thank you. Jenny, I know we shaved off a portion of what you may have wanted to say earlier is anything about some of your team's long range planning efforts you want to add while we have a few minutes. Just to add that, you know, we're working on a number of different long range plans, including a sustainable transportation plan which is addressing different types of mobility in the community, all different types of mobility and not just for cars but biking, walking every other type of connectivity to our transit system, etc. We're also working on a net zero plan, which is aiming to achieve a goal of net zero emissions by 2050, as well as a fair housing plan, and eventually a housing production plan. And with a number of these initiatives what we're finding I guess what I wanted to share is that we're trying to apply some of the principles that we've learned as a result of the pandemic, everything from new ways to engage the community and also the importance of really emphasizing and centering equity in our planning work. And I think that that's just something that I wanted to share with the community that we're thinking about these issues and finding ways to incorporate them into long range strategies so that, you know, everybody has access to the services and programs and activities that we're working on. And that policies are then responsive to those issues. Thank you very much. Christine one more library question. Do you have metrics in mind or conditions in mind that you'd like to see before we think about expansion of services or, or is it a more general consideration at this point. I think it's a general consideration, you know I think where we're seeing across the state across the country and around the world we're seeing that cases of COVID increasing. We're, I can't say that specific metrics will will make a, you know, will drive us towards a decision. I think I'd like to see us in the tail end of the next wave before, you know, complete reopening is, is possible. But we will continue to evaluate and, you know, obviously Andrea and her team will be communicating that out. Thank you. All right, well I think I'll give one last call for anybody who wants to insert a question into the q amp a. I don't want to, I don't want to start giving a closing and then have someone ask a question so give it a second. All right, well it seems like we've probably exhausted the questions and answers or questions that folks have today. So I want to thank everyone for attending and watching at home. I want to thank all of you for making the time to do this today. I think it's very helpful to share what you're doing in your departments and putting a face to the efforts that that all of you and your teams are putting in so thank you for the time and thank you for you share today. And again, thank you to everyone in the whole community for their efforts over the past seven months. You know, hopefully we'll all be able to look back at these times, you know, in the not too distant future and you know they'll be sadness for those that we've lost. But hopefully there can be happiness and better appreciating the things that we do have in our community and in life in general and an appreciation for the efforts that everybody put in in the community to get through these times together. So with that, I think we'll close for today. Thank everybody for attending and hope to see you all soon. Thank you.


Okay folks Larry Pesepento with the mid-afternoon update for TFNN, well it's a red and green type day folks, the stock indices are all up, gee that's not saying much it's been 11 days in a row for the Dow Jones Industrial Leverage and face of that with those indices the way they are the last three days has been a decrease in open interest and I don't know how long it's going to take but one of these days someone's going to realize that was short covering and you better have a parachute after that because that's not new buying folks that's people covering their shorts and frustration raise your hand I haven't done it today or yesterday anyway let's take a look here at this gold market you can see we had a beautiful pattern here just perfect symmetry at the 1955 level and we bought it there we had a nice move so I put my stop at break even and it went down and took the stop out at break even and then rally ten dollars so anyway it's had two ten dollar moves today we'll look at it again tomorrow the other thing that's interesting folks is we've got the treasury bonds and treasury notes setting a really major major major I mean major support and that with the Fed coming in tomorrow is going to be very interesting I think they make their decision tomorrow around around two o'clock I'm a winter two o'clock I'm not even sure you can check that with somebody else because I don't really follow it too much I believe it's 215 yeah I believe it is 215 because that's 1115 my time so that's probably it the other one that's very interesting is we had a really strong move in crude oil almost made 80 dollars a barrel and it still might but there's some major resistance up here at that 7950 level looking at the charts that that we follow right here as far as the livestock markets that hogs and cattle are still going lower we had a nice trade on the downside and cattle this week which worked out pretty nicely and the other ones that were watching the course of the grains today they're down yesterday they were up sharply but today they've backed off a little bit but they were up so much yesterday it is due to have some type of a of a smaller correction in here and that's what we're seeing as we look at these markets here today today's guests will be Jeff huge of alpha insights tomorrow will be Paula web and Thursday will be Bill meridian of cycles research out of in Austria and then also on Friday and we're hoping with a little bit of crossing my fingers we're going to have mr. Peter a light he's on so we'll take a break here would be right back<PHONE_NUMBER>


Like fans, like feeling like they have control over your career. Fans are wild, bro. Y'all have to think about it. If you're ours that has fans, you know where I'm coming from if you're ours with no fans, bro, listen up, right? Fans like to feel like, if it wasn't for me, you would not be here today, right? I think we all in our head have this weird, fancy life. I stopped listening to this motherfucker tomorrow. He falling off. You know what I'm saying? And so that's why I go back to, like, giving them real choice has a lot of positive benefits, even if you decide not to listen to them and take into consideration what they're saying. But even just giving them the illusion of choice is very powerful because, like, they become emotion connected to it. They start to feel like it's their project.  You do need them to survive. But like that individual, you may not need to survive the way they feel like you need them to survive, right? But it's like playing into the fantasy, you know what I'm saying?  Here go five options. They made more than five songs, you know what I'm saying? Like, they have hella songs out. Why they only give you that five illusion of choice? Right, these are five songs I already feel like anyway I was going to run with. You know what I'm saying? Me and my team been arguing about it. Shit, we were all on the same page. You would have never got this choice, but we're not. So, hey, I'm going to let you all decide, right? But as a fan, we just go like, oh, he made these five songs. He can't decide which one. Yeah, one down, one down, one right. And it's illusion of choice, bro. Illusion of choice. Not even whenever artists like ask things, I'm like, bro, you don't really mean this, but I'm going to participate because you at least, you at least made me feel like you needed me in this situation. Much appreciated because fans' desire for that is growing. Yeah. I don't think that existed as much before, right? People were cool of just witnessing what the artist does, right? It was almost this mysticism about it, which is why, you know, artists grow up feeling that today, like wanting to operate in a time that doesn't exist, like, oh, I should be so mystical. And I should just create this thing that the world isn't all of, but the world isn't all much these days to be honest. It's a different temperament with the fan bases because people see so much and then people are so, I don't even want to say full of themselves, but it's just, it's just so indifferent because they've seen so many different things. So what you really want to experience, or I mean, what you're really dealing with is now a fan base that went from, hey, I'm cool of witnessing what this artist does next. I wonder what's going to happen to a general market temperament of this is a RPG, everything is a RPG. I want to be a part of it. You know, I want to be a part of everything, gaming, likes, comments. Everything is receiving my feedback and functioning as a result of my feedback. That's the perception and that's what people are accustomed to. So if you give me the opportunity to that, it's funny. That's not even as cool anymore. You allowing me to vote on the song, that's novel, great marketing and made me feel amazing back in the day because you gave me the opportunity to vote on the song today. Not so much. I might feel more invested and feel like, oh, this person is a good person. But I also feel like I'm kind of supposed to be involved in this process. There's a sense of entitlement in today's current fans, too. So, you know, but it does have a benefit. I think like it really does have a benefit to allow them to be involved somewhere along the lines. Yeah, you just made me think about something that we've kind of touched on before and other points, but artists are competing with content creators, right? And a lot of content creators, like just general content creators, usually have no issue with letting their audience drive things, right? So it's like, if I'm a fan and I commented on Brand Man Showing Video, you should make a video about playlists and you make a video about playlists. And then I get on this Twitch stream like, yo, you should play the new, I don't know, Pokemon game.   And then he got a skit about it. At this point, bro, I'm just, I'm just one naturally assuming I'm amazing. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm killing it, bro. I'm I got these motherfuckers up. But then, too, it almost starts to feel like, hey, you person that won't give me that choice, like, how dare you when so many other of my favorite creators at least give me the option to be a part in some way or another. And like, YouTubers are notorious for doing it. YouTubers and streamers, like, I feel like a notorious for giving their audience, like, some of that type of input into what's going on.   We already talked about the impact that the YouTube landscape has on just, you know, content consumers as a whole, you know what I'm saying? So I didn't think about it as you said that, but it's like, yeah, bro, every other creative aspect of my life or, you know, creative person in my ecosystem probably has given me that type of choice that in one way or another. And you, music artist, you person that I see a couple of times a month won't even let me pick something for you for crazy. I'm not going for that, you know what I'm saying? Because that having at least the illusion of input for a fan. Allows them to feel like they have ownership of some of the process. Right. And I've been a part of this. And now that I've been a part of this, I want to support it more as it comes out, because I am not just supporting him. I'm supporting me in a way. I'm a part of this vision.   So his world is my world. And now you have people invested in your world and they're going to help you grow it. They're going to show up to concerts more or buy things more. Hey, I was a part of saying that you should come up with t-shirts or a certain type of t-shirt instead of doing a dead hat. So now when that t-shirt comes out, I'm like, yo, I want to be a part of it.  And the differentiation is the core product is what people come for. All right. It's serving a specific need or behavior that they'll be consistent and use.  It's a bell and a whistle, but people don't actually use it. All right. It'll be like me saying, man, I would love if Instagram went back to chronological order and the Instagram adds it to a different feed, which they have and I still never click over there. You know what I mean? It's a feature. It's really cool. And then if you put it on my main feed and made it my only way, I would actually do it, but it's not actually a core product enough where, no, I'm not going to use it unless it has this thing, right? Or it's not as functional or useful. So that same applies when you're listening to your fans. You can get a lot of noise. Part of that process is building the skill of understanding one, how do I differentiate between stuff that they're just saying and that's just like them being off the cuff and being careless because they can say something. Like you said, fans, people love to talk to you these days and give their opinion and they feel like it's their responsibility almost to make sure the world here is their opinion.  I stand on that. It's genius as they might be. You know, I also stand on that.  Oh, there's genius and stupidity, right? Because sometimes you don't know enough not to say something and that something might be, it might, it might click at the right time and the right space, you know what I mean? But this doesn't mean you smart just because you got one thing right. You know what I mean? But let me take a quick second to say if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands of millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply. It's completely free. But the thing is we're not going to let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com. Check it out. Back to the video. I want to play this quick snippet from Brock Hampton to really get this conversation popping. It's interesting that we embrace the audience as much as we did and like allow them to be a part of the the painting. Yeah, give them the paintbrush. And I think that was good and bad. But when it was good, it was great, really, because then you're kind of like all building like this. Like collective together. All right, so. Like he acknowledged period, there's the good and the bad of having your fans be involved. So I want to touch on. Some of the good and some of the bad from the perspective we've experienced in things as content creators in general, but then also maybe some of the artist's nuances in particular.  You have a vision on how you want to do things. So then you talk about all these pieces of feedback that you're getting. And you're like, no, that's just not the way I want to do it, because I'm creative and I have this vision. If I do everything based on what you say, I'm no longer creative. I'm pure marketer or business person, just reacting to the best form of feedback. I get that, right? So you're trying to sell your vision, not find somebody else's vision and follow that. But, you know, getting that other side of the fence. You want to make sure what you're doing connects.  I mean, what's the point of doing this whole thing? If you want to do it as a career, right? If it doesn't at least connect with people to a certain extent. Yeah, yeah, right. And like fans, too, usually try to point you in the right direction, especially when you're growing and, you know, they don't really have a reason to dislike you yet. A lot of times like fans are viewing it from their vanity point and they may even be paying attention to the conversations that other fans are having that you might not be seeing.  Go this way, right? And so, you know, I think I've seen instances before where like the audience is steered, the creator or the artist and completely in the right direction, you know what I'm saying? And I do think I've also seen times where their feedback held the creator back, right? Like it's almost like too much noise coming. And like you said, the artist starts to lose confidence in their idea. Damn, they don't like my idea. They just want me to do what they think is a good idea. And it discourages them a little bit, right? But, you know, you said something like a long time ago that made me think about it differently when you kind of talking about how tech works, right? And you told me that, you know, in tech, they believe in just like getting the product out there really fast to get a lot of feedback on it so they can tweak it. That's what makes a lot of sense, right? Like I have this thing that I think will work, right? Based on whatever my experience is or my viewpoint is. And then I get hundreds to thousands of feedback from the people I'm trying to sell it to, right? And like I said today, people are very vocal, bro. People have no problem telling you what they think should be better about the thing that you're doing for them. So it's like, I have this thousand people, my focus group telling me that, hey, if you did this thing, this should be crazy. And, you know, I just think it's valuable, right? It's like, why not get that viewpoint from the people that you were trying to get the purchase of things you're trying to do? So I can understand there being certain elements of an artist's career that maybe they don't want to let fans in, right? Like maybe it's like, hey, I don't think they should necessarily be sitting with you in like the writing room, right? But there are also some artists I've seen do like live writing sessions with their fans, right? So, but I could understand an artist going, now I don't want you here when I'm in the initial creation process, maybe once I have a framework for it, and I don't know where to go or, you know, I got three visual concepts for it, I don't know where to go. I can understand like giving them a ladder of choice and making them feel like they have complete autonomy over the situation. I think that sometimes is a happy medium. But like that was saying, like I think there's enough good that could come out of it that makes me believe that artists should trust their fan base majority of the time, unless you just have like a trolling as fan base. Like a DJ academic fan base or something, you know what I'm saying?  But if you have fan bases and like that, which is the most artists, then like, yeah, you know, let them at least give them the illusion of input, you know what I'm saying? Because that can go a long way.


You know I know that to a lot of people this might come across as a really silly question but it isn't and I want to answer this as seriously as possible because I've realized that each gender thinks so differently about sex but nobody actually ever communicates properly and so these misconceptions and these myths just never get sorted out.