Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington Select Board from Monday, January 10th, 2022. This is Select Board Chair, Steve D'Corsi. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Dianahan. Yes. John Hurd. Yes. Len Diggins. Yes. Eric Helmuth. Yes. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chaplain. Yes. Doug Heim. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely, consistent with an Act signed into law on June 16th, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The Act includes an extension until April 1, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded, and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novus agenda platform. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. This is the first scheduled meeting of the Select Board for Calendar year 2022. Let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. Before I turn to items who on the agenda, I would like to read the land acknowledgement that the board supported last spring in town meeting approved through a resolution and which is also contained on the town's website. We acknowledge that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony, province, and Commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. I will now turn to item two on tonight's agenda, the consent agenda. There is one item this evening, the minutes of the meeting of December 20th, 2021. This is the regular meeting of December 20th, 2021. I'll start with Mrs. Mahan. Move approval, no questions. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Second. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. No comments. Mr. Helmuth. No comments. Okay, on motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Hurd, Attorney Hunt. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. Item number three for approval, establishment of Veterans Memorial Park Gift Account. Jeffrey Chunglow, Director of Veterans Services. Is Mr. Chunglow with us this evening, Mr. Chaplin? Yes, he is. I just promoted him to panelist. Good evening, Mr. Chunglow. It's just about with us. Good evening, Mr. Chunglow. Good evening. As soon as I clicked join the meeting, it rebooted for a second. So I'm sorry about that. But first of all, thanks for having me participate. And I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and happy new year. You as well. So I was bounced out when you had started your discussion. So I'm not sure exactly what was mentioned before I signed back in. Yeah, I just introduced the item. So if you could tell us about establishing the account and we're aware of the, we had voted earlier last year actually, just before Veterans Day to create the, or keep the park, the Memorial Park near the fire station. But if you could tell us about the gift count and what you're looking for from us this evening. Sure. So I had planned to do this anyways in the future once we started collecting funds for the new Veterans Memorial Park. I recently had a veteran pass away, World War II veteran, Catherine Adler, who was 99. She passed away last week. So in lieu of flowers, she requested that donations be made to Department of Veterans Services. So I reached out to Rita to establish, or the process for establishing a budget item or a line item for donations for the park to establish that new account. So I have received a number of checks and it's a good starting place for the new Veterans Memorial Park. And I just asked that you accept the proposal to establish that new account. Attorney Heim, just a question on, is it just a vote that we need to establish the account? Is there anything else that we need, any other further action that we need this evening? Yes, sure. I don't think there's a further action that the board will need to take. There may be some further action that needs to be taken by, the board essentially, the primary function is to accept funds either by donation for grant, any conditions that are tied to them and make sure that they're acceptable in terms of who they're being received from. This is the sort of primary key keeping functions the board serves. But in this particular case, I think of this juncture, what Mr. Chandler was describing is the, it's the only action that the board needs to take. Okay, thank you, Attorney Heim. I will turn to the board now. I'll start with Mr. Heard. Mr. Chair, I'd like to move to approve the request to establish an account to accept gift funds for the new Veterans Memorial Park. And I look forward to what becomes of it. And again, Mr. Chandler, thank you for all your work that you do and your advocacy on the issue for our veterans in town. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Heard. Mr. Diggins. I'd like to second that. And please again, Mr. Chandler, who was the person who asked that donations be made in lieu of? Yes. So it was the family of Catherine Adler. So she was a Marine Corps veteran, World War II, had a very storied career, set some milestones. And so it was her family that requested that the donations be made. Yeah, I mean, World War II, I mean, we love to know more about that story. And certainly appreciate what her family is doing in this realm. So once again, I'm happy to second the motion. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I enthusiastically support the motion and express my gratitude to Ms. Adler's family for her service and for honoring her memory of her service in this wonderful way. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have any questions because I know our veteran services director will have this running smoothly and promptly as with everything else he does. And I'm also grateful for there's a lot of context that Mr. Chunglow does just silently. And we probably wouldn't even know about this one. So, but for this account being established and the generosity of the Adler family. And we thank her for her service and her family because as anyone who's married to or related to a military spouse, it really is also a family sacrifice. So as always, the board is available to you, Mr. Chunglow, with any help that you need. And you've always kept us in the loop and apprised of what's going on and will all be your biggest advocate. So thank you to everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan. Yeah, and I support this as well. I believe Ms. Adler may have been 99 years old when she passed. She, her relative's a McNamara family in Arlington, McNamara is her younger sister and I condolences to the family, but also I had heard about Ms. Adler's service and I did want to thank the family as well for identifying the veteran services for the gift account. So on a motion by Mr. Herd, seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney Hyde. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helman? Yes. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. Dacorsi? Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you, Mr. Chunglow. Thank you. Have a good evening. You too. Item four, board discussion, removal of double polls. The board will recall that I started a practice that if ever source of Verizon comes in that we have an update on the double poll situation in town and I do have some news to report. When I first had made this an agenda item back in October, I had cited statistics from October 31, 2020. We're according to the DPU report that Verizon filed or the report filed with the Department of Public Utilities. There were 148 double polls as of October 31, 2020. As of October 31, 2021, that number is 114 double polls. So there is progress being made. However, there is a detailed list that is provided or that the Verizon provides to the DPW by community. And we're gonna post that in the town. I'm gonna ask for a vote to post that on the town's website and ask residents to take a look at it and at any of the locations that are missing because that report that shows 114 double polls shows two double polls on Mass Ave. I use that as a sample. If you drive the length of Mass Ave, there are at least seven double polls. So there's some gaps in the reporting. And so while on the one hand, we're pleased to see that there has been some positive progress. I think there's some real questions on the completeness of the double poll report and the double poll that I had pointed out at the meeting back in October on the corner of Adams Street in Mass Ave, probably the worst one in the town doesn't appear on the double poll list. So that explains why it hasn't been removed. So what I'd like the board to consider, and if I could ask the town manager, ACMI ran a story about this back in November on their November 12th newscast. They actually reached out to Verizon for a comment on the number of double polls. And this is the response that they had received. I want to thank ACMI for the completeness of the story. But Verizon responded that they're currently up to date for all their double poll work in Ellington. And essentially that the reason that the double polls haven't been replaced is that they're awaiting work from other parties. And the town manager and I have spoken about this. And I think it's, we should request, think about requesting and then I'll open it up to the board. A meeting with representatives from Verizon, Eversource, RCN and Comcast, they are the parties that would have wires on the polls just to get an understanding as to what the communication is and what happens because for the primary party to say that they're currently up to date when there are 114 polls that are in compliance with the statute, I think we need to do better in terms of what the communication is. So with that background, I will turn to the board and I'll start with Mr. Diggins. Sorry about the delay, Mr. Chair. Well, clearly there's an issue, I mean, and so, I support your pursuit of this matter. And is there a motion that you want to come out of this? If you would like, I mean, I suggested action to request a meeting with the parties and to also publish the list and ask residents to report back if any of these sites are missing. Well, I certainly support that and I'm happy to make that motion. Great, thank you, Mr. Diggins. Any other comments? No comments. Okay, Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, I'd very glad to second that. I think that, you know, I appreciate Verizon's response but I think the danger for this when you multiple parties is that they can all wait for the other and point fingers at the other. And, you know, that does not serve the residents of the town very well at all. So I think both having this meeting and inviting the citizens to help with this tracking and accountability is a really good idea. And I want to thank the chair for refocusing the boards and the town's attention on the double polls each time that the utilities come for us for necessary approvals. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. This is Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Has it been seconded? Yes, I believe you said no seconded. I apologize. I was reading that teeny little print on this and I wasn't focusing on my apologies. I think it's definitely a good idea. We're going to post this double poll grid document that you've provided the rest of the board with. And is it my understanding we're going to ask residents? I have two power question on that. I'm going to ask residents to report directly to the town if they don't see their double poll or no other double poll that isn't on this list and or I know residents will, some residents might say, well, I want to send something directly to, you know, Verizon or whomever. Or is it, we just want to gather this information and go forth from there. Yeah, I spoke to the town manager about posting. I think maybe in the first instance is to report to the town. Certainly people could contact Verizon if they want, but I also want to let the public know that the list that we're going to publish is actually a list that Verizon files with DPU. It is a public document. So what we're reporting is a matter of public record already, but I think it, Mr. Chapterling, maybe you could respond. I think if we'd like the public maybe to reach out through us so that we can reach out to Verizon to suggest corrections to the list if there need to be corrections. I think that sounds right. We could either designate a staff member to receive those emails or even set up an inbox specifically for this purpose and direct people to send an email stating the location of the poll and we can double check the list. Okay. And I definitely support the various party joint meeting that the chair is suggesting to us. I don't think we need to vote on that. That's just something that the chair would schedule. I just would put it out there. Would it be beneficial to have, or maybe first communicate with a cable advisory committee chairperson where we are bringing in some of these cable companies? They may say they would be valuable there. They may just want to send in a statement. And then the other thing is, I mean, this is for something for the chair and the town manager's sort of room discuss about is should we perhaps at that meeting invite our legislative delegation? That's just a thought. Not saying it has to happen. So, and thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. And I'll follow up with you on that point maybe as we go forward once we get a response from the various companies in terms of timing. Mr. Hurdy. Thank you. Happy to support the motion. Thank you for your continued advocacy on this issue. Just one question on the chart that we had sent the shorter of the two. So there's two categories of jointly owned polls. It looks like once it has ever sourced and Verizon, the other one just hasn't flipped. So is there a significance to who is owner number one? Do they have kind of who we would have to talk to to get the poll removed? Yeah, and maybe Mr. Chaplain, you can fill in maybe. My understanding is that in different communities, whether it's Verizon or ever sourced or another utility, whether joint owners, one of the companies is given primary responsibility for maintaining the double polls or replacing them. In Arlington's case, it's Verizon. That's why they, we do see there is 28 polls now that say ever sourced as the primary owner. But my understanding is Verizon has primary responsibility in Arlington to gather the other companies when a poll is being replaced. Is that right, Mr. Chaplain? Yes, that's accurate. Okay. Okay. So I was just going to note that it looks like Verizon's responsibility is lacking on their responsibilities more than ever sourced, but the 89 polls that they're primary on, but thank you for the explanation. Happy to support the motion. Great. Thank you. So on a motion by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Helmuth, a two-part motion, attorney. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. Mrs. Mahon? Yes. Mr. DeCourson? Yes. To unanimous vote. Thank you. Okay. So we did list at 730, public hearings. It's now 736. We will do these in order and we will start with item number five, ever sourced petition from Massachusetts Avenue, Jacqueline Duffy, supervisor of rights and permits. And while we're waiting for Ms. Duffy to join us, I do wanna point out that she appeared before us in October, within a day, no more than two days after the meeting, she did reach out to ever source and I believe reached out to Verizon about the poll on Adams Street and on Mass Ave, as well as the other one across from Elmsworth Road. So I wanna thank Ms. Duffy for taking the initiative after the last meeting and I wanna welcome her to the hearing if she can hear us. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. How are you? I had sent an email to Verizon after that meeting that we had and I never received a response. I believe it was before a storm that we were going to get because that poll was so badly damaged and I never got a response back. I believe I sent it to Diane to show her that I sent it to them. I don't know what's going on with Verizon. Yeah, no, actually while you were signing on, I thanked you for doing that because I was aware that you had reached out after the last meeting. Yes, I was switching me over to be a panelist. That's why I didn't hear you. Okay, all right. Yeah, no, thank you for doing that and we as well haven't heard anything. So we will continue to try to do that. So on the petition, I believe this relates to work that needs to be done for Arlington High School. If you could tell us a little bit about the petition and the work that's proposed to be done. Yes, we're requesting to install 1,480 feet of conduit and this is to accommodate the Arlington High School. Okay, I will turn to the board and I'll start with Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I'd like to allude to approval and I have no questions. Mrs. Mohan. I would like to second that and just say to Ms. Duffy as the chairman noted as you were switching over. I had shared the information that Ms. Duffy had sent me the next day with the chair and the town manager and I know they acted on that and unfortunately they've gotten the same response that you have Jackie, which is nothing crickets but we're just going to keep on keeping on so we can get to the bottom of this but I do want to thank Ms. Duffy for that. I know she even as Mr. Corsi, the chair said send some pictures that the chair had included as information so we do appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan. Mr. Hurd. I support it, no questions. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I do support it. I have a couple of questions me and I think this will go to the town manager through you, Mr. Chair, if that's okay. Yeah. Thanks to me. So I assume that this one, this one engineering memo is done by Mr. Schnard. I noticed that the other two were but there's no name associated with this one. I assume he does them all. I mean, I would assume the same Mr. Diggins though it's certainly possible that Mr. Capathorn could stand in if necessary to draft a memo. I got you. So that's fine because I know that both of those are very detail oriented. I noticed that these are, I mean they're detailed but a little boilerplatey too. I mean, and so I trust them to make sure that anything that is different in these to be addressed in particular will be done. And the second one is, I noticed that it's like, if any brick sidewalk or any sidewalk would be replaced with brick sidewalk. I take it that we have to replace it with whatever was there initially, right? Yeah. I'm not familiar with any brick sidewalk in that location. So that must be carried over from another memo. Okay. All right. But to the question that I was really getting at though it's like, so we would have to replace it with what was there though, right? We usually try to do like for like. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Just one question. And this is for the time manager maybe for turning time. We do have a list of conditions and typically we'll make the approval subject to the conditions. Condition nine refers to the construction moratorium. And I don't know if that's something that is just being put in there to make us aware of that date. I mean, this work needs to be done before the new high school opens. So to the extent that that is there I want to suggest and ask the manager if they believe this would be appropriate to waive that condition for this project because they may have to do work in the public way between now and when the school opens in February. I would agree. I think waiving that condition makes sense. And it would track with precedent on other projects. Engineering and other board has waived or put the construction moratorium the winter construction moratorium on hiatus for expediting gas leaks repairs or gas main replacement to repair gas leaks or to affect the timely installation of infrastructure. And this would fall into that category. Okay, great. All right. I don't have any for the question. I just want to ask Mr. Helmeth if wouldn't mind making a friendly amendment for the conditions with the exception of that one, number nine. Yes, good catch. Thank you. And if Mrs. Mahan, if that's acceptable for the second. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. All right, thank you. This is a public hearing. So if members of the public wish to be heard on this item five, we will open it up right now. I don't know if there's anybody who has signaled they want to address the board on this one. I am not seeing any hands raised at this time. Okay, all right. So on item number five, that on a motion for approval by Mr. Helmeth, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, turn your hand. Mr. Herb. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCourson. Yes. Yes, Ms. Phil. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Duffy. Could I just say one thing? When you said like for like, yes, we do replace like for like. If it is a brick sidewalk, we have those a lot in Cambridge, just to let you know it is a like, we do replace like for like. Okay. Thank you for that information. You're welcome. Have a good evening. You too. Okay. So items number six and seven are national grid petitions. I am consistent with my prior practice. I am going to recuse myself from participation in each of these items, item six and seven, because the legal work that I do for national grid. So I'm going to turn the meeting over to Mrs. Mahan at this point for these two items. Thank you, Mr. Chair for passing the virtual gavel. Now we have two petitions for national grid. I believe it says Ms. Mary Mulroney will be representing. Is she on the list? She is joining us by phone. And if you're ready, I can allow her to address the board. Yes. And I'll say the first number six is the national grid petition Oakland Avenue and Ms. Mulroney whenever you're ready. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Which petition would you like to start with? If it's okay, the Oakland Avenue. Sure. The national grid respectfully requests your consent to install and maintain 55 feet of four inch plastic mains from the existing four inch cast iron mains to service a new house at 292 Oakland Ave and Arlington. And from that main extension, you'll install a new two inch plastic service to the point of entry of the home. Okay, thank you. First, any questions from my colleague? I'd like to start with Mr. Diggins. Hello, questions. Are you gonna take any motions now, Mr. Chair? Mr. Chair? Yeah, so I'll be happy to make a motion to approve this request. Okay, thank you. Mr. Halman? Thank you. I second the motion. No questions. Mr. Hurd? No questions. Thank you. I also had no questions. I just would ask Ms. Mulroney. I don't know if you were able to hear the comment we had under the double poll conversation initiated by the chairman, Mr. Corsi, and speaking about an upcoming meeting. I should try to get everybody together to sort of cycle this out. Okay, what was that in regards to? The double poll issue that we've, every time we've had the utilities committee started, the chair started back in October about really trying to address the double poll issue. And it's sort of like the hot potato game. And we really wanna come to sort of a meeting of the minds and come to a working plan to actually start to address this, recognizing that we have the utility companies, the cable companies and national grid. So that was discussed a couple of agenda items before you. So I just wanted to give you a heads up on that. Okay, even though we're natural gas so we're in the ground. Oh, that's right, national grid. I'm sorry, then you don't have to worry about double polls. And this is some of the ground I don't know about. I had a computer one day that wanted to move. Yeah, this is a public hearing. Mr. Chaplain, I'd like to open it up and ask if anyone from the public would like to speak. So there is one hand raised and a butter, Heidi Neck. And I see the name of another butter who had reached out to me previously, Mr. Romar. So if he is listening and would like to speak he could raise his hand as well. But with your approval chair, I would, I actually, if you're okay, I'll promote both Heidi and Mr. Romar to speak. Yes, please. And if we could start with Ms. Neck, if she's on or whoever comes on first. No, she is, yep. My name is Heidi Neck. I just abut the property at 292 Oakland. And I'm just curious, is this standard operating procedure? Is there anything I need to be worried about? Any safety issues? You left the national grid or the board? Probably national grid is in a better position to answer this question. You know, there'd be nothing to worry about. This is standard procedure all the time. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else want to add to that, Mr. Chapter Lane? I do think Mr. Romar had a few questions if I, so I would promote him if that would just, okay. Okay. And if he can just say his name and address for the record when he's on. Okay, sorry. I've done news. Thank you for the opportunity to address the board. We are abutters at 290 Oakland Avenue. We have no objection to the extension of the line. We simply had several questions about how we would be impacted while the construction takes place. For example, we'll be able to have access and egress from our driveway. The current line ends right at the middle of our driveway. So it would seem to me national grid has to dig there. And we're wondering about the access and egress, how that construction takes place. Second is will we be notified prior to construction so that we can prepare?  That would be an impact for us also. And that's pretty much the essence of our questions. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Romar. I guess I would ask Ms. Mulroney to speak to your three questions around access and egress during the construction project. Notification during the project and as well as your question regarding gas appliances, whether they need to be altered in any way. Ms. Mulroney? Yes, Mr. Romar, national grid, this is a small job. So it shouldn't take that long. I'm guessing I'm airing on the side of caution and I'm gonna say two days, but I really believe that it's probably gonna be one day. And you would be accommodated. Like if you need to get in and out of your driveway, the crew that is on the site will always make sure that you're notified as they go. And if you need to get out for an emergency or something, the crew will probably have plates there and will always make sure that you can get out of your driveway. And if they will notify you prior to the work, I'm gonna make that, put that in one of the notes. And as far as your appliances, no, you'd be, if they needed to, they'd get in touch with you, but no, you'll be fine. It will have no impact on anybody on the street. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Romar. I don't see any other hands from the public. So what I will do is to motion to approve by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Helmuth, Attorney Hine. Mr. Herb. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahon. Yes. It's a four zero vote. I'll note that Mr. DeCoursey recused himself. Thank you. I still can't believe I crossed double poles off to National Grid. Oh, today I think the next double National Grid petition is from NASA. Ms. Maloney. Yes. Hi. National Grid respectfully requests, the town of Arlington's give us permission to go in. It's 300 feet in all, but we're looking for 25 feet of six inch coated steel main, extending from the six inch plastic main and mass avs in Arlington. The main will be installed from mass av through the shared driveway and into the development property. Install 50 feet of four inch plastic to serve service to serve building number full up with the new development at 165 Massachusetts Avenue Arlington. Building four serves building one and building three to install approximately 50 feet of two inch plastic to serve buildings two with the development of 1165 Massachusetts Ave. So it's like 300 feet in total. But it's a small section is a mass av and the rest is on private property, a shared driveway. Thank you. I'd like to start with Mr. Helmut. Thank you. I'll move approval subject to conditions, but I did want to reference the engineering reports note for this property saying that the request wrongly identifies the grant of location for the entirety of the grass gas infrastructure required and advises select board to only consider the request for that portion of the gas main located within the public right of way, which is approximately 45, looks like there might have been a typo in the memo as it didn't continue in 45. But so I wanted to ask perhaps the town manager if that's okay, Ms. Chair for clarification on that. Certainly Mr. Chappelley. Mr. Helmut specifically asking you if that's acceptable in terms of. Yeah, yeah, if I'm understanding this correctly and I think, and I apologize that I just didn't catch this before, shortly before the meeting, that if this is still a current recommendation, as far as you know, from the town engineer that we only consider the request for the public for the portion located within the public right of way. And then I guess my specific question is just finishing the sentence, which just says it is approximately 45 and then the memo leaves off, maybe it's feet, I'm not sure what the figure is and I, terrible for me to not see this before and bring this up right on the spot, but I think we need to get it right. So I would have to consult with engineering to know what the remainder of that sentence is, whether it's 45 or 4500, I don't know. As to the first question, I would imagine that it's still appropriate as I think we can only grant the board can only issue a grant of location for a private way and nothing else. Yeah, well, so I think the typo probably doesn't matter then if we, and maybe if you or the town council have an opinion on this, but I think if I move that we approve the portion of the guests may be located within the public right of way, would that be sufficient in this case? I believe it would be, Attorney Heim, do you think that's acceptable? So I'm sorry, Mr. Helmuth, my understanding is that you're wanna limit the motion specifically so that the only thing that the board is approving is that which is clearly under its jurisdiction the public way. That's right. I mean, I certainly don't have any objection that I don't know if National Credit has a position on it. Ask them next, yeah. But you're the arbiters of certainly the public way. You're arbiters with certain private ways with respect to certain things and you did serve as the board of survey historically. But I'd be curious to see whether National Grid had any perspective on whether or not it's material that we can vote on property that isn't really the towns and what its experience with that has been. Yeah, and I would invite that as well and just note that I'm just responding to the advice from Mr. Schroenhardt in the memo. So yeah, but if National Grid has a view on that, be glad to hear that now. Ms. Melroney. Yes. Go ahead. Sorry.  You want to know about the private driveway versus the opening extending like 25 probably to 45 feet. They're probably airing on the side of the classroom with 45 feet of the public way. Is that what you're asking? Yeah, I think our question is that the town engineer recommended that noted that the request identifies the grant of location for the entirety of the gas infrastructure and just noted that the board only has jurisdiction over the public right-of-way and advises that we should only consider the request for the portion of the gas main located within the public right-of-way, which is about 45 feet, which is what we can do. And we just wanted to make sure that I'm gonna make the motion that we approve that within the public right-of-way but to make sure that wasn't an unforeseen issue or concern you had about that. No, there shouldn't be because it's on a private driveway. She had private driveway and that would be up to the owners to deal with national grid knowing that it's going down there. But I always feel it's better to let you know, even though it was a small section of Math Ave, I always like to include everything so that, everybody has the general knowledge of it. But yes, no, it should be fine. Okay, great. Thank you. So on that, yeah, I think I'll just repeat my motion to move approval subject to recommendations and conditions in the engineering memo. And with the further situation that this approval is for the public portion of the gas main located within the public right-of-way. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mr. Heard? Thank Mr. Helmuth for his diligence on his motion. And I would like to second that. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Yes, there's nothing left to say on this one. I'm happy to approve. For myself, ditto. There's a public hearing. If there are any, and I will note all the butters have been notified. I guess I would ask the town manager, Mr. Chantelin, if anyone has indicated from the public, they'd like to speak. Do not see any hands raised right now, Madam Chair. Okay, so with that on a motion by Mr. Helmuth, seconded by Mr. Heard, Attorney Heim. Mr. Heard? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. Lohan? Yes. It's a 4-0 vote with Mr. DeCourson accusing himself. Great. This time I will pass the gavel back to the chairman. Mr. DeCourson, thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. We will now move to... Thank you very much. We will now move to agenda item eight, American Rescue Plan Act Investment in Equity and Outreach Proposed Expenditure Plan and Opera Investment in Water and Soar Infrastructure Proposed Expenditure Plan. Mr. Chantelin will be presenting, along with Jillian Harvey, the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Michael Rademacher, Director of Public Works. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Your timing worked out very well with saying their names as their faces appeared on screen. It was almost like we choreographed them. So quickly before we dive into the details of each of these proposals, I did wanna take this opportunity to inform the board as well as the viewing public that last week, the final rule for ARPA was issued by Federal Treasury, which was a multi-hundred page document that in many ways we are still combing through, but there was a top-line change of significant importance to Arlington and many cities and towns across the country. And that was a change from requiring us to justify a revenue loss, to be able to use any ARPA funds for general fund benefit, shifting that to saying that cities and towns under a population of 250,000, which we qualify as, and with a grant total greater than 10 million, which we qualify as, can claim up to $10 million in revenue loss without justification. We had set aside, as you probably recall in the framework, $3 million for being able to claim revenue loss in case there was a change in the rule that would allow us to do so. Obviously this is a better result in terms of the support that we can provide to the general fund, though it will prompt me and I think others to want to revisit the framework to see where we could potentially reduce previously proposed investments to be able to increase benefit to the general fund. So there's more to come on that. I thought it was important to lead with that tonight because of that fact, we'll only be asking for one discrete portion of the funds that were requested by Mr. Rademacher to give us a chance to do a deeper analysis as opposed to the entirety of the expenditures that were outlined in the Water Sewer Memo. I would hope to be able to come back to the board by its next meeting in January or at the latest, its first meeting in February to bring forth either a recommended option or potentially even several options for a revised framework that would take this change into account. So before I talk a little bit about the equity audit and community outreach, any questions about that aspect? Thank you. So with that, why don't we start with the memorandum and request that was put forth by Jillian? And this is a continuation of what is now really the years of work that this town has committed to with an agenda around diversity, equity and inclusion. I know the board is well aware of multiple trainings that have been conducted by the National League of Cities for both the board and staff and our goal of continuing those trainings into this new year to be able to move into the implementation of the utilization of a racial equity toolkit across all departments. Additionally, we've talked for quite a while about the need to develop an equity action plan. And I don't wanna speak for Jill, but I think what Jill has found in her work is that before being able to confidently and clearly execute or create an equity action plan, the best practice is to complete an equity audit for the organization. And that is what a big part of what we're asking for tonight is endorsing the use of these ARPA funds. In this case, $100,000 for the, to go out and find a consultant to conduct an equity audit in cooperation with town staff to be able to then create an equity action plan upon, which we can act upon. Included within that request is also the funding for the duration of ARPA eligibility, a $55,000 a year position for a community outreach liaison that can work directly with Jill in the division of diversity, equity and inclusion to more fully reach out to our marginalized and most vulnerable populations in Arlington to truly be able to make sure that we are including all voices that need to be part of all of our efforts around DEI. So for this first year, we're asking for the approval of $100,000 for the equity audit and $55,000 for the position. And then in the future years, we would be asking for a continuing of the $55,000 for the community outreach position with further requests to come for the expenditure of the balance of the funds as they're outlined in the framework, likely for many aspects of implementing what the equity audit and equity action plan would call for. So with that, Jill, did I miss anything? If I may, Mr. Chair. Certainly. No, I think you covered it. I'm just gonna say if there's any questions or anything that needs clarification, I'm able to answer that. But yeah, the idea is to get the audit done so that we can start to build out the framework. And with that, I mean, I think we all know what our limitations are in outreach and communication. So this will be a huge help to ensure that we're making all that the town has to offer actually accessible to our community members. Thank you, Mr. Chaplin and thank you, Ms. Harvey. Mr. Chaplin, what I'll do is I'll go through the board. We'll do Ms. Harvey's request first and then we'll address Mr. Roda-Marcus, but I'll go to the board now for questions or comments. But I wanna thank Ms. Harvey for the detailed memorandum outlining of the request and that was included in our agenda package. And I will turn to the board now for questions or comments starting with Mr. Diggins. I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to see this, Ms. Harvey.  Beginning with the audit because I often say, I mean, we can't tell whether we're doing something unless we're having an effect unless we measure me and then we have to get a baseline. So you're doing that and the outreach and engagement coordinator, he's actually a member of Vision Arlington was asking me if we might be able to hire someone in that position, and I didn't know and I hadn't really brought it up with the town manager. It was really a matter of just trying to limit how much of his time that I take on Monday mornings, but I had reached out to a colleague, well, not a colleague, but a fellow select board member in Brookline to ask them how their coordinator was working out and she feels that the position is a good position to have. I mean, there are some complications there, but she thinks this is a good thing for us to do. I hope that we will be able to sustain this beyond the opera funds. I mean, I know that the money's hard to come by in this town, but I'll say this about spending in government. We have to be careful about putting government on a starvation diet, and then having it underperform, and then have people say, well, why do we want to fund government when it doesn't do us any good? So we really have to invest in government in order to make it show, in order for it to show that it can really do good for the public, because in the end, government is us, me, Dan, and so. So I'm so thrilled to see this, and I hope that the person, whoever it is, will come to one of the civic engagement group meetings at some point in time, so I think this would improve the framework. You don't really need a motion to approve anything. I'll move motion to receipt, but whatever you want me to approve, Mr. Chair. Yeah, Mr. Diggins, I think that Mr. Chapter Lane and Ms. Harvey are looking for a motion for endorsement of the expenditures. So if you are so inclined, if you want to move to endorse the expenditures, that's what we would look to do tonight. I'm happy to move to endorse the expenditures. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. I'd like to strongly enthusiastically echo everything my colleague, Mr. Diggins, just said, we have to start with talking the talk, and we do that. This is really walking the walk. And I know, Ms. Harvey, when we spoke the summer about your goals for Arlington, and you talked a lot about this equity audit that you really wanted, I am beyond thrilled that we have the resources to do it. And I know we talked at length about the equity action plan that you want us to work on that will flow from this. This is the real work. This is the hard work of equity. I think that we will learn some things from this audit that are challenging and are difficult. And we need to confront those things with an open heart and with open eyes and with new ways of understanding. We need to listen. I think this will be a really good tool for that. I was glad in your memo that you started out by talking about the pandemic. It has shown us that we are all in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat. We have different boats. It has been a lot harder for some people than others. The impacts have been far greater and you're absolutely right that the pandemic has really laid bare the inequities that have always been there and are worse. So thank you for your vision and connecting those dots as you always do. And I am really excited to see what we learn and even more excited to see what opportunities we identified to do the really hard work, really effective work that will help everyone in this town feel like they are part of the town, that they have a voice in the government, that they have a place at the table. So thanks. Thank you, Mr. Helmut. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Ms. Harvey and Mr. Chapter Lane for your presentation and your short and long range sort of vision on this and where it's going to go. And I just for clarity's sake, we're endorsing the $100,000 study and we're also endorsing the position at 55,000 times three. It's not 55,000 one time. Just for housekeeping, is that correct? That is correct. Happy to support. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan, for that clarification too on the time periods. Mr. Herd. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Ms. Harvey, for the memo and all your work on this. I'm happy to support this. I know we've been talking about the equity audit for what seems like years now. I don't think it's been that long, but it's something that, you know, it's been at the forefront of our discussions about diversity, equity and inclusion as the first step to get us where we need to be. So it's good to be able to use the federal funds to do it, we do it anyways, but to have an avenue to do this with the ARPA funds, I think is a really good use of the funds. And I know you have a lot on your plate, so I'm happy to support the adding someone to take a little of that off your plate and not help you get through this. So I appreciate all your work. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Yeah, and I want to echo my colleagues, Ms. Harvey, thank you for your vision and for putting this before us. And I am happy to support this and look forward to the results and doing the work that walking the walk, as Mr. Helmuth said, as we go forward. So thank you for this. And so an emotion by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Helmuth for endorsement of the proposed expenditures, Attorney Heim. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. Mrs. Mohan? Yes, thank you. Mr. Diggorsi? Yes. Jean-Anne Rissville? Thank you. Thanks. And I will now turn to the second half of the presentation this evening, which is the water and sewer infrastructure proposed expenditure. Mr. Chepton, did you want to go through the, I think it might be one particular item this evening or Mr. Rademacher, whoever would like to present that? So I'll give a brief overview and then I think Mr. Rademacher can certainly answer any detailed questions the board might have. So the board will recall that one of the first votes it ever took in regards to ARPA was approving $1.6 million in water sewer infrastructure spending for the water meter reading system. So that's already been put in place, but that is part and parcel with our ongoing water meter replacement program. So there is one item that's listed in the memo that Mr. Rademacher put together, listed as water meter replacement. And there's two sums in there, one for 405,000 and one for 337,000, which I think adds up to 742,000. And Mr. Rademacher and I talked about this today. So I think he would love to have it all approved tonight. He understands the sort of reanalysis that we need to do based on the federal rule, but in order to move forward with the water meter reading system and to bring to completion this water meter replacement program, we're both very hopeful that we can ask for the board's endorsement of that additional $742,000 expenditure on top of the 1.6 million that had been previously approved by the board. The only thing I would add to that is in the scenarios that I've already run in looking at how we would get to the $10 million for claiming revenue loss within the ARPA framework, this expenditure, the 1.6 plus the 742,000 works well within that without inhibiting our ability to get to the $10 million figure. So we'd ask for your favorable, again, your endorsement of that request tonight. And again, Mr. Rademacher can answer any detailed questions about the program. Thank you, Mr. Chapter Lane. And thank you, Mr. Rademacher, for the detailed memorandum and the way things shifted last week. I know, you know, well, good news for the general fund. It's gonna create some challenges in terms of the timing on water and soil projects. And we wanna work with you on that, but thank you for your patience on that. Did you wanna add anything to what the manager said or I can turn it over to board members at this point? No, Mr. Chapter Lane covered it very well, but I'm happy to answer any questions. Great, thank you. I will turn to the board. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. Happy to make a motion to endorse the time manager's recommendation or endorse to endorse the expenditure for the water meter replacements. I appreciate the carefulness of the thought by the time manager and his staff in reacting to the final role for ARPA. And I think that is appropriate. Appropriate caution right now to do this because we have a short-term need to get this project done, given our exposure with the technology. But to take a step back and look at the rest. So I appreciate that. No other question. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll go ahead and second that. If you have just one question, sort of clarification question, and that's on the private sewer info removal. Obviously that's talking about the property, not that the town owns, but basement some pumps of residents. Correct. Yes, for the majority, yes. Okay. And I'm just thinking of all with East Allington abutting the wildlife. What exactly is the 200,000 for? So we have been tasked by the DEP to have anybody's private property, some pumps that are connected to sewers in the house to be removed. Some pumps that run during a storm that discharged to a sewer often exacerbate the issue of sewage overflow into streams. So we're tasked with working to remove that overflow. And it can sometimes be daunting for residents to handle all those costs on their own. Sometimes these are issues they got when they bought a house that they didn't create these problems and so forth and so on. So we have a database of where we believe these connections exist. And we're going to be looking to assist residents in disconnecting these sources of some pumps to sewers. But we were hoping to be able to offer some financial assistance in doing so. That's great. I was hoping that it wasn't sort of 200,000 to enforce and all these either long time residents or brand new residents are faced with a cost that they hadn't built in there. And it's good, you know in some cases could be very expensive. So this would more or less just be to set up a program if it's just 200,000, I'd be happy but I'll leave that to you in your department. But I think you may have to revisit that but we'll see. So I just wanted to make sure that 200,000 wasn't just to enforce and say we got to yank this out of here, go deal with it. I'm very pleased to hear that especially since I think most if not all of this really applies to East Arlington. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chen. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Herd. Thank you for the presentation. I have no questions, happy to support it. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Yeah, and I'm happy to support this as well. So in a motion by Mr. Helmets. Thank you Mr. Chair. Oh, did I miss you, Mr. Diggins? I'm sorry. And I want to express my thank you, Mr. Diggins. I'm sorry, I slipped the vote here and I had you going first. I didn't get back to you here. My apologies. That's okay. I got national grid with double pull. So I think I did better than you. Sorry, Mr. Diggins. No problem, no problem. I'm actually very happy to see Mr. Radbaka too. I don't want him to feel that I'm only enthusiastic about equity audits, the great part about being a part of the board is that I get to learn a lot of stuff from you. And I learned enough that I actually really care about this. And actually my colleague, Mrs. Mahan, brought up a question that I was interested in too. So we disconnected some pumps from the sewer. Where does the outflow go at that point? We're developing different options to suit different situations. So sometimes it might just go to a backyard. Sometimes it might go to like a dry well installed in the yard or in some occasions we'll let residents connect to our storm drain system. It's definitely not sewer system. Okay, well then, so if the goal of disconnecting it from the sewer system is to stop the sewer overflow situation. And the problem we have is a combined stormwater. The town, I'm sorry, the town does not have a combined system. We have two separate systems. Okay, so then we're not part of the problem. Okay, so then if we're not part of, I guess what I'm confused about then is that, so the reason for disconnecting the sumps is so that it doesn't go into a sewer and then be a part of a problem. But then we're not part of a problem. Well, so we do not have a combined system within the street. Our storm drain and our sewers are separate within the street. What can be a problem is when a sump pump in someone's basement or private property is connected to the sewer and they are adding clean water at a high rate to a sewer system that isn't designed for that level of inflow. So then when those sewer pipes are inundated with clean water, they start to back up and you won't get necessarily sewage backing up into streams, but maybe coming out of a manhole and a street and then running down the street into a catch basin and then finding its way into a stream or whatnot. So we are looking to remove clean water from sewer pipes so that those sewer pipes can flow as designed and not be inundated. But the town itself does not have a combined drainage and sewer system that overflows during heavy rains because they're combined. They sometimes overflow because like this, these private inflow sources of storm drains of some pumps are connected and those are something we can rectify. Great, thank you. Whether I'm smarter or not, I certainly feel smarter after this. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins and I'm sorry for the mix up there. So on a motion by Mr. Helmuth, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Hunt. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, and hopefully we can get DEP to do the same with the CSO discharges in the alloy, but I know we'll be discussing that again in the future. Thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Junana spoke. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both for joining us this evening. Thank you very much. Next is open forum, except in unusual circumstances, any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there is a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. Mr. Chapter line, is anybody who wishes to speak for open forum? There's currently two hands raised. Mr. Chair, three hands raised now. When now Evans is the first hand. Okay. Good evening, this Evans. There we go. Can you hear me now? Yes, yes we can. Okay terrific. Before I begin, I would like to please beg your indulgence for an additional 30 seconds. I have rehearsed and rehearsed and I cannot get my remarks below three minutes and 30 seconds. So if that would be okay, I would be very, very grateful. I usually have a soft three minutes. So why don't you go ahead and if it feels like you're getting to a good spot, we won't take a close look at the time. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Whenel Evans orchard place. Good evening everybody. I want to speak about one affordable housing strategy of the draft housing production plan, which this board will be reviewing at the end of this month. And this is to allow two family homes in all residential districts by right. The intent of this upzoning is to help Arlington increase its supply of homes, quote, with a housing type that has traditionally been part of the town's residential landscape and also to introduce a modest missing middle effort that is compatible with detached single family homes, unquote. The traditional housing type referred to here is rentals in one or both units of two family homes, but we're actually seeing an increased loss of these rental options and the disappearance of housing for the missing middle as new market rate condo duplexes replace our single and two family housing. Additionally, there is much research that shows that upzoning actually drives up prices. Alan Arthur, president and CEO of a nonprofit affordable developer in Minneapolis where four plexus by right were recently allowed says, the comment that building housing alone will automatically fix affordable housing problems is absolutely false. You'd have to overbuild for a long period of time. The focus should go to preserving existing affordable housing units, which is much cheaper. Churches United for Fair Housing has found that, quote, rezonings are so sure to pass and so sure to be beneficial to developers that even the announcement of a review process leads to rampant speculation, unquote. Michael Storper at the London School of Economics has studied upzoning effects extensively and says that, quote, upzoning allows for market speculation to dominate. Skilled people with high incomes are going to move into upzoned neighborhoods and crowd out the middle and lower income people who are living there. This is how blanket upzoning produces the consequence of displacement, exactly the opposite of what the authors of upzoning bills claim they want to produce, unquote. An MIT study of upzoning in Chicago over a five-year period found that, quote, upzoning in hot neighborhoods sends a strong signal to the developer community that there is a big market for luxury housing. Property owners wishing to sell and get the same signal and begin the process of bidding up sales prices. And a study from the Urban Displacement Project at Berkeley found that, quote, because market mechanisms work differently at different geographic scales, at the regional scale, the interaction of supply and demand determines prices and producing more market rate housing will result in decreased housing prices and reduce displacement pressures. But at the local neighborhood scale, new luxury buildings send signals to the market that such neighborhoods are desirable for wealthier residents resulting in new demand. By extension, one would expect market rate development to increase displacement at the local neighborhood scale. The materials Don Seltzer and I emailed to you all last week show that these effects are well underway here as our two conversions take place. Our two conversions are de facto upzoning and rather than providing options for the missing middle, they are instead removing options from them. I respectfully ask you to keep this consequence in mind as you consider whether to adopt the finalized housing production plan. Thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for letting me run over. Thank you, Ms. Evans. The next hand raised is Lynette Culverhouse. Good evening, Ms. Culverhouse. Just need time to mute yourself. My name is Lynette Culverhouse. I'm a resident on Draper Avenue and a town meeting member in precinct 11. First of all, I'd like to thank Ms. Harvey for putting together the DEI audit and the board for supporting it. It's a good start to doing the hard work of making Arlington more equitable and inclusive. On a related matter, I was a signer on the letter sent to the select board last week regarding the BLM banner. There were 81 other signers to this letter, 32 of whom are town meeting members. It is very disappointing to see that it's not on the agenda tonight and that this matter is not resolved before the Martin Luther King Day. Town meeting overwhelmingly voted to display the banner in town and it's hard to understand why it's not been done yet a whole year later. All I'm asking this board to do is not to ignore this unresolved issue and the people who so strongly support hanging the banner. There is huge support for displaying the banner in town and we owe it to each other to publicly proclaim our stated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion by honoring the vote made by town meeting. I hope to see this on the select board's next agenda and I would be happy to discuss this with any board member who wants to talk about it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Califer-Hose. Next speaker is Elizabeth Dre. Good evening, Ms. Dre. Good evening. Elizabeth Dre, town meeting member precinct eight. I'd also like to congratulate the board and Ms. Harvey on the vote taken tonight to support the equity audit and the position of the community outreach liaison that's very exciting news. And thank you for that work. As we approach the celebration of Dr. Martin with her King Jr. in the black and black history month, I asked the board to acknowledge the letter from the community members submitted last week and attached to tonight's agenda, asking you to resume and complete your discussion related to the Black Lives Matter banner tonight and to heed town meetings unequivocal vote regarding return of the banner to town hall. Since July of last year on four different occasions, town leadership has publicly committed to work with the Human Rights Commission, the DEI coordinator and community stakeholders to determine how, where and when a banner or a similar message could be displayed in Arlington and to develop a policy to define how the town hall space should be used for banner display. That's four times. And four times there has been no follow-through on those commitments. Over a year ago on January 4th, then chairman Hurd stated some of the last words that have been spoken on this issue by the select board by urging fellow select board members to act. He said, we made a decision to go through our special town meeting, let them wait in on the subject and then we would consider the vote of town meeting among other competing aspects of the situation that we had to consider. It is incumbent upon us now to come up with a plan. And later he said, we should resolve it at the next meeting, if not tonight. And that was over a year ago. And since then there has been no discussion. You may remember the September 2020 discussion about putting up a different sign so that everyone who entered town hall would clearly understand the full breadth of the town's commitment to equity beyond Black Lives Matter. The select board unanimously voted to ask the town manager to display the section of title two, article nine, section two, subsection C of the by-law regarding protected classes so that it would greet all people who entered the town hall. Originally there was a large sign attached to the construction fence, but today I went to the town hall to look. And here I found it on a nine by 11 piece of paper taped to two seldom used side doors to the side of the main entrance. And in my opinion, this does not take the place of a Black Lives Matter banner hanging on town hall. The letter submitted has been signed by over 80 residents, including 34 town meeting members. It's an effort to hold the select board accountable to the unfulfilled commitments that you have made to residents. The letter asked you to add the Black Lives Matter banner to tonight's agenda for discussion and to vote to rehang the banner on town hall. That's probably unequivocally reaffirming that Black Lives Matter today and every day in Arlington. And while you chose not to do that, I urge you to do so at your next meeting. And finishing up on a separate note, I wanted to say I'm disappointed to see that in the public participation section of the select board handbook, the use of the word citizen instead of resident and the ask that people continue to share their address to speak, both exclude and discourage residents from participating as is their right. This language was informally done away with under chairherds tenure. And I would love to see that reflected permanently in the handbook. Thank you for your time this evening. Thank you, Mr. A. The final hand raised is Dawn Seltzer. Good evening, Mr. Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dawn Seltzer Irving Street. I would like to speak to the board about the housing production plan. I've submitted detailed comments to the board about the shortcomings of the consultants report. I hope you will find time to compare this report against the state guidelines of what should be in a housing plan. State guidelines require that the plan evaluate the impact of future housing growth on school capacity. Our previous housing plan devoted four pages to this analysis. This draft report has but a single paragraph which dismisses capacity as being of no concern based solely upon the 2015 McKibben forecast. However, that 2015 forecast made no assumptions about housing growth nor changing family demographics stemming from new denser housing. The recent census shows that all intense population is growing far faster than McKibben predicted. We already have reached a population that McKibben predicted we would not see until the next decade. Please consider this rule of thumb. For every 80 housing units that we add, expect to fill up another classroom. I asked the board, where will we build our next school and where will we find the $55 million to pay for it? Another failing of this plan is the recommendation to encourage the replacement of single family homes with two families and duplexes. The report's author has been quite candid that this is not about affordability. It is about providing more choice to upper income families who can afford to spend one million or more on a home. Households making more than 200% of AMI well out of the scope of what state guidelines say a housing plan should be covering. This board has been provided with dozens of examples of recent conversions in which single family homes were replaced with condo duplexes for which each unit was more expensive than the original home. The residents most affected are the one third of Arlington households that have an income of between 100K and 200K. This includes many of our first responders and two income teacher households. For this middle third, smaller older homes that range from 600K to 800K are attainable. But this housing plan attacks that existing moderately affordable housing base by encouraging tear down and replacement with more expensive duplex condos. The middle third of Arlington is slowly being squeezed out by eliminating the home ownership that is within their means. I hope that this board will make the appropriate revisions to this draft plan prior to approving it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. There are no additional hands, Mr. Chair. All right, that ends open forum for this evening. I will move on to traffic rules and orders of the business item nine for discussion and approval all alcohol license regulations changes Allie Carter economic development coordinator. Allie is here and should be joining us in just a second. Good evening, Ms. Carter. Good evening, thank you. Allie Carter economic development coordinator. Great. And thank you, we got a version of the proposed changes, but if you could walk us through those changes and then we'll turn to the board for any questions or comments. Sure. And thank you for the feedback. The last time I came to the board, I took your feedback, brought it back to some of my peers in town, in the legal department, in the select board office and in the department of health and human services and the Arlington police department. So this revision that you see marked up here is a result of review from all those departments in addition to the folks who looked at it before. The pages, you know, basically the goal as stated before was just to add a little bit more flexibility to the types of establishments that can open and serve alcohol with these licenses. So on page three, there's just some language to state that brewery licenses are allowed by this in addition to holders of common victual or licenses. And again, on page four, just a simple addition of brewery license language. This is a request that we get fairly often and just people have a hard time finding a space big enough to accommodate breweries. But at this current point in time, there are three different parties looking to open breweries in town. And two of these parties have at least one Arlington resident on their team. So this really is responsive to active requests from entrepreneurs, sorry, returning to the document here. No suggested revisions on page five or six. It does, I think the most substantive changes are in the physical plant section, section D, which mostly relates to signage and marketing of alcoholic beverages. And we wanted to tie in the section 6.2 of the zoning bylaw, but also change the language to allow that if someone opened a brewery, they could have signage for their own product, but not that a restaurant could or other type of establishment could just have posters or signage for different brands of alcohol. Section E allows for not just wait staff but counter staff to serve alcohol at a point of sale. This again would just allow more flexibility for the type of service and the type of food service business that could open in town. And then in alignment with other goals that the town has, we wanted to be a little more flexible with recyclable and compostable materials with the service of food and not just silverware. But we also wanted to clarify that we discouraged paper plates, disposable items, plastic was not what we were looking for, but durable materials that could be reused. And the final item was just, I think we went back and forth about this quite a bit, the origin of related to outdoor dining and alcohol service. There was the last sentence of, excuse me, let me back up. It's the second to last line on page seven before the beginning of section four, stated that all outdoor food and alcohol service shall conclude before 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, I'm sorry, Thursday through Sunday, which corresponded to the weekend and didn't seem to make as much sense as if it said Sunday through Thursday. So after checking and double checking that line with many peers, we reversed those days. So that's a summary of the specific changes. And I hope that wasn't too much detail, but I did wanna cover it all. So I'm happy to take any questions anyone has. Thank you for the explanation on the various items. I'll turn to the board, Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Carter for. First of all, it's nice to see you on the north side of 11 o'clock. Certainly you stood the test time with your stamina. Definitely went through that. Am I too assume? I know we had a conversation about first, second, third offense, the language there. I think we spoke about it. We were gonna check on it to make sure that that's sort of in concert with other cities and towns, other penalties. So I take it that there's no red line there that that's okay to stay the way it was. Yes, correct. Okay. And I just wanna clarify, because I'm just imagining some possible restaurant managers that the like, when we're talking about the number of alcoholic beverages in text right now. In terms of serving food, it does say in there, it's not necessarily the mandate that you have to use disposable recyclable, you can use solid, correct? Yes, correct. But with the goal of moving forward, I'm just like, imagine going in, I'm gonna get beat up down at Gilliam's about straws, paper straws versus silicone versus, give me the good old plastic. So I wanna get my donut straw. So I just wanna be able to say that, but also tell people to be mindful of the future as we move forward, that may be ultimately where we go, but that that's still open enough. Yes, indeed. And until Gilliam's start serving alcohol, I think they'll be okay with their current straws. They'll still ask me, I still get asked about paper straws. I need alcohol afterwards, but that doesn't mean, but no, I'm just thinking of restaurants and sometimes people focus in on one thing. And I just wanna be able to provide the correct information. So I do thank you for all your hard work on this and putting it up with us at an early hour as you have at a later hour. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan, Mr. Hurd. Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Carter for the presentation. I'm happy to second the motion. And I don't know where they put a brewery in Arlington right now, but if they can squeeze it, I look forward to going to it. I think it'd be a good market for it here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurd, Mr. Diggins. Common ground, Mr. Hurd. They put it at common ground. I think that's a good space. I bet if I said, I don't smoke pot in support of a pot place. People go, yeah, right. And if I say, I don't drink, they go, huh. But I don't do either, because of a lightweight need. And trust me, the world is better off because we just don't need a less inhibited blend. I am really happy to see this, especially the brewery part of it. Yeah, it's exciting. I hope that works out someplace whether it's common ground or any other place. And I'm also happy to see the relaxation of parking requirements because I think that will make it easier on some businesses and also kind of support our whole notion of active transportation, which, you know, when you think about it, when people go to drink, should they really be getting in the car and driving anyways? Maybe some have someone come and pick them up. But anyways, this is really good work, Ms. Carter. And not only am I happy to see you before 11 o'clock, I'm happy to see you in January at all. Good luck with everything, all right? Look forward to seeing you in the car. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Carter, for your work on this. And especially for doing the good luck work with your colleagues and other departments. I know I checked in with Health and Human Services about this in the past weeks, and I know that you've worked together with them to address concerns they had. And you know, it's important to get this right. I think the economic benefit to our businesses is really important, but it's also really important that we continue our really good practices of effective alcohol control policy. Not only to protect underage youth, but also to encourage responsible alcohol service and such, so I appreciate that. I do have two questions, just to help me understand the intent of a couple of things, and both of these are in page seven in section E. I think it's a good idea to add the driver's license verification at the point of sale to confirm drinking age and also the customers, the sole recipient of the beverage. And my question is, because I just don't know how this works, how does somebody at the point of sale with that ID confirm that the customer is gonna be the one who drinks the beverage? They would have to hand it off to them at that time. It would be sort of like a check, verify, and we went over this a lot, Natasha and I, they would have to look at the license, identify the person, and then hand that person whose license it is, that beverage. As they proceed to sit, additional controls could happen, but at the point of sale is basically, additional monitoring can happen. There's always some room for error, but we really wanted to focus on that the person who gets handed the drink is the person whose license is presented. Yeah, good. Yeah, I know the handoff makes sense. And I mean, obviously what we're trying to avoid is straw purchases for, particularly for minors or people under age. Are there other regulations in place that prohibit that anyway? That's probably a better question for the health department actually. I think there are, but I think what you're getting at is that there are other controls that we can look at other server training and policy that would address that. Yeah, the customer, I think that the customer is the sole recipient of the beverage. With that specific language, it's not quite so explicit, but what we were trying to get at was that it's a one-to-one transaction. Yeah, okay, yeah. That one person orders one drink and that's what they walk off with. And that you can get a tray or a pitcher or more than one beverage. No, that actually doesn't make sense, right? Yeah, okay, no, that's plenty clear. Thank you. And thanks for including my understanding about that. And the second thing is just a paragraph below that. I noticed that the food being served on either solid, reusable, or recycler compostable, but we've eliminated any reference to beverages. So was there an intent to exempt beverages from those categories, which I think could have the effect of newly allowing beverages to be served in disposable glassware? Sorry, I just wanna read it again. So I'll explain the point we were trying to make with the food service was just to be a little bit more flexible and accommodating. Again, it kind of relates back to the type of establishment that would serve you the drink over the counter. That's more like not a fast food. I really wanna say not fast food, but like a fast casual type establishment where you can get alcohol typically at these places, but you can also order food that comes like on a metal tray that has wax paper at the bottom or perhaps a plastic red basket that's again lined with wax paper so that the materials are reusable, but it's a little bit more of a casual establishment and not necessarily like a silverware, white tablecloth type of restaurant. Would there be any problem with just adding food and beverages must be served in solid, reusable, recycler, or compostable dinnerware so that we don't have a loophole there for the beverages themselves? So I think that would go, I really enjoy this type of thing, by the way, this word smithing. So I think because section, so E2, that is service of food, but E1 with service of alcoholic beverages. Yeah, that's a fair point. We could, if we wanted to add a similar sentence, it would go in that section. Yeah. I don't feel super strongly about it, but I mostly want to make sure that there was, since we were changing some of the categories, and I'm thinking mostly at this point, just the environmental sustainability implications for this, that if there's an opportunity to deal with that, but if that's kind of something that could have been raised earlier and gone into this, I'm happy to let this, to support this as it is now. And if we want to possibly revisit that, it's part of another larger sustainability conversation. No, that's fine with me too. Mostly really, I just wanted to understand kind of what the intent was. Yeah. And it was a lot about the type of establishment, but also tying in those other goals. I think we could, and to be fair, I'm not like fully versed in that. To be fair, I'm not like fully versed on the food code, the way my colleagues in the Health and Human Services Department are. So it could sit somewhere else, but I could also see that basically the last sentence of E2 as kind of amended could say, instead of food must be served on, beverages must be served in. Right. And drinkware instead of dinnerware. Yeah, but I think my instinct is to let it stand as it is now just so that we don't unintentionally do something in this moment that has complications that we haven't thought about. Maybe just as a bookmark to potentially look at that later, because we could always add that revision in a later time if it makes, I think it makes sense from a sustainability point of view to really look at that with beverage containers, but probably not to try to monkey with it too much here. But that's it. Thanks. I appreciate the discussion, because it helps me understand what we're trying to do here with the scope of these changes are. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Yeah, and I also want to thank you again, Ms. Carter, for the explanation and for the changes here. One question on that page seven on the service of food. And again, I support this. I don't know if it's something that we may have to look into or you may have to look into later, to the extent that you do have a brewery or a beer garden type operation, no number of them have food trucks. And so the food is actually being serviced through, it's almost like a joint venture from the food trucks that might come on site. And just a question, if this would be broad enough to cover that situation if it ever comes, it's not hypothetical. And it is, I guess it depends on how broad the definition of area is for alcohol being served. But I guess we'll worry about that when the interest comes in. I think in terms of the alcohol regulations, this would work for that, because I was trying to think of that scenario. The other set of rules that would have to be amended, I believe to accommodate, that would be the traffic rules and orders. There is language in there about any sort of vending that happens from a vehicle has to be continuous. And if it is discontinued for a period of 10 minutes or more, they have to keep it moving. And so I haven't quite tackled that piece yet, but that would be, I think, a next step to consider. Okay, all right, good. Thank you. So as I said, I support this as well. And on the approval of the all alcohol license regulations changes, motion made by Mrs. Mohan, seconded by Mr. Herd, attorney Han. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helman? Yes. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you, Ms. Carter. Thank you all so much. Have a nice night. You too. Okay, item 10 is a presentation discussion and vote. On marijuana establishment, host community agreement, license applicant, Calix Peak of Massachusetts. I want to announce it's near nine o'clock. We have a few items left. Would members like a five minute break before we start the hearing? Okay, why don't we do that? And we can bring the Calix Peak or arrange for them to come join us, but why don't we start that in five minutes? So we now on item 10 is just a nasty presentation, discussion, vote, marijuana establishment, host community agreement, license applicant, Calix Peak of Massachusetts. There are a number of people here from Calix Peak. I see attorney O'Connor is here representing them. So if you want to introduce yourselves and we have, let me step back for one second. We have three host community agreements that we can enter into in our length and we have entered into two last fall. We sent out a notification for expressions of interest. Calix Peak was the only organization that responded. And I've been trying to coordinate with the attorney O'Connor for the hearing date. And tonight is the night that we're gonna go forward with it. So I'll turn it to attorney O'Connor and then can introduce the team and make the presentation. And we'll have questions from the board members as we go along. Thank you, chairman DeCorsi and good evening to all of you. I represent Calix Peak and this evening, Aaron Carrachillo is the CEO of Calix Peak is on the call. We have Pete Dagestino from 10X, one of the consultants and Dan Linsky who I believe is in charge of security for Calix Peak. You have an extensive application and project information from Calix Peak. They have been in front of your board previously for a host community agreement. Calix, I will give you a very brief overview. Calix Peak is a very experienced in the management and administration of retail adult marijuana use. It is a well-capitalized company. And I will to be charitable with respect to the site which is 251 Summer Street, Arlington, will say that it'll take a tired looking site and significantly improve it with the 3000 square foot building and 7,000 square feet of parking. You also should have a memorandum dated November 23rd, 2021 from the marijuana study group. And I believe Mr. Diggins was the select board representative on that study group. And the study group determined that this proposed project is not anticipated to have a significant impact on safety and operations on Summer Street or the surrounding roadways. There were a couple of issues raised. One of them was a more detailed ingress and egress plan and a question of whether there would be drilling versus blasting when the new, when what is there as everybody who lives in town knows this is the old Getty gas station is to be demolished. Those issues I would suggest to you would be better vetted in front of, if the host community agreement is allowed in front of the Arlington redevelopment board. Another issue raised was the status of the 21E at that site. There was a clean 21E for that property. And the Arlington police department representative on this committee noted that the experience with the apotheca in the Heights has been a positive one. And for those of you who are in the Heights, I'm in the Heights several times a week, you wouldn't even know apotheca was there. So I would point out that in 2016, the voters in Massachusetts approved the legalization of recreational adult marijuana used by 53%. Arlington's vote was 57%. We, you have the opportunity to approve this host community agreement with the top rate company. Take a B4 site, which is a vehicular oriented site and the zoning bylaw specifically says when the town has the ability to take a vehicular oriented site and make it some other use, they should try to do that and provide the town with the revenue stream here from the impact fee. And I would also suggest you that the renovation and improvements on this property will significantly increase the property value and the property taxes. So I'd like to turn it, unless you have any questions of me, I would like to turn it over to Erin who will go through the proposal. Yeah, go right ahead. Erin, I think you're muted. I apologize. I'm going to share my screen with the presentation if you don't mind. And I want to thank you guys tonight for taking the time to meet with us. I really appreciate it. I believe most of you as Mario Connors that have reviewed this proposal at length. So I want to go through this really quickly because I know it's 50 slides and we've been on here for a long time this evening. So in the interest of everyone's time on this call, first, let me introduce myself. My name is Erin Crotchlow. I am the CEO. I was appointed in December of 2020. I believe in the past year I've met with one of my former colleagues. I have an extensive background in retail. I've been in retail for 20 plus years. My original background is finance. I am an accountant slash ponder. I came out of public accounting and was there for four years before I delved into the retail world. With that, I wanted to kick off kind of the location. As Mary noted, the plan is to obviously, obviously it's to tear down the current facility. We're going to review keeping the facility and adding on but it may be a complete demolition once we get a local architect in there to see what we could do. The image that I'm showing here currently is what we're building in Swam Scott and this is going to be kicked off in April. And this also was, this was a tear down. So this was a building that was like an old bodega slash slipper store. And we tore it to the ground and basically put up this new building. So ideally this is the aesthetic we're going for but we would work with local architectures in town to ensure that it fits the neighborhood. Since our last time that we met with you guys we have signed an HCA in Worcester and we're starting to build that out in early 2022. And as just noted, we've already started our demolition in Swam Scott with a go live date that says here in March it's probably going to closer to April given just the weather and the time of year. Additionally, we are already working our parking lot is shared with the veterans. So we are currently working with the veterans to do some events with them whether it be for Veterans Day, Memorial Day, anything like that. I've already started participating in local events with them. They had one in September that I actually personally went to and donated. So it's for me extremely important as earlier in this presentation you guys mentioned Miss Adler and things that Mr. Trumbler are looking to do and to me that's a huge win. I am the daughter of a veteran. I am also a granddaughter of a veteran. So super important to me to be involved in the community and especially with veterans and those that aren't served correctly in our community. So for tonight's presentation we're going to kind of go over everything. I gave you a little bit of background on myself, some aesthetics of the current building. This is kind of our local kind of layout that we have. This is a rendering from our Kansas City store. It's very clean and really simple. Probably not what a lot of people are used to when they think about marijuana facilities. We tried to make this very inviting so that people don't feel off when they come in. A little background again on the company we are minority owned and we are woman run. So most of my management team I'm about 80% women operated at this point. A little bit additional background on us. We have operations in California, Missouri and Ohio. California, we have a 250,000 square foot greenhouse and we are opening a retail store in Santa Monica. That was about a four year process and we just landed the CUP at the end of October. So that is going under construction as we speak. Missouri as noted, we just opened our first store there in Kansas City. We also are building out an 80,000 square foot cultivation manufacturing facility and that'll be live in May. We did have an Ohio facility but we did sell that to an Oregon investor at the beginning of 2020 once COVID hit and we kind of were all trapped a little bit more at home. So again, a little bit of background on me. Undergrad, Widener, I got my master's from Villanova and then I went to Anderson. So I squinted that I worked for FAO Schwartz in Manhattan. I lived in Florida for about eight years. I worked for Itch Sugar. Some of you may be familiar it's a hundred retail store candy store. I was involved in selling that to BBX which is a publicly traded company and then subsequently I moved here. Jen McLaughlin is my chief branding officer. Jen is a retailer by trade. She has worked at the Gap, American Eagle, Talbot's and she also has a lot of local on businesses. Her husband and herself had opened two coffee stores one in Cahasset and the other in Duxbury and they recently opened a taco store in Hangam. So if anybody's in the area, definitely check it out. I went there last week, it was amazing. I worked as our, we noted here earlier Mario Connors online and I also have Chief Linsky who's our security advisor. Chief Linsky will probably jump in later when we get into security but he is a 27 year veteran of Boston Police Department and is incremental in helping us get through a lot of these safety things as we navigate with cannabis. Also noted, we have investors that are of Korean descent. Michael Bang is our chief investment officer. Michael has an extensive background with Goldman Sachs and I kind of lean on him for doing a lot of our modeling and analysis. Dr. Song is our chief medical officer and as we talk about events or having onsite training Dr. Song is an advocate of cannabis. He really got involved in cannabis when his father was dying of cancer. He has oncologist and it was kind of the way that he entered into this market was he didn't want his father on opiates during his dying days and he relied heavily on edibles to really have his mindset with him as he was passing on to the next stage of his life. Gwen Jakau, Takagawa is my compliance officer. She has everything compliance in this company. She is up to date on the constant and ever changing cannabis rules throughout the country. And we have Mark Meadermeyer who's in charge of our director of outreach. So he'll be heavily involved if we should bring this application of reaching out to the community whether it be veterans or other organizations and how we can help and be a good part of the community. Our business model obviously is vertical integration. As noted earlier, we have the location in Worcester. We also have Swam Scott and then hopefully this next location. These are some of our current products. We named everything local because we really wanted to be part of the community. Local to us meant what can we do in each community that we're in and it's always going to be different. It's always going to really go towards what is needed in each community. The current plan is to have four point of sales and our goals do 150 transactions a day. We do have 10 dedicated spots currently and I'm planning to have two of those as online pickup. Additionally, we plan to work with some of the social equity guys on delivery services. And this just goes into kind of the customer appreciation day and how we'd like really get involved with our customers. And it's also about having community education. So whether that be a shutting down for a day and just having a workshop. So people that may not feel comfortable can just come in and just talk and just understand and we can help them and navigate them. And maybe it's just not the right thing for them either but at least having a better sense of what their options are. I think that's important to get to the community. So again, we're going to go over the site. This is the current site as noted earlier and this is our plan for the site. The goal here is really to have a refreshed look and have a lot more green space. And that's what we did in Swam Scott. With Swam Scott, we also worked with the town to navigate having an easier parking situation as well as travel studies to make sure that there was no conflicts with any kind of traffic that was going to happen. Again, the aesthetic for us has been very clean. You're not going to see a lot of cannabis promoting. It's a simple atmosphere. We really wanted to make it inviting for everyone. Pete, I'm going to turn it over to you to talk a little bit about the traffic studies over time if you don't mind. Sure, yeah. So good evening, board. Good to be before you again. It's great to see everybody. Hope everybody's staying safe and healthy. As you know, we've talked about this location previously with the board on a couple of occasions. During the last presentation before the board, we had not conducted the study, the traffic impact analysis prior to the meeting. So in this round of application, we elected to do it prior to that. So the board would have time to look at it. As you know, the siting of this location, as we've mentioned before, really aligns with what we think town meeting envisioned on the placement of these three cannabis facilities throughout the town. And so we think this is really consistent in keeping with town meeting and kind of envisioned during the zoning and including the implementation of the buffers, which we all know have been very deliberate into how the town has executed those. So everybody should be fairly familiar with 251 Summer Street. We think it's a great location. And if you could, Erin, just go to the next slide. Talk a little bit about that, perfect. So this is just an overlay of marijuana dispensary zoning analysis. This is just how everything lays out in the town. And I don't have my cursor, but you'll see our location with the green star kind of in the middle there. So it's pretty well situated. And if you could, Erin, go to the next slide. This also shows all the complies with the buffers and so on and so forth. And then you'll see our site circled at the top left. And again, the overlay of the Google Maps. So it's very compliant with all the zoning. You'll see it doesn't hit any buffers, which is what we're highlighting in the top left. In the top left image with the circle around the pink lot, that is just demonstrating complies with all the buffers. If you could go to the next slide. This is overhead, just back one slide. At the bottom right, you'll see there's an overhead picture of the site. We would plan to keep the building primarily in the same area and utilize the parking space to the left where you'll see there's a bunch of cars. We'll restripe and re-engineer that lot to be compliant with the local zoning and have appropriately sized and marked parking spaces. So there'll certainly be adequate parking. We do have under agreement this entire parcel to include the left lot and the right side of the building as you see it here. So any questions on that? I'm happy to take them or I can take them at the end as well. Why don't we go through Mr. D'Agostino and then I'll turn it to board members for particular questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Okay. So the same care security plan. Again, I have Mr. Alinsky on the phone. So I'm happy for him to jump in. Basically, we're going to utilize Mr. Alinsky to come out, review the site, working with Arlington police to make sure that we're safe and compliant and really review our security systems to make sure that they're where they need to be. I will tell you, anybody that's dealt with cannabis, these generally turn into probably the most secure locations. Every neighbor should be thrilled to live next door because there is literally cameras everywhere. Like my facility in Kansas City has about 62 cameras on a 6,000 square foot building. So there are cameras all throughout the parking lot, all around the building to ensure that everyone is safe, both employees and customers. We'll have security on site all hours of operations. We're going to ensure that they're trained adequately and that we train in accordance with the CCC requirements. Any safety or any kind of disregard to any kind of policies that this company has is grounds for immediate termination. And I take that pretty seriously. Similar to marijuana free establishments, we're going to design the facility to be safe and secure. We're going to have commercial grade alarm systems, again, in conjunction with Mr. Alinsky giving us advice of what we need to have. We'll have trackable key cards that limit access to certain areas of the store, specifically the vaults and any kind of packaging areas. And we'll also have panic buttons and any kind of redundant intrusion systems. We'll have backup batteries in place for four to six hours. So should there be any kind of interruption to our service, our cameras will always be on. When I get into seeing the image of the store, we plan to have a secure in-house delivery. So we're going to build a garage within our facility. So anytime there is a delivery, that car will pull into the building. So there will be no kind of activity hopping in the parking lot or that anyone can see. So this is what I was just referencing. And we just did this also with Swam Scott where we just built a garage so that there's no need for anything ever to happen in the parking lot, which is always a concern for the neighbors. So the parking lot, there'll be a button, they'll get buzzed in, there's cameras in here, so everything is tracked. As I noted earlier, I come from extremely, vigorous audit background. So we do a lot of three-way matching with cash and I also have external auditors that I bring on usually two to three times a year to make sure that we're operating compliantly, not only for ourselves, but for our financial standpoint. I want to make sure everything is ticked and tied. As everyone knows, this is a heavy cash business. So making sure that we're making sure everything is accurate is super important. Employee training, diversion, prevention, on-site education. So as I noted earlier, Dr. Stone is thrilled to come out and potentially educate people that would want to be educated. We've probably looked early on to do those more frequently to get people aware of what we are and what we do and how we could help them, but also how we're going to try and help the community. Our on-site education for our employees, they're going to go through a lot of training. We also hire a third party to train our employees to make sure that it's not just us coming up with a training guide. It's actually a cannabis training guide to make sure that we're compliant. And we'll work with local vendors to have literature both on-site as well as in the waiting room with people late. And if there's any questions, our team will be trained to be able to answer that. As noted earlier, prevention and diversion is extremely important. So having Mr. Lindsay working with the police department as well as ourselves to make sure that we're just following any guidelines or any things that they may be thinking that maybe we're not thinking about. We'll have a track and trace system. Our track and trace system is obviously metric. We use Flow Hub, which is integrated to the track and trace system. Additionally, we use Work, which is a cannabis party, a cannabis payroll provider. And that's also integrated through Flow Hub so that we're able to track everybody down to their number. So everything is very trackable. And again, the nuisance prevention, well, nothing will be tolerated. We don't want to be a hazard to the neighborhood. We want to be good neighbors. The goal is to be successful. If we're successful, the town is successful. And I do not handle anyone that is going to be causing any kind of issues on-site, whether that be our unemployed or someone else. And then the benefits is really, HCA, a charitable, as I discussed earlier. We do a lot of charity activities throughout the country as noted, farm stopping veterans. Out in California, we work with a lot of underserved communities. So we work with the Girls Club. We also had my guys go out on a weekend and they built a park. So it was a really fun activity for them. Great team building for them, but also an appreciation for things that you're not thinking that, how lucky you are every day. We participate in a lot of neighborhood and civic associations. This building plans have 18 full-time positions. So the estimated payroll is going to be $800 to a million a year. So we're really, and the goal is to really hire as many local people as possible. Mostly they're going to be salaried employees, generally good paying salary employees jobs. So having people local is super important.  How long goes off, we want to make sure that there's somebody local to handle it. So having locals on the ground is very, very important. And these were just some of the things I just already had mentioned. These are the Girls Inc. and the building out of the park that we did. In Massachusetts, we work with the Urban League. So really having that social equity is extremely important to me. And giving back to those people that may be underserved, displaced, especially during COVID, it's been a real challenging time for a lot of people. And I want to make sure that we set people up for success. The Massachusetts market is one of the biggest markets in the Middle East. It's estimated to be a billion dollar market in the next few years. We currently obviously hold a license in Storm Scott. We estimate that this store should do 5 million to 7 million a year. And estimating a 2.5% tax range, it's about 125,000 to 175,000 a year. Plus additionally, the benefit of the HCA for the town. And again, these are just high level numbers that are in the presentation. So I won't let you in depth, but this is really just noting where the most of the expenses go. And clearly it's highly designated to payroll. And these are just the responses that Mary already answered early on. So I'm going to leave that go for now. And then if you guys have any questions for myself, Mary, Pete, or Mr. Lincey, we're here to answer those. Great, thank you very much for the presentation. I will now turn to the board. True, before I do that, maybe if I could ask Attorney Hyme, I probably should have done this before the presentation, just in terms of based on where we were in terms of a process here with the HCA. I don't know if there's anything you want to add in terms of process or the compliance with the buffer zones or anything of that nature before I turn it to board members. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I'll just provide a quick reminder for any members of the board that might want to refresh or members of the public that the process before the board is really limited to whether or not it will grant a host community agreement to the applicant. We've already granted host community agreements to two marijuana retailers in Arlington. To my understanding, one is open. The other one is not yet open. The board is not obligated to grant an HCA to anybody, but this is now the third round of HCA solicitations that the board has had. To my recollection, this particular applicant has been before the board at least twice before. The process, this is especially for the public's sort of education reminder, the process only begins here. If the board were to grant an HCA to this applicant, the applicant still has to go through the special permitting process, which is administered by the Arlington Redevelopment Board. That process is primarily about compliance with zoning bylaws. So while the applicant has prepared a number of things about things like traffic studies, those things are typically handled in a great deal of depth before the redevelopment board, which was the case with the podcast, is the case also with ESCAR, I believe. Additionally, there's a parallel process. The applicant, one of the sort of big changes between some of the applicants prior, submissions here as they now have, I believe licenses or HCA's and provisional licenses with the Cannabis Control Commission in Massachusetts, where they did, which they didn't in previous iterations. I believe they've already referenced the locations of those. The Cannabis Control Commission also does a vetting process, obviously, for anybody who's seeking a license to open a retail establishment or any other kind of license. There's, so there's a lot of layers of review that happen either in parallel or after this process. This process is really about the board using its own criteria to make sure it's comfortable proceeding with the host community agreement, setting forth the basic parameters of what that host community agreement will be. Typically, in the past, what the board has done is charge the town manager and my office with negotiating host community agreement as the board may recall. We've stuck strictly to the legal criteria established by the state and have not asked for extra payments or more money or anything like that, which happened in some other communities. We've stuck pretty straight and narrow to the four corners of what HCA's can include. So unless board members have any other questions for me, the only other thing I note is that my office had previously vetted this applicant in terms of its corporate structure, in terms of its compliance with the site location, all that kind of stuff. Nothing has really changed other than the fact the applicant now holds more licenses in Massachusetts than they, I mean, has HCA's and provisional licenses in Massachusetts that they didn't previously have. None of those exceeds the number that you're allowed to have in Massachusetts. So the applicant is still in good standing as far as my office is concerned. And then the other information you have is obviously from the marijuana study group. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney Heim, for the overview and for your guidance. I will start with Mr. Diggins, who had attended the marijuana study group meeting for any questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So he has to be, I was part of the marijuana study group and we had a nice discussion about Kalex Peak. And I have to say, we're pleased. We put out a positive recommendation to the board. I will say about the process, one of the things that I regret about it is that we can't have the, I won't say we can't, but we haven't had the applicants at those meetings because they'd certainly be enlightening, I think, to talk with them at those meetings. So I am just gonna ask a few questions and then have a statement at the end and potentially a motion. So if you could go to the slide referencing your director of operations and community outreach, Ms. Mark Niedemeyer. And on that, it mentions a disadmission statement of the company. So what's the mission statement? I am missing where you're seeing that. Okay, let me see if I can go to it myself. I'm sorry, I had a hard time pulling this up. Never, I'll go to it myself. The slides weren't numbered, so it's a little hard to just kind of specify which slide. So it's where you're introducing the staff and there's Gwen. Oh, okay, that's nice, yeah. Yeah, so formally we really have cut back on our staff just to give you a heads up on that. We did a lot of restructuring in 2020. So our formal mission statement is shop local, buy local, be local. And that's kind of, they're obviously an evolving thing, but that's what the important message behind local is. So it's hiring and being part of the local community. Gotcha, all right, cool. Thank you. So can you give me a sense of the nature of the outreach that you might do in Arlington? So again, it's not having like, reaching out with Mark and reaching out some of the community activities that are there. I would love to reach out to the veterans as I noted earlier. That's something that's extremely close to my heart and I'm passionate about. Pete who's on the phone is also a former military. So for me, that's extremely important. Also important for us is equity. And I know you guys talked about that a lot tonight. I've already started working with the Urban League and how we could either do some onsite training. What else can we do to help? How can I as a CEO develop the next CEO? How can, how do I find the guy that's gonna take my job? That's what it's about. And finding those people that really have been impacted through cannabis, but also given the recent situations with COVID, a little background myself. My husband's a teacher. So we've watched a lot of what has happened over the last two years and how it's impacted families and a lot of these children. So super important for us to be involved. Great, thank you. So from your market research, I'll ask questions and say a little more before letting you answer it or asking the answer it. I mean, how many marijuana shops do you think Arlington could handle? And I ask you that because I wonder to what extent you're wanting to be here is a function in fact that we have, we are at this point allowing only three establishments. So that's obviously important. Given that there is nothing really close in proximity besides Apotheca right now and obviously the other host community agreement that's out there, having places that are not served as well is really important. We've been looking at other areas along the coast as well where there's a 10 to 15 miles but everybody knows with Boston traffic that could be 30, 40 minutes, especially on a snow day. So finding areas that aren't on top of each other and aren't highly populated is important. So, but do you think Arlington could handle more than three establishments? Well, if I'm being greedy now, if you're going to get me. Right, because as you add more, obviously it's just going to detract from other businesses. So knowing that we will probably pull a little bit from Apotheca depending on where people are buying from and somebody else will pull from us. That's just the way it's going to work until the market kind of settles and everybody lands with their three recreational licenses which is all you're allowed to have. So it's going to be a continuing evolving land, a little bit of a footprint until the ship kind of lands itself. Gotcha. If I could add to that, if I may. Mr. Diggs, how are you sir? Good to see you again. It's been a while. You know, I think when we think about the kind of the market in Arlington, I mean, we have Apotheca who really services the Heights area of the town and then you have Escobar which would be on the East side and then Kalex really serving the middle of Arlington. And I know we talked about this at the last go around. I really feel so that was the intent of town meeting to spread them out with the 2000 foot buffer. And I think this meets that intent and it doesn't detract from the other businesses that you've approved in town. I think when I think of Arlington and how challenging it has been to get property and meet these 2000 foot buffers and actually get these businesses spread out to add a fourth or fifth one could become more challenging because they're gonna have to go between two of the entities whether it's between us and Escobar or Apotheca whatever the case may be. So I think the way this has come together is a little bit interesting because I think putting in the buffers the way the town did they actually got the result they were hoping for. So I think with that hopefully the board would move forward with this applicant and then give it some time to evaluate how those three businesses are operating and servicing the town before they added more. Thank you. So regarding your discipline and respect to your employees so across your businesses have you had any terminations due to employees? I mean just not following the rules or worse. I've had one theft small amount but yep it was caught on camera security caught it immediately and he was escorted off the property. Just one. Yep, that was a cultivation. So my cultivation facility in California we have about 60 employees. It's a highly Hispanic population, super diligent workers and we just got somebody putting something up asleep. Cultivation is a little different animal the way that it works there is everything is weighed every time it goes into every room. So that is the interesting part about cannabis and people worrying about theft. It is so trapped. It's pretty crazy. It's pretty impressive how tracked all of this product is. And so one last question and that is regarding the salaries because there was some concern about that being in the study group being so will there be benefits associated with these salaries? Yes, we offer a really good benefit plan. We actually cover 75% and they're eligible for benefits 60 days after they start. And we have currently we just have medical and dental and vision. We are working on a 401k plan. It's an ever-evolving thing. And so is that part of the total when you say it's a 800k to 1 million payroll? It does not include in kind of 401k it does include healthcare benefits, taxes, et cetera. Yeah, all right. Yeah, I guess one of the concerns is I don't guess me one of the concerns is that in the Arlington is just a pretty expensive place to live me and so with 18 employees being at 800k to 1 million it's still gonna be a little tight being rather tight me for someone to live here me and work there. But you know, the market is what it is me then and it's not just me. Some of those 18 hour hourlies, right? We always open it up where if it's someone who college kid who just wants to put in three hours after school. So we expect that there's always a demand fluctuation in the evening when people are leaving work. So it's great when the college kids wanna work for you like from four to eight because it gives them the opportunity to make extra money and then it's not a full-time job. The full times are really more security supervisors, managers, system managers and it's a 40, 45 hour job a week but I believe the pay is very good. I hear you and it's not a deal breaker for me. And so I'll ask the chair, me, is this time for a motion? Well, what I was gonna do is they have questions first Mr. Viggins and then I can return in the order if there's a motion if that's true. No, I'm happy to ask the sequencing, you know so sometimes I'm all about the questions and then I let it go and then someone makes a motion it's like, oh, I should have done that. I mean, so I'll just end with a comment and that is to say, I am really happy to see you back. And I've told the story a few times meaning in the first vote, I did not vote for approval of Kayla's pick peak and Mr. Heard had made an argument meaning for voting in an affirmative mean and I thought about that argument a lot when I left mean and I did regret not voting for you all. The reason I didn't was because I had very much wanted to see another establishment in the East because I felt the East could handle it and that the entity that was going for it was very close to the 2000 just didn't quite make it. I'll also add that I was one of the people that voted in the special town meeting for the amendment that would have eliminated the buffer at all because I really just kind of wanted to see more market competition and given that the East being voted two to one in precincts three and four being for allowance of marijuana establishments mean the notion of NIMBs would have not really held much water for me. So that was my rationale was that I was hoping that by not voting that someone would find another establishment in the East mean and hopefully it would have been you. It didn't work out. I really appreciate that you have hung in there. You've been really respectful throughout the entire process mean you have a good track record in and so you can tell where I'm going on this especially since I was on the study committee. So thanks for entertaining all of my questions and also to my colleagues. Thanks for tolerating all the time I've taken. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins, I don't recall what my argument was but doesn't look like I needed in this meeting. No, I'm gonna be brief in that this is I think the third or fourth time that we've got a presentation by Kaleigh Peake. I've been impressed by the presentation every time that's come before us the first time obviously there was an issue with the buffer and Apotheca was an established business and then I did vote for Kaleigh Peake the second time around. I like this site. I think it's a good site for it. I think when we first had community host agreements before us, it was still the time period where we envisioned lines down the street of cars going to these establishments but I've been in Apotheca. It's not more than one or two people in there at a time at this point and I don't envision that there'll be major traffic issues in this location. It is a location that used to be a very well-known service station run by well-known people in town but it's been depressed for more than a few years and I think this would be a good addition to the neighborhood right in that location. And again, I'm very impressed by what I see from Kaleigh Peake that you're a very professional company and you come prepared and you are in fact persistent and they have a very strong commitment to serve the town of Ronaldington and the residents here since you got many calls as a chair and I know Steve has as well. So I'm happy to move this forward. I'm happy to finally take these HCA agreements off of Attorney Hyme's plate because I know that's been a lot of work on with it for him and his staff over the past couple of years and I think we're in a good place with the three that we hopefully will approve as of tonight and I'm happy to see you guys back. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to match Mr. Hurd's brevity but it might not make it. Anyone who knows me. I just have, I think four questions. Around on-site security, chief Linsky's role in three to six months after if you are successful this establishment opens, who meaning what position or if you already know who the person is will be the daily on-site security supervisor. So we obviously haven't hired anyone yet so I don't know who that person will be. So I apologize. Mr. Linsky, I'm happy to have you jump in and kind of go over how you're involved with us and help us with that. Sure. And can I add to this? When you do hire the person will chief Linsky be involved? Yeah. And also he'll be involved in training them. So thank you for the question. So my name is Dan Linsky. So those of you who don't know me, I'm a recovering cop. I was a cop for 28 years in the city of Boston and now I've been recovering for about almost seven, eight years now. I was the chief of the Boston Police Department when I left my service with the city and my most coming event I was in charge during the marathon bombing attack and had many of your officers from Allenton come over to help us in a bad day in Watertown. I met with Chief Larrity and had conversations about this location. My job is a security consultant. I am not going to be the day-to-day security manager, although what the team and Erin has asked me to do is to do more than what my team designs the physical security standards, the access control programs, where we put cameras, what type of cameras, while people sign in inside out, policies, procedures and all of the day-to-day operational procedures. I will not be overseeing day-to-day operations of security. I will work with the team to determine who that will be, vet that person, make sure they are well-trained, well-equipped and well-prepared to do it, although I will be at their right hand. One of the things the team has asked me to do is to go outside the whole walls of the facility to make sure that one of our clients leaves our facility and goes down the street to Allenton Catholic and uses the parking lot to use products. And somebody takes a photograph of that, a picture, a video, the police interact with that individual, we get a report of it, they can contact the security manager or they can contact me and that person is no longer welcome at any Kalex Peak facility in Massachusetts. We value what communities allow us to do and value the licenses they give us and if anyone wants to not obey the rules, they're not welcome at our facility. So we've got a good neighbor agreement with everybody. I'm working day-to-day with the team to set up the policies, procedures, training, make sure the security manager is well-suited, working with them on individual investigations. If we get one of the events where an employee is a diverting product or we have an issue or concern, my job is to work with the security manager that we pick and the Allenton Police Department and any other, whether it's the Kansas Patrol Commission or the city zoning board or anyone to make sure that all the information issues the concerns of the area if there's an investigation needed, we do it. We also, it's great to have 52 cameras that record 24 hours a day. One of the things we do for our clients is kind of compliance. So I go in and pull video, random videos of different days, hours, types and see whether or not everyone who is on board is complying with what we said we would do for rules and policies. There's limited access to the state, right? However, if sometimes people get lazy and people prop a door open and people who shouldn't be in there or helping carry things out, we go in and look at video and if that's the case, we first discipline, train and if not, remove. The other things we do with our clients are secret shopper training where our team will go in, try and use fake IDs, see if our security team that's in-house is working well or not working well to address issues of diversion to youth in the community. So my job is not to be the day-to-day operations manager but to help quarterback that team and support them going forward. I look at it as the Bill Belichick of the Kalex Peak security team where I'm coaching and directing and hopefully bringing in a new Super Bowl this year against that evil man in Tampa Bay who left us. And I didn't talk until it was three, my mother thought I was deaf and mute and had me tested and now she says she can't shut me up.  And if you have other questions, let me know. Well, I just, which coach Belichick gave after game interviews, the way you just gave your presentation. No, I appreciate that. And then I understand the motto mantra, if you see something say something and my daytime job is a court reporter but when that fails, especially around public safety, construction, those types of entities that abide to that, it has some really serious consequences. And what I've seen when it's failed is when something has been going on that isn't safe, whether it's not safe to your employees, whether it's not safe to your patrons and there's nobody trained there that can recognize that situation, that that's not safe, whether it's in terms of running a business, whether it's in terms of, you know, how you dig up against a rubble stone wall and workers go underneath and the workers don't know that they put themselves in safety. So my thing is, I guess I would just leave it unless you have anyone had any kind of quick brief thing to that. I'd really stress that sometimes people fall into oh, see something out, see something, say something but you need to have someone on site that is qualified to recognize that versus a college student. And I'm not putting that down, that's coming in working four to eight or five to nine or anything like that. So. You're absolutely correct. And that's what my job is to do to make sure that the team there is well-versed to deal with any situations that comes forward. I've kind of made a career off of that. The other thing we've talked to the chief about is there is some technology available where our video cameras could be easily accessed by the Allenton Police Department anytime they wanted them through some technology that's available. And we've offered that if need be to make sure that they can actually do their own kind of check in and peak if need be or in the case of an emergency going forward. We want to train our staff to deal with all kinds of emergencies. You know, I don't anticipate robberies. However, if there's a robbery, take it. We get, take what you need. We've got a bunch of cameras. We're going to work with the Allenton Police Department to get you out of there. We're going to train our staff how to make sure they don't put themselves in harm's way over a bunch of product if somebody's desperate to do something. We've also designed our facility to hopefully have you go to the other two facilities in Allington if you want to do a robbery because ours is a little more security enhanced and we're deterring people from doing that. But I agree with you. We need to prepare people for all hazards and that's not something Aaron and the team take lightly. They're very serious about making sure we keep our clients safe and our team safe. Thank you. And the last two things really just don't expect comment here because I'm just putting it out. Goes sort of beyond our scope here, but I know you and your team and Attorney O'Connor will be addressing this. Just as you move forward, I know when you design the building and level the site to whatever plane you do, I'm not well-versed on flooding impacts up in this location except for when we have those really quick flash floods that, you know, so I know that's not before this board if you do move forward, but I just would put a plug into that to as I know you will have your team look at what this building, it seems like you're putting it pretty much in the same place, adding the garage, 10 car parking lot, but as you move forward and come, if you do before the appropriate body, I just want to put the pitch in. And lastly, I know it's a little small little thing. I know one