Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Allington Select Board from Monday, August 9th, 2021. This is Select Board Chair Steve DeCorsi. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Dan Han. Here. John Hurd. Yes. Len Diggins. Here. Eric Helman. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Tonight's meeting of the Allington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with an act signed into law on June 16, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The Governor's order, which you can find posted 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, I'm going 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. Students 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 for 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. The meeting participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the post of agenda materials on the town's website using the Novus Agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. We have a full agenda tonight, so let's see how much of the town's business we can get done. To return to the first agenda item, I do want to note that for those of you viewing and expecting to see us in the slideboard chambers, with the change in the increase in the COVID transmission rates, the town issued an order earlier today through the town manager chapter lane, requiring face masks for all individuals in public buildings. The Board of Health will be meeting on Wednesday and I believe we'll be providing further guidance in light of that and other issues that come into play for a meeting that could last three to four hours. We thought it best to have the meeting remotely. We will continue to monitor things through our Board of Health and Health and Human Services. I suspect that our next meeting, Christine Bonjono, our Director of Health and Human Services, will be reporting to the Board. She'll be meeting with the Board of Health on Wednesday. I believe she's meeting with the school committee on Thursday night. So, before I start, Mr. Chaplain, do you want to add anything to that just on the announcement for the face masks? Certainly to directly say this is in direct response to the Delta variant and the surge underway in the nation, region, state and even in Middlesex County. We are hoping based on the science we're saying that this will not be a long period of time and we're going to be looking at this in very short increments of time but as of today as the chair mentioned, putting a mask requirement in place for public buildings, as well as a strongly encouraged request of wearing masks in other public spaces has gone into effect. Great. Okay. Thank you. So we will now turn to item two on the agenda, the Ellington Housing Authority tenant member appointment. If you want to provide just a little background before we ask the individuals who have submitted expressions of interest to present to the Board. Like in December, along with the Housing Authority, we nominated or selected an individual fear of the Dilla to fill an open seat on the Ellington Housing Authority. Following that appointment, the legislature enacted chapter 358 of the acts of 2020 that was signed into law on January 14, 2021. That required that housing authorities have a tenant board member. The date the the acts effective date was May 15. And following that act that superseded any other appointments that were made that calls for a procedure to select, which is the select board selection of a tenant member representative. The term of the appointment, and I'll turn to Attorney Hyman, just clarification on this is through 2023. That goes along with the period of time for the other members of the Housing Authority so turning time if there's just want to clarify that that's the date that will be this term that we select and anything else you want to add. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just note that that term, the seat is for five years. However, we were three years into the seat that was coming up for under the legislation to have a tenant board member appointment. So, the tenant seat is for five years, but we were three years into it, due to the process and guidelines for how these things are supposed to be filled. And that was confirmed with DHCD, the town clerk, Housing Authority member Julian Preston and Jack Neagle, the acting director of the Housing Authority while instrumental in making sure that that was clarified and confirmed. So again, you'll be making an appointment through 2023. After that, it will be four or five years the next time around, but there was three years that it had already been occupied for this specific seat. For the public certification, the reason you want to do that is you don't want multiple seats coming up in the same year. It's supposed to be on a rotating base. And so we received eight individuals who either expressed an interest on their own or whose name was submitted through the clerk's office by the local tenant organizations, those being local tenant organizations at Winslow Towers and Cusack Terrace. We did not receive anything from Drake Village. And we received five individuals from Anatomy Manor. So what I'm going to do, we didn't receive anything from Chestnut Manor either. What I am going to do is first read the names of the individuals who will be talking with us tonight seeking the appointment, and then we will call each one individually, ask them to present for a minute or so. I will ask board members if they have any questions for each of the candidates, and then we will move towards nominations and votes. So with that, the names of the individuals were posted on the agenda. And this is in alphabetical order, Fiorella Badilla, Dylan Dalton, Pat Dunleavy, Pamela Hauser, Alicia Jones, Cynthia McGinty, Julia Modan, Vanessa Roussell. Today we were notified that Alicia Jones has withdrawn from consideration. And we were also notified that Ms. Dunleavy is unable to make it tonight. She did submit written materials for the board's consideration, and that is part of the agenda package. One further correction, Cynthia McGinty is listed as Winslow Tower. She's actually Cusack Terrace on the board's agenda. So with that, if we could go, Mr. Chapter Lane or Ms. Meyer, if we could promote Ms. Badilla and we will go in alphabetical order down the list. Hello. Good evening, Mr. Badilla. Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? Well, thank you. Good, good. So if you could, we had received your written submission. And if you could take about a minute or so and let us know why you're still interested in being the tenant housing representative, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Pirella Badilla and I live in Minotomy Manor at 63 Mont Street. I am originally from San Jose, Costa Rica. Since last December, I have been honored to hold a position on the board of the Arlington Housing Authority, replacing Rick Murray who resigned. I have been an Arlington Housing Authority resident since I was 14. In the last eight months, I have learned a great deal about the duties and member of the board, which I can use to represent the interests of all housing authority tenants in the future. In addition to preparing and attending board meetings, I have completed the board member trading course required by the state and attended the online conference sponsored by the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials and have had meetings with Jack Cooper, the director of the Union of Massachusetts Public Housing Tenants. At Minotomy Manor, I have encouraged the expansion of the Minotomy Manor garden project and the organizing of a new Minotomy Manor tenants association. On the board, I have asked for the replacement of the leaky windows and doors into Minotomy Manor apartments. I am pleased to report that the formal assessment of these crucial issues will occur this fall. The formal assessment is necessary for applying for CPA and other funding mechanisms beginning in December with AHA seniors and those with disabilities until this spring. Since then, I have had occasions to interact with Drake Village residents, which is one of the four elderly state-eated housing authorities, and learn about their concerns. On an initial tour, I sat down and had conversations with several residents. One was in Spanish with a woman from Colombia. The other occasion was at a reception at Drake Village following a board meeting. In July, I had a meeting with the newly elected officers of the Q-Sec terrorist tenants organization. Excuse me, but over the time, if you could, if you're wrapping up, if you could just wrap it up in the next few seconds, that would be great. Going forward, my desire is to serve all of those who live in the Arlington Housing Authorities and work with the Board and Union of Massachusetts Public Housing Tenants to create the crucial conditions for them to have comfortable and productive lives. Thank you for considering me, and I look forward to continuing my work with the board and advocating for tenants' rights. Thank you very much. I'm not going to go down the line, but by a show of hands, if there are any board members who have questions for Mr. Padilla, but before I do that, I see Attorney Heim has his hand up. I'm sorry, Mr. DeCorsi and Ms. Padilla. I just wanted to interject because I know that Mr. Heard wanted to say something at the outset of this. So, I don't want to interrupt these questions or Ms. Padilla's consideration and discussion. I appreciate that. I'm sorry for missing that earlier. Yeah, Mr. Heard. Yeah, no problem. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt Ms. Padilla's presentation. But I have spoken with Attorney Heim on this regarding, I do have a familiar relationship with the Operations Manager of the Housing Authority who is currently serving as the Interim Executive Director. And I have spoke with Attorney Heim who we've come to the conclusion that I can participate in the discussion and vote on this matter. But just to clear any potential appearance of conflict of interest and in the interest of full disclosure, I am going to just recuse myself from the discussion and vote on this particular item. Okay, thank you, Mr. Heard. Okay, is there any board members who have questions for Ms. Padilla? Okay, thank you very much, Ms. Padilla. Thank you. Okay, next on the list is Dillon Dalton. I do not see Dillon Dalton in the attendee list, Mr. Chair. Okay, all right, we'll go back if there is, if we do receive word later before we open nominations. Next on the list, Patricia Dunleavy is still on the list. And as I said, she had submitted written materials. She is not able to be with us tonight. But I know board members have looked at the written submission and we will consider that as part of the vote this evening. Next is Pamela Hauser. I can promote it. Pam? Okay, should be coming up right now. Good evening, Ms. Hauser. Good evening, gentlemen and ladies of the board of the town of Allenton. My qualifications, I am a lifelong resident of the town of Allenton. I was born and raised here. I have a degree in business management and administration. I worked for the federal government for 17 years. I left after 9-11 when at the time I was on the phone with a gentleman who was at the Pentagon and got killed while I was talking to him on the phone, which was quite a thing. I raised three children at monotony manner through the 70s and 80s. I have a unique perspective in the Allenton Housing Authority. My father, Robert Hauser, was the first executive director of the Allenton Housing Authority from 1949 to 1975 when he passed away from cancer at the age of 53. I feel that the AHA needs a level head and its decisions that need to be come before the board, and I feel I give that. I have been attaining, I was very vocal in obtaining new elevators for Winslow Towers and new windows which are currently under construction. I have the qualifications that I feel are required to be on this board. I am very vocal. I have been president of Winslow Towers for the past eight years, and the tenants don't want me to leave, and according to the regulations, I do not have to give up that position. My duties at the federal government, I was a GS5 secretary, but my duties included that of secretary, supply manager, equipment manager. I was in charge of space allocation, phone allocations, liaison for a building being built and security. I feel I am quite qualified to handle the Allenton Housing Authority, and I am very willing. I know all the other presidents of Allenton. Thank you, Ms. Hauser. You're just about at your time limit, so if you just have a concluding sentence or so, that's fine. I just feel I'm very qualified for this position. I hope the board can consider my appointment. Thank you very much. Do any board members have any questions for Ms. Hauser? Okay, thank you, Ms. Hauser. Thank you very much for your consideration. Sure. Okay, next is, and as I said, Alicia Jones is no longer a candidate. Cynthia McGinty is next. Mr. Chairman, I do not see Cynthia McGinty either. Next. And again, if Ms. McGinty joins us before we close the presentations, we'll allow her to come on. Next is Julia Moten. Mr. Chair, I do not see Julia Moten. Okay, and I will point out to the public we did reach out to all of the candidates today to inform them that we would be having the meeting remotely and invited them to join us. We also reached out last week when we set this agenda item up. We reached out for additional written materials. We offered the opportunity to present to the board this evening. Okay. Vanessa Russell. Okay, I think she is. I think she is here under a different name. Let me see here. Mr. Chair. Yes, Mrs. Mohan. I do see Ms. Roswell on chat and perhaps she's logged in under a different name that maybe she can just provide that to chat. So, unless Mr. the town manager is found. I think we have fun Vanessa. I did not submit my letter because with time restraints and a lot of other stuff going on I've decided to withdraw. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. So that, that completes the list of candidates. Is there anyone else on the list of speakers or that we've heard through the chat. I do know that Ms. Jones and Ms. Dunleavy did contact the board office today to let us know that they would not be able to make it. Well, we have one more check to see if there is any, any others waiting. It does not appear so Mr. Chair. I would just ask if anybody is waiting to present and I'm not seeing your name if you could try to raise your hand just to make sure that I'm not missing you. Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chaplain. I don't see any hands either on that list. Okay. So what we will do now I will open nominations actually take a motion to open nominations. Anyone. So moved. Is there a second. Okay, seconded by Mr. Diggins. So on a motion to open nominations by Mrs. Mahan seconded by Mr. Diggins attorney. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. It's a four zero vote. Okay. And again I won't go down the line if there are any members that would like to nominate any of the individuals who submitted expressions of interest. Please do so now. Show of hands. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I want to say from the presentations we've gotten tonight and I mean this with all sincerity as well as we did have some written attestations said to us. We have so many candidates that really, really would like to appoint them all. However, I do know as part of what we've heard and and or read the majority if not all of them are very actively involved in a j properties and and working with their neighbors also working through COVID-19 and I read some of that statements of things that they did safely. And I want to thank you on behalf of the town. Because everybody was really just getting on this ride and trying to figure out how to maneuver it. With that I would like to nominate the umbrella. Thank you. Is there a second. Second from Mr. Diggins. Okay, any other nominations. Seeing, seeing none. Yes. I'm sorry. Could I move to close nominations. Yeah, I was just going to ask that. Yep. No, absolutely. Do we have a second. Okay, motion to close nominations by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Diggins. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Okay. And now, with one one individual nominated and I also want to thank everybody who expressed interest in the housing authority position and for submitting written materials and being involved in in in the town. So with that we have one nomination before the board attorney Heim. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. It's a four zero vote. Great. Thank you very much. Could we bring back. Ms. Bidi for just a moment. Hello. Ms. Bidi. Congratulations and I want to thank you for your presentation tonight and for the work that you described over the past several months and as we said at the beginning of the session this is a two year appointment and just again. I meant to mention this earlier. We had confirmed that all of the candidates were registered voters are now and that is a requirement and so everybody met that requirement and I don't know if any of the board members have anything that they want to add but wanted to bring you back to congratulate you. I appreciate that. Thank you guys. I'm so looking forward to the next two years. Great. Great. Mr. Diggins. And I just wanted to add that I am I'm really happy that you wanted to continue working with AHA and there are lots of reasons that I nominated you back in December and and from what I hear from other members of the other board and my colleague and you've done very well. I have intentionally not be hovered Bidi out of respect for you and and and also as a side of my confidence to meet and and be part of wanting you to be on the board was for you to grow into the role and then grow also grow as a person who is interested in civic engagement and and I think you've done a great job. You know, and I encourage you to continue working with us and maybe even in larger realms so thanks for continuing. Thank you Mr. Diggins actually would like to comment I look forward to working in involving youth around Arlington to local government. So, thank you. Okay. Thank you Mr. Diggins and Mrs. Mahan. Just, no matter what it's a border five originally miss the Della came in to fill out Mr. Murray's seat. Someone had asked me now. If she were successful for the tenant seat on what happens to Mr. Murray's seat and I don't know if you Mr. Chair or turning high. I think it's sort of an osmosis situation but if somebody could just provide more clarity on that. I'm turning on correct me if I'm wrong, but this tenant seat effectively, Mr. Murray's seat is effectively now the tenant seat. And so that will be merged and will from this point forward be the tenant seat. Mr. Chairman that's correct. Yeah, the way it works is if there was no vacancy. We would have had a different process but because Mr. Murray vacated the seat, we were able to appoint miss the dealer to fill that vacancy until such time as the the regulations have been promulgated. So they are essentially now the same line of seats. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And then best best of luck moving forward. Mr. Della. Appreciate that. Thank you guys. Have a great night. Okay. So that concludes item two. We'll wait for Mr. Herd to get back. I will announce agenda item three approval of sale of $162,225 sewer bond to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority for inflow and infiltration local financial assistance program. Phyllis Marshall, our town treasurer will be presenting and I believe she's here with us. I am. Sorry. Good evening, Ms. Marshall. Good evening. I am before you seeking your approval of this bond of $162,225. It is the loan portion of the project that was submitted by Mr. Rotemacher. There is also a grant from the MWRA in the amount of $486,675 for 75% of that project. And the scope of that project is was submitted to you for design, bid and award for improvements to rehabbing and reconstruction of the sewer system and related facilities. And also for post construction flow evaluation from a previous phase of project. So it's a great opportunity for us. It's interest free loan and so I would hope that in accordance with the 2020 annual town meeting vote of article 59 you would give positive consideration to this sale. Great. Thank you, Ms. Marshall. I'll turn to the board now. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I'd like to move approval and I just have one very quick question if I could. Go ahead. On page 10 under scope of services. Yes. I understand sometimes numbers are used as numbers and sometimes they used as sort of non numbers. So I just wanted, I just had a question where task one and two are part of phase number 13 and task three to close out as part of page number 11. Is there a 12? And I only say this that if for some reason there was a typo, which I'm sure there isn't. There is a phase 12. But I don't have information on this project right now. I don't. I think it's underway, but I can't be certain I can follow up with Mr. Ottermacher. Yes, if you could and if you as a follow up to that follow up. I'm going to assume, because you can only authorize and vote what's contained here before us under scope of services. So I think phase 12 will have an additional cost and we'll have to deal with that in the future and if you just could. After you follow up Mr. Ottermacher, whoever else you deem appropriate on what phase 12 is, if just there's some sort of approximation or estimate. Not asking where the funding is going to come from just. And that would be it. I want to thank Madam Treasurer. I've done such an exemplary job that I never really come in and bug you or anything. Because everything's running so well, including the staff in the office who are very appreciative. So, I'd like to see a woman in our upper ranks. So I do appreciate that and with that I'll turn it back to the chairman thank you for the leniency there. Mr. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I will move. I will second the motion and no further comments. Okay, thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins. He broke my streak of seconds. Okay, we just watch any further comments. No comments. Okay, thank you and Mr. Helman. No comments. Thank you. Thank you. And I have no comments either. Thank you for the presentation. This Marshall. Okay, on a motion by Mrs. Mahan a seconded by Mr. Hurd to approve the sale of the bonds attorney. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmeth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Great. Thank you very much, Miss Marshall. Thank you. Thank you, attorney. Yes. Agenda item four, presentation bus network redesign. Daniel Amstutz. I believe the town manager. Mr. Chapekoin will be introducing this item and we have a, at least one or two guests from the MBTA with us tonight. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I just promoted. Melissa, I'm going to pronounce her last name wrong, likely dilleya from the MBTA. the board an update on the MBTA bus network redesign program that they'd like to bring the board up to speed on and answer any questions that the board might have. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chaplain. Good evening, Ms. Delia. Is that correct on the pronunciation? It's du-lay. Du-lay. Okay. We're sorry. No worries. Okay. Yeah, the floor is yours. And we did receive the presentation and our agenda. There's some written materials that we received, but go right ahead. Fantastic. So I will take about 10 minutes to go through the presentation that was provided to you, and I'll let you know when I'm changing pages. So just by introduction, my name is Melissa Delia. I'm senior director of service planning for the MBTA. I've been here for 21 years, and I'm pleased to be before you, members of the select board and town manager. Excuse me, one second, Mr. Chaplain. Is there a way that we can share the presentation so the public's benefit? There it is. Okay. Yeah, if you can say, sorry to interrupt, but that way it'll be right there in front of us. Super. That's a lot easier to follow. Thanks for the idea. So if you go to the next slide, the main takeaway here is that we have a number of initiatives under the umbrella of the better bus project, whether that is bus priority or fleet and facilities, modernization, or operations processes. But among these is the bus network redesign. So I'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide. So what is a bus network redesign? It's a complete reimagining of the MBTA's bus network to better reflect the travel needs of the region and create a better experience for current and future riders. And what we're looking to achieve through that is better frequency, service that's fast and reliable and making sure that we're connecting to key destinations and creating a legible network that's simple and easy to use. So on the next slide, I am showing that a bus network redesign generally serves the same neighborhoods and streets, but it connects them in different ways to make a network that is better for riders. So on the left, sort of sample illustration, we have here, you have a lot more routes with deviations where they might be on one corridor and then they turn off to go to other corridors. You have a lot more complexity and in the end, you actually have less frequency on any single route. On the right example, this is showing a lot more direct services. It's simpler and more legible. And because the routes aren't taking these deviations to get to other places, you end up with more frequency on any single route due to those shorter routes, even though those two networks might use the same number of bus resources being buses and operators. So that's what we're hoping to achieve with a bus network redesign. Through route change, you can get better frequency, better legibility and easier to understand routes for our existing riders, but also for new or infrequent riders who might see that it's being a real barrier to understanding a bus service. On the next slide, I'm just trying to show what you can expect through a bus network redesign process. We're looking to see a more equitable network, a network that's simpler and easier to understand, more high frequency corridors, better connections to major local and regional destinations. We've heard very many folks say that our existing network dates in many cases. You can look at routes from the 40s and see the exact same routes, but that means that places that have seen a lot of development since then, whether that be Kendall Square or the Longwood Medical Area, are sometimes left out of our existing network connections. And we also want to focus on all day service with more buses in the midday, evening and weekends. And I'll just underscore on that last point, this has been part of our plan for the last two years, but with COVID and the changes to the way that people work, we think that's probably going to transform into differences in the future of work and that the peaks might be a little less peaky in the future if there continues to be some sort of some number of hybrid workforce, maybe not coming in every day through the week, but even two or three or four days per week can mean that we can reallocate some of those peak period resources into other parts of the day and have a more all day type network. On the next slide, we start getting into some of the metrics that we're going to use to score the success of our new networks. And to that end, we actually just in June added three new metrics to our service delivery policy, which is what defines how we sort of score ourselves in terms of service quality. We added three new metrics looking at equity, looking at access, and looking at competitiveness. Now in terms of equity, we'd be looking at how are we providing transit critical populations with equitable transit service.  And then similarly, how are we connecting people to the places that are most important to them? And I'm going to get into some really interesting data sources that we're using on that metric in particular. And lastly, is the MBTA a good choice for people who are making these trips? And that gets that competitiveness, you know, is a is the travel time for a transit trip competitive with what someone would be making with the travel time someone would use to make that same trip biking or walking? How much of a difference is that because often our trips are very radially oriented, which means that we can have really long travel times for some of these kind of cross town circumferential trips, you know, thinking like in Arlington to Medford or other suburbs that are close, simple to bike or drive to but very complicated in some cases to use transport. On the next slide, this gets into one of our upcoming data sources that we're using. This is the first initiative in my knowledge at the MBTA, where we've used location based services data. And what that is is cell phone data that's been anonymized that we can use to monitor no individuals. Of course, that's been anonymized but looking at what overall trip making is in the MBTA service area. And it's looking to see not just for transit trips, but all trip making whether that's walking or biking or driving. Because one of the things, you know, traditionally we do a lot of work with ridership data, but inherent in that ridership data is what your network is. And we wanted to take sort of a blank sheet approach to say, well, where do people want to go, not just where we go today. So it's a really exciting and rich data source that we've been mining. So on the next slide, you can see actually, sorry, there was one important point on the previous one if I could just go back. One other thing that's really interesting about this new location based services data is that you can tag it to a certain geography. And associated with that geography are demographics. Like I was mentioning, it's very important to us to look at our transit critical ridership. And the way we get that isn't from knowing who has a specific cell phone device because it's anonymized, so we don't actually know that. But we are able to tag it to the demographics of a particular geography. And then we can actually see how that person's travel is linked with multiple trips. So it's not just that people are only ever taking trips from their home to work or home to wherever it is that they're going. But in many cases, people are going from home to daycare and then daycare to work and then work to the grocery store. And they're chaining together those trips that might be, you know, multiple trips through multiple geographies. And the streetlight location based services data that we get is able to follow that individual and keep the demographics of that trip as we follow it around. So as we're looking at how different trips are being served by a network that we create, we're able to look at the demography of that. Because often you have people with all sorts of demographic backgrounds traveling kind of in other areas through, you know, downtown Boston, especially is often a tricky place where many of the trips in downtown Boston aren't by people who necessarily live there. So it's able to give us some better information that's really exciting for us to use and helps us to use some of these new metrics that I've been mentioning earlier. So going to the next slide, there's a lot of detail here, but it's just at a very high level talking about the data that we are using from the streetlight data and then how that gets kind of drilled down to say, okay, here are the areas of demand that we look at. And here are the connections of certain origins to destination location that create corridors.  And then lastly, we haven't quite gotten to the stage yet, but how do we turn those into specific bus routes that have starting locations and ending locations and layover locations and stops and all those other things that you need to do to create actual bus routes. So in terms of the process, we are starting with the process of creating the high frequency corridors so that we can have those lead conversations with municipalities about where we can look to create priority treatments, which can help us unlock even more corridors as we're designing these routes. But in terms of high frequency, what I mean by that is routes that look like today's route 77, where you have service that runs seven days a week. You know, minimum frequency is every 10 minutes or better, or maybe even more frequent than that during rush hours with a span of service that goes from the 5am till past midnight. So that's the type of service that we want to have more of because it's simple. You don't even need a schedule to show up often. You can just be confident that you'll show up and there will be a service there and you don't have to be tied to a specific schedule. So imagine the route 77, but more of that is what we're trying to create. At the same time, in order to create more of that, the way that we can allocate more resources to places is to have infrastructure to support it, whether that means bus priority, either bus lanes if there's right of way to support that, or in places with more tight roadways if it means transit signal priority and queue jumps at congested intersections, or even other types of investments of the bus stops where we can put parking and layover locations are also important. And then lastly, these would be presented to the public through a different type of route nomenclature so that people would know that this is a different kind of service. We haven't gotten into this detail, but my vision is to show this on if we could have it on a spider map in every subway station so that the high frequency bus network would be as legible and iconic as that spider map that shows where all the rapid transit lines go and if you can show where all the other places you can get to that are high frequency that you can expect that high quality reliable service. So that's the the decision. So on the next slide we get into the five year implementation timeline. We're here now where we're working on a draft network. The plan is to be able to share specific actual routes in the fall and have a more extensive public process. The plan is to adopt the final network in early 22 and to implement over the course of perhaps the earliest implementation could be in fall of 2022 with continued implementation. This would be our roadmap for say the next five years of where we would implement changes. The earliest changes would be more things like changes that don't require new accessible bus stops or new construction of bus priority if it's a matter of kind of changing signage and reallocating our existing buses. Those are the things that would be most likely to be implemented up front. We'd probably do kind of waves by geography routes in the west versus routes in the south at a different time just to kind of make it easier to get the signage updated rather than update all the signs overnight. And then there might be other things that do require more capital type work that implementation would come as those projects allow it. For example, we've long talked about making more transit connectivity into the Longwood Medical Area, but many of those would only really be possible with a lot more transit priority through some very congested streets or making more like transit hubs in that area. So those are the types of things that might take a little while to. On the next slide at a very high level just trying to say that you know we're all here to try to make a better rider experience and we're focused on kind of the upper right hand corner of this slide with the bus network redesign. How we need a new network that goes where people need it to go and when they need it and that's easier to understand. But this all exists in the context of other initiatives that are ongoing at the MBTA whether that's bus priority, whether that's fleet facilities, electrification of the bus fleet, etc. So I just have a couple more slides. We recognize that change will probably be hard. We can make the network better for the vast majority of current riders but to make that happen many people's trips will change and for some people it would get worse. In Houston and we use Houston as an example. One of our consultant team members is a former board member from Houston where they engaged in a similar reimagining of their bus network and they're the number of riders with all-day existing service tripled and ridership grew by 17% in the end when they implemented. But the public complaints in the five months before implementation outnumbered positives 330 to 1. So we recognize change is hard but that to truly transform the network we need to make trade-offs and we're using everything we've heard from riders to think through that. And then also just to illustrate that we have some graphics here on the map. These are actually from Miami. On the top you have kind of their pre-bus network redesign network and then below you have their post network redesign network. Above you can see that they value shorter walks to the buses. So you can see there's a lot more routes and they're a lot more closely spaced whereas the bottom network values more of those high frequency connections. They're saying that it's okay to walk a little bit farther if it means that you're walking to a high quality transit and the way you can tell is those red routes in the bottom are more of those like high frequency think like today's key bus routes type services where you can walk up and expect a bus you know pretty much any time of the day. So you can see the trade-off we're looking to make is can we get you know more high frequency even if it means that some people might have to walk farther for certain trips. So on the next slide what are our commitments? Equity first and foremost. We want truly transformational change. We want a better network for the people who ride today. We want extensive stakeholder engagement. We actually want to implement this in the near term and we want to integrate service changes with bus priority and other infrastructure to maximize benefit. But we need your help to make this happen. So on the next slide municipal partnerships are a key to success. We can only succeed at implementation where we have partnerships with municipalities that can help us advance change and those partnerships can take several forms. We need effective transit priority and congestive corridors that can mean bus lanes. It can also mean huge jumps and transit signal priority. But some of the other kind of unsung heroes of the municipal partnerships I like to call them are things like layover locations because we need a place to turn the bus around. Those five minutes at the end of the line are critical for us to maintain reliability of trip departure times. They're critical for ensuring that you know the operator can find a place for their operator break and can use the restroom somewhere. And often it's a challenge to site layover locations especially when you have like congested busy urban areas with shop owners and delivery services and parking I know can be at a premium in certain urban portions of our network. We also need bus shelters, finding places or doing construction to get accessible bus stops. And also very important we need new and upgraded garages to be able to operate the service. Many of our garages are sort of at their useful life and we're having lots of conversations on how to either upgrade those or in some cases potentially replace those just to maintain existing capacity. And then also we're having conversations about what it would take to increase our capacity to store buses so that we can you know in the context of potential future expansion. So in terms of bus network redesign, public outreach, we are sort of in the middle though today it's a little bit earlier because this was from an earlier deck so pardon that. But the plan is that we're going to have a draft network this fall which will be associated with more public outreach. We've also started having some kind of leading outreach actually today. I'm pleased we had a meeting with town manager and a number of staff from community development, economic development, the Arlington Police Department's traffic department was there to start having those conversations about partnerships in Arlington specifically and we've been having a round of outreach with many of our core municipalities for those similar conversations as well. And then implementation as I mentioned we're looking to get to implementation by approximately fall of 2022 as at least the leading start of implementation and again that will be a multi-year process. So with that I will end my presentation and I was pretty close to 10 minutes and I will ask if there are any questions. Great thank you Mr. Lay and I will turn to the board for questions or comments. Mr. Heard. Thank you and thank you for the presentation. It's I think change can be hard but done in the right way can certainly lead to improvements. We've people in Arlington definitely use the bus system. They value the bus system and will have a lot of input from both town staff, town leaders and residents as to what we could do to increase efficiency of the bus systems. We've we have already taken steps with the bus rapid transit program that we went through to move towards bus prioritization that that's been very well received and so I look forward to what if any suggestions will come out of that. I guess the good thing in Arlington is all our routes are already for the most part on some of our more centralized thoroughfares so you should I don't anticipate there'll be major changes but I am excited to see what we can come up with and it's good to hear that you'll be looking for input and public engagement and partnerships in order to because every ministry municipality is different and changes that work in one municipality might not work well for another one so we'll be happy to be part of the process. I know Mr. Dickens will be intricately involved and we'll have many discussions with you I'm sure about what changes we need and what routes we need to keep. Just one question if you know and I assume just in the COVID era that ridership is quite down as far as the what weight of the ridership data is that based on pre-COVID numbers or is it going to be more is it current ridership data and I only ask because the one thing that we've been blessed with in Arlington is a very careful and conscientious residence in light of the pandemic and whereas you know we had very we had a lot of ridership before COVID you know I'm sure in Arlington it's far down because people are just cautious about their exposure so is it going to be both pre-COVID numbers versus current numbers or just current numbers? That's a very fair question so thanks for bringing that up so when I've been mentioning the location-based services cell phone data that we're using to drive a lot of the planning for the network that's all using pre-COVID data we're not comfortable that if we were to use today's numbers that those are necessarily representative of what the long-term plans are so the one thing that it's also interesting is that we're trying to create a process that's replicable so that say in five years or you know some point in the future we could use this process again to try to see what gaps are to account for any you know changes in the future of work because there's a lot of questions as to you know how much of the changes are going to turn out to be permanent but we just don't have a crystal ball to show that right now but we want to be able to do something that's replicable and then also something that might acknowledge you know developments that we know are already in the pipeline because we're basing it on 2019 data like or even developments that have come online in the last two years like that's not in the data so again we're using pre-COVID data but we want to do something that's replicable so that we can continue to update and look for you know gaps where you know maybe the transit system isn't serving a large amount of trip making well. Thank you and thank you for the presentation. Thank you Mr. Hurd, Mr. Diggins. Thank you Mr. Chair and Melissa it is so delightful to see you you know so Melissa I've known Melissa since the beginning of the Ryder Riverside Committee in several capacities seeing that the MBTA and CTPS right? Central Transportation Planning Staff? No just MBTA. Just MBTA okay you know so and she's just been so helpful to the Ryder Riverside Committee in helping us understand a lot about service delivery and I'll say it's because of knowing how involved you've been with service delivery that is the only reason I'm a little skeptical about the bus design thing because because I know all that went into making you know our current system work as well as does because it's a complicated system because our road network is complicated and then on top of that you have all these cars and the buses work really well if there aren't any cars there and I think whatever redesign we do if we don't somehow minimize the cars we're going to still have bus bunching and other problems that affect service so I think it's going to be incumbent upon a lot of us in the very municipalities to do what we can to get those cars off the road to emphasize the sustainable aspect of not having so many single occupancy vehicles and maybe working on car sharing so we're going to have to come at this from multiple angles so and the equity part is going to be a little challenging because it'll be interesting to see if those who suffer a less convenient right for lack of a better word or or those who you said would would find that things are a little worse mean if they don't fall into a certain category that then becomes problematic so so you certainly have um you slash we have our work cut out for us in and and with respect to that bus garage I don't know if any whatever told you about my idea for the bus garage I kind of campaigned on it would be an origin center and it'd be below with a big tower of opportunity and and innovation on top of which can also help with some of our housing and and financial base and and I could go on but I'm not because we have a very long agenda and I know I have a lot of access to you but thank you so much for coming it really has been a pleasure seeing you listening to you thank you mr. Diggins uh mr. Helmuth thank you thank you for a great presentation um following one of the points that my colleague mr. Diggins made I kind of have a bigger picture question for you um I fully appreciate and applaud that you're starting places is equity and the writers and the people writing the system now and making sure that they have an optimal experience to get where they want to go I think that's your mission but another lens to look at transit is is sustainability and you know the UN's devastating report on the climate change that just came out in the last 24 hours or so you know reminded us all that we're running out of time so we know that for lots of reasons not just you know including helping the buses run better but we need to reduce the number of single car trips particularly and so my my question is when the MBTA sets its metrics and sets its goals does it also to what extent does it look at um increasing ridership and yes including the people who write now but people who aren't writing people who would ride if there were better transit to where they needed to go and um would the MBTA even go so far as to say how many car trips can can we replace and you know I know that that's some of that is structural some of that is is your charge from the legislature and from the government so um yeah but I'm curious to what extent that perspective informs the work that you do the goals that you set and the metrics by which you measure yourselves for this kind of program those are some uh really interesting questions and while like transitioning uh doing mode's shift isn't explicitly a goal I think that the the way that we're going about this by looking at all trip making which does include include you know general auto motorist trips as well and trying to say you know can be improved our competitiveness because oftentimes those motorists are driving because the transit trip is truly terrible and it really is their best option and you you can't expect someone to take like three buses and two transfers to get you know just to cross town on what's a very simple drive so I think um I think we can get at what you're getting at even though that's not explicitly one of the things that we're we're looking at great thank you yeah thank you I appreciate that and I you know I noted that it's a side effect it's a good one that in Houston you know ridership went up and I think this is probably something that municipal leaders who want to act locally on climate and in transit probably need to be in contact with our state leaders to say that maybe this can be part of the MBT's job to you know to provide some type top-down guidance guidance about that how we think about transit from both ends both from serving the riders but also in in growing that that mode shift which is a new term I've learned and I'm not any danger of being uh being Len Diggins but I'm glad to learn new transit terms so thank you no further no further questions thanks again thank you Mr. Helmuth and Mrs. Mahan um thank you Mr. Chair um I don't know if we need to have a move receipt or so that would be great yes okay and then I'm gonna try to be brief and if there are any hopefully of my three or four questions that there's a lot of information about if we could as a board get that further on down the road um and the first one may not really but I think it might come under public hearings and gathering information um I know that labor workforce development along with the DOT Department of Transportation recently there was a really quick study I think it was only like six months came out with traffic data related to each of their pervues workforce development around the hybrid remote model and DOT in terms of scheduling projects on the state's highways and other state owned property and what they came out with is that they're seeing a trend that especially with remote hybrid working that Monday Friday is more turning into a lighter day tell some people coming out of Boston but believe it or not and the Tuesday Wednesday the ones that the roads are really crowded parking lot even pre-covid so I would just ask and this may already be being considered considered that when we talk about uh buses I would not know what we want to see the same situation where whatever the routes are Monday and Friday you can get on there you feel real safe because you know there's three roads before there's another person and then if what the initial modeling and it is brand new there's only one study that's come out but it seems like it's going to bear out Tuesday Wednesday Thursday more cars in the road which equates to also Tuesday Wednesday third Thursday more riders on the tee so you all have to study that um and figure it out but that would be one of my uh adding a public participation sort of thing and then um I'll keep going okay the next question or questions I want to have the caveat I am not trying to be get brownie points and apples for my teachers with the planning and community development director as well as our energy manager but our next discussion is on Arlington's net zero action plan and I only I wouldn't ask these questions but on your presentation on slide 10 um it's sort of superficially um discussed um but then on slide 11 it's more explicitly discussed so I have two maybe three questions if you know if not um or maybe it's still in discussion um what the board is going to discuss amongst many other things um are is adopting a zero emission municipal fleet and charging infrastructure plan no later than there's more boards to it no later than 2030 do you know has the MBTA done that or something similar to it maybe it's not 2030 I know we do have folks who are looking at uh future bus fleets and specifically adoption of electric buses I don't know the exact time frame but I'd be happy to get Scott Hamway or Bill Wolfgang to communicate to you what those time frames are we have we have a fleet and facilities plan that has dates and estimates but I just I'm not familiar with that okay if you could just find out I know pretty much not pretty much nationally but trending nationally is is discussing this by 2050 Arlington's a little more uh trying to be upfront and leading with the 2030 so if you could find out that question if you're 2030 2050 for zero emissions um for your fleet not municipal and other you know dial ride things like that and then my second question would be and again referencing the um pages 10 and 11 I would be interested as well as with my colleagues um and perhaps this can come through our colleague Mr. Dagan Dagan's getting the information getting back to us but um on that same sort of line of questioning um you do say fleet and facilities we need to replace old buses and you know kind of the question that I'm asking about zero emissions for your fleet and then when I look at um the implementation timeline five years which brings you to 2026 I don't really see anything in there unless um I don't see there anything in there about that particular area so my question would be is it in there but it's another facet of the MBTA in a different committee and consultant that's discussing that or does it mean it's not in up until 2026 it's going to be some time after so those would be my questions so if you want to take a hit it any of them or if you'd rather just go back and make sure to get all the information I'm happy with that and thank you I I only ask this because I'm brand new to ollington's net zero uh committee believe it or not unlike tonight I try to say next to nothing because they're all the professionals and that they've been doing this and know what inside it out so um I'm taking a little bit of knowledge that I sat and listening and from them and you did it here so thank you miss delay and thanks for those comments I'm happy to tackle that last one in particular with a little bit but just at a very high level you know this is the bus network redesign so we're looking at route changes that we can implement over the next five years there are other people who are working on a separate initiative looking at bus fleet and bus facilities that's like a 30-year plan because you know life cycles of buses are you know 12 years and life cycles of garages are like 30 years and you know getting all those kind of spaced out appropriately so that you have swap space we can shift buses as you're doing construction in one garage and moving to the next one that's a decades long process uh so you know this is interfacing with that project and it's influenced by the fleet facilities project but it's totally separate in terms of like they're on a very different time scale than we are you know I totally understand that that's the court reporter me it's kind of like if you put something in the document you've now opened that door so I guess what I would say is if you're going to make this presentation I mean I truly wanted for the the knowledge and information I'm not saying other people won't you may want to rewrite that or since it's not in your 2026 plan of what you oversee um you may not want to put it in there because I know as my interest unstable um somebody's going to ask me a question if it's in there like that though actually they're going to ask me that question even if it's not there that's why you put it there because people are like oh bus network redesigns like everybody is asking about that so I definitely appreciate that question but then also one of the first questions you also had was about the um days of the week which is actually really interesting because during COVID our busiest day has been Friday of all things so even though you know employment wise we see that long-term people are thinking about coming in three days a week and maybe working from home on Monday Friday that's kind of what we've heard from some of our surveys of employers in the Boston area that we've been conducting or that our office of performance management and innovation has been conducting but like I said work trips aren't necessarily all the trips and we find that people are more likely to make other types of trips and again our highest ridership day is on Friday but and also really interesting if you look at our ridership by time of day it's very very stable on weekends so you know people still need to you know do their grocery shopping and do those other things and making all those other types of trips so even though work commutes are way down right now we still see a lot of those off-peak trips are still being made with the same frequency that they were made beforehand so which underscores our interest in creating sort of an all-day seven-day a week maybe Saturday and Sunday won't be exactly as crowded or as frequent as Monday through Friday but but a bit more you know our Sunday frequencies are often far less frequent than even Saturdays and other days the week so we want to make a network that people can feel confident that you know they can use the transit service on weekends that they don't need to go out and buy a car to do those errands or that they don't have to go out and buy a second car to do those errands in their household so that's the type of things that we're looking to do thank you mr. delay and thank you mr. chairman thank you mrs. mohan I just have a couple of comments but before we do that could I have a second for mrs. mohan's motion to receive thank you mr. diggins and thank you for the presentation tonight one question I have and I think it's great to have the better bus project and you have a time frame spelled out here but what about needs or demands that you're going to identify in a shorter term and and what I'm thinking specifically is the green line is going to be extended to Tufts very soon the 80 bus leaves Arlington center goes right down Boston I haven't met for that seems to me to be a the type of corridor that is once the green line opens to extends to Tufts that there would be a lot of demand for particularly people from this area going to the north station area even to the airport so how is this project being done with just other in conjunction with looking at other needs of the system and I'm hoping that where demand is going to come up through the green line extension that it doesn't have to wait to go through this full process for sure and especially if we're talking about implementation of the earliest items in fall of 2022 that's very close to the GLX's opening you know in early 22 at least to the tough Medford Tufts portion of the line and and if I could also add one bit of context there had been some proposed changes to the MBK bus services that had been um recommended as part of the forging ahead process from last last spring that I'm sure many are aware of it was actually proposing elimination outright of the 80 actually that proposal once we got the CARES Act 2 funding had been eliminated and any future decisions about what the 80 or maybe a shortened version of the 80 that wasn't duplicating so much of the green line extension any of those future discussions were sort of pushed to this process the bus network redesign to say let's not just have a major reaction now that we have the CARES Act 2 funding so that we can be more deliberate have a more inclusive public process and think about how best to connect areas to the green line extension so we don't have all the roots identified yet but certainly we are aware of the green line extension opening and we'll be recommending changes that can complement that green line extension network and just for other and another example of integration is that there is a silver line extension process that's ongoing that we're also looking to integrate with so we're keeping an ear to the ground on a number of different transportation projects and we're hoping that this will kind of be conscious of all those other changes. Now that's great thank you and this certainly is more optimistic than what we saw in the forging ahead presentations earlier that there's a big concern with a number of the changes that were proposed for Arlington so I want to thank you for the presentation I also just want to add one final thing not a question just a comment good luck on access to the to the Longwood Medical Area because that has been an issue for ages getting from Cambridge to Longwood without having to go downtown and out has always been a challenge so best of luck with that. On a motion to receive from Mrs. Mahan seconded by Mr. Diggins attorneyheim. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmut. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Yes. Great. Thank you very much Mr. DeLay. I look forward to working with you and the tea throughout the fall. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Sure. Okay. So I just want to have an announcement not doing as great as I had hoped on the agenda this evening for timing so what's just for people who are watching people who may be in the waiting room we're going to take item five now after item five I'm going to ask if the board will take item 17 and 18 out of order that's the welcome to Dr. Holman and the AHS building project but right now let's move on to the to the net zero action plan. Item five can Pruitt Energy Manager and Jenny Wright Director of Planning and Community Development. Good evening Ms. Wright. Good evening Mr. Pruitt. Good evening. Good evening. We have a PowerPoint presentation for this evening. Great. And do we have that? Ms. Yep. Here we go. Mr. Chappell. Thank you. Great. Well I'm going to take a brief amount of time just to give you an introduction to the Arlington net zero action plan which many of you it sounds like are very familiar with based on the last conversation which is very exciting. Love all the references to a clean future. So if you could go to the next slide it's no secret that Arlington has a long history of greenhouse gas mitigation efforts through a variety of initiatives plans campaigns etc. And the most recent of them actually originated with the select board when in 2018 you authorized joining the Metro Mayors Coalition and committed to net zero by 2050 which led to the creation of the clean energy future committee which Diane Mahan now serves on and previously Dan Dunn had served on and helped us to lead into the development of the net zero action plan which obviously we're here to talk about tonight. One important measure effort that relates to our mitigation efforts is the hiring of a clean energy manager which initially was I believe a regional energy manager so it was somebody who covered multiple communities but the great efforts that were happening in Arlington really required a full-time individual to do the work and so the town invested in the creation of that full-time position and of course that is can prove it today. And the last of them or the another more recent thing aside from whatever happens tonight with the net zero action plan is that recently the town filed a home rule petition to ramp up decarbonization in new and substantially rehabbed buildings related to the reduction of fossil fuels in those buildings. So I think that that's a really great example of the kind of effort that we're talking about and you know I think with with any plan but particularly this one this one requires three things the first of them is will it's going to take a very strong will in order to accomplish a lot of the goals in this plan. You'll see things in the plan that are obviously very centrally all about Arlington but a number of other things relate to stronger will that go well beyond the town and so that leads to the second item which is advocacy. We're going to have a lot of advocacy efforts to leverage what we're doing here in Arlington but to encourage it happening beyond. And then the next thing is partnerships you can go to the next slide thank you and the partnerships relate back to in many ways the Clean Energy Future Committee and many of the people who serve on this committee including the smiling faces on the screen. There are people who have relationships with many organizations in the community statewide organizations are working collaboratively with other municipalities working with our legislative delegation the list goes on in terms of leveraging the talent and the partnerships to make everything happen. And if you go to the next slide that led to the pushing forward with the Net Zero Action Plan project which was funded by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and a town match of time and resources. We also received technical technical support from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council MAPC and when we received the funding it was actually to do two things the first one is to was to develop a net zero playbook which essentially is this great compendium an online actually available online that showcases the various types of best practices and ideas around net zero. The second part to it was to work with Arlington, Natick and Melrose to develop these more specific and prescriptive plans into the future which is what we did and it started in June of 2019 and it was completed back in February. Next slide please. So the net zero action plan had a lot of engagement despite the fact that most of it took place during the pandemic in the last year. We focused really as closely as we could on centering equity in this planning process. We also conducted a survey. We held a net zero virtual open house in November which was a really interesting interactive process and we made a lot of presentations along the way which was not just talking to people but talking with people about a lot of the ideas that ended up evolving and became the crux of this plan. So that included various groups in town as well as the the traditional town bodies. Next slide please. And so the plan itself has essentially four components. The first is really inspirational and sort of aspirational I would say and a little bit creative and fun. That's the letter from the future which is how we hope it will be in the future in 2050 of course. Then it's getting to net zero which talks about the background of the plan and the overarching goals. The net zero action roadmap is really the the meat of the planning document which outlines 31 greenhouse gas mitigation measures that are based off of some really great data and research that we're planning to update on an ongoing ongoing basis in the future. And then lastly some very specific implementation tables that provide key details on all of the measures that are outlined in the roadmap. So with that I'm going to hand it over to Ken who is going to outline a little bit more about that foundational data component as well as the plan itself. Thank you. Thanks so much. What a great setup Jenny for where we've been and where we are now. And just a little bit more about that first of all it's a delight to be speaking to the select board tonight. So we we did as part of this project we completed a greenhouse gas inventory with data from calendar year 2017. So this represents greenhouse gas emissions in the year 2017 from Arlington. Total of 284,078 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. It really was most you know almost entirely carbon dioxide but some methane, some nitrous oxide and then all normalized back to a carbon dioxide equivalent that translates to a bit more than six tons of CO2 equivalent emissions in that one year from every single resident of Arlington. It's quite a bit of greenhouse gases are emitted from a variety of sources and I'll mention what they were. As you can see on the left stationary energy which was almost 62% of greenhouse gas emissions in Arlington refers almost exclusively to buildings so heating and electricity for buildings. Whereas transportation is almost 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. You see this through you know the vast majority of Massachusetts communities. It's buildings and transportation that are emitting the greenhouse gases of note. On the right side you can see a little bit of a further breakdown. Residential buildings account for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions with commercial and industrial quite a bit smaller and then on transportation it's almost it's almost all passenger vehicles causing the transportation related emissions and that's you know mostly gasoline with some with some diesel in there as well. We're going to update this inventory periodically. Fortunately the tool that we developed well it was really MAPC that developed it with consultation with Arlington, Natick and Milrose is easy enough that we can actually update it ourselves in-house. We don't have to hire consultants each time we want to update our greenhouse gas inventory. So we want to do that at least once every five years. More frequent than that might not make sense because there's some variation year-to-year emissions. But next slide please. So the plan is broken down into three sections and these are really essentially all greenhouse gas emissions from the town coming from buildings, coming from mobility or transportation and our energy supply is the third which is primarily focused on electricity but well I won't say primarily it's but it's focused on electricity and heating fuels. The goal of this plan is to get us on a path to net zero. There was discussion about whether the 31 measures in this plan by themselves would actually eliminate greenhouse gases by 2050 and the Clean Energy Future Committee is an amazing committee of terrific people with a tremendous amount of talent and insight but we did the best we could and it'll only get us so far because we will need new technologies, we'll need reductions in cost for certain technologies, we'll need new federal and state laws really for any community to get to net zero but I think Arlington is is quite a bit out front with this plan and we are going to be well on our way to net zero by implementing these 31 measures. Next slide please. So this this slide is key it gives the a framework for understanding everything in the plan essentially certain there's essentially three pillars to reducing greenhouse gas emissions down to net zero. One is to maximize energy efficiency especially of buildings make them as insulated as possible as airtight as possible so that they don't need that much energy to to be cooled and heated and for plug loads and lights. The next pillar is to electrify everything. Director Rape mentioned the home rule petition that we have in front of the legislature at present to where we're requesting the ability to restrict fossil fuel heating in new buildings and major construction that goes back to this key pillar. We want all energy use in town to be through through electricity and the reason that's so important is we are steadily greening the grid. We will get to a point where all electricity is carbon-free. It's almost 50% carbon-free right now and it is getting that's increasing by 2% per year based on the next generation roadmap bill signed into law by the governor in March. That's going to increase to 3% per year starting in 2025 so our grid is greening in general for everyone in Massachusetts but especially in Arlington because we have Arlington community electricity you see the acronym ACE there. Our local electricity program adds an additional 11% for everyone of renewable energy to the electricity supply for homeowners and businesses and then on top of that Arlington residents and small businesses can opt up to either 50% or even 100% clean electricity. Quick advertisement there go to acce.arlingtonma.gov and it will take you less than five minutes to sign up to for 50 or 100% clean electricity and again the importance of electrifying everything and supplying that electricity with clean electricity is paramount. Okay and so if you keep those three pillars in mind essentially any measure in the net zero plan will make sense and fall into those categories. So next slide please. I mentioned there are 31 measures in the plan mostly in buildings followed by mobility followed by energy. We paid so much attention to buildings because 62% of our greenhouse gas emissions impact come from buildings 36% from transportation and then our clean energy supply measures come in last but even though they're few in number they're critically important because we have to green our electricity supply. Next slide please and I believe this is actually the last slide my apologies for there being so many words on the same slide but you know a director rate mentions what it's going to take to implement the plan and she mentioned she mentioned will and advocacy and partnerships and as we discussed within the CEFC finalizing this plan that was actually the easy part the hard part is implementing the plan and so there's no way we could undertake or even initiate 31 measures in any given year so the clean energy future committee selected 10 measures to initiate this year leaving the remaining 21 measures for subsequent years. Three of those measures at the top are four of what we're calling the electrify Arlington campaign which is a campaign and accompanying website and promotion of EVs. You won't be surprised to that we're talking about electrification as a measure to implement given the importance of electrification in the net zero plan itself as I mentioned the idea here is that this the concept of electrification is new to most people even if it's not new executing on it is fairly complex so we want to have a website that's one stop shopping with clear information for everyone who wants it as well as in terms of the campaign we want to train up local volunteers to have basic knowledge on electrification and you can kind of act as a concierge for a homeowner who wants to understand the basics of what to do and get part of the way there before being handed off to a true expert or in fact an installer of heat pumps or solar or that or that type of thing similarly electric vehicles are here they're here to stay but they're still new to most people so we want to have the really clear good information and people who can help disseminate that information so this is kind of similar to the heat smart campaign that we ran in 2019 except much bigger we hope in over a long longer time period the fourth measure is to advocate for a net zero stretch energy code at the state level it's something that that we're already doing fortunately it was made part of the next generation climate roadmap bill passed by the legislature that I mentioned earlier and so that code is under development we simply need advocates and municipalities simply need to make sure that it is truly a net zero code and not something watered down that doesn't doesn't get there we decided to study the feasibility of commercial property assessed clean energy or sea pace something that we're now doing within our within the department of planning and community development it's essentially a finance financing mechanism for expensive energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades at commercial properties we decided to continue and expand participation in the green communities program and similar programs we're already of course a green community and participating in the green communities program but as the state takes more and more decisive action against climate change we think and have already seen that there will be more and more grant programs available and technical assistance programs for communities that want to lead on climate as Arlington has for so long the seventh measure is to support implementation of connect Arlington I think I think this board voted to endorse that plan at its last meeting what's even much much better than driving an electric vehicle is to make your trip by foot or bicycle or on mass transit and so the the top mobility recommendation coming out of the clean energy future committee is to robustly support implementation of the connect Arlington sustainable transportation plan the eighth measure was to adopt a zero emissions municipal fleet policy or plan as Miss Mahan mentioned and that is something that we are starting to look at other communities are looking at that some some some municipal fleet vehicles are easy to electrify we've already done that with several others are harder especially police cruisers that are running three shifts there's no time to park them and charge them for example but I am pleased to say as I think many of you know that we will be adding two fully electric buses to the Arlington public school fleet over the next 12 months through a couple of grants that our department has won and so two out of 12 will be electric and we'll we're not not going to look back going to keep heading in that direction hopefully supported by grant funding the ninth measure to advocate for improved utility rates for EV charging this is kind of an esoteric measure that I'll basically just say the the electricity cost for charging electric vehicles rapidly through what's known as DC fast charging can be prohibitively expensive with ever sources current rates and so we are advocating for those rates to be modified specifically for EV charging at that DC fast level and finally the a goal that we are starting to work on now is this goal of increasing the Arlington community electricity or a default rate of renewable electricity to 100 by 2030 so you wouldn't need to opt up to 100 you would be at 100 automatically by 2030 it's a challenge we're looking at it the town manager has been a real leader on the ACE program and if anyone can help us figure it out I'm sure he can so these 10 measures again are just the start we're going to evaluate priorities annually the CEFC will and decide which measures to continue which we've essentially completed which to delay and then perhaps every five years we'll look at the whole plan and decide if we essentially need a new plan sort of a major upgrade as I mentioned earlier there will need to be changes in technology changes in state and federal law decrease in cost of some of the technologies for Arlington to truly reach net zero and I think we'll need to update the plan periodically to capture those changes in laws and technology and cost and with that why don't I stop and see if you have questions great thank you Mr. Pruitt I'll start with the board with Mrs. Mahan excuse me thank you Mr. Chair and surprisingly enough I'm really not going to have any questions only because I do have the opportunity and benefit of sitting on the clean energy future committee with Ms. Ray and Mr. Pruitt and a whole bunch of other groups mothers out front and I do want to put a shout out for Daniel Amstutz who I'm always amazed by how much we work him every time we turn around I mean I think I see him not even joking at meetings in zoom more than my husband because he's in transportation he's in the clean energy futures committee he's at the select board meeting so with that I will just make a motion to receive and leave it to my colleagues for any questions a follow-up they might have thank you Mrs. Mahan Mr. Chapellein yeah Mr. Chair if you don't mind we were hoping the board would consider a motion of endorsement tonight like the connect Arlington plan if Mrs. Mahan would be willing to consider no move to endorse I was just know what it is that for me when I see that someone's looking for something more than receipt and it's been on previous wording when it says for approval that means you just don't want the receipt so just not that anyone has to do that but so no problem move to endorse thank you okay thank you Mrs. Mahan Mr. Diggins I will happily second it and and I am thrilled to see any moment straight and Mr. Perot here I'm with us you know that is surprised me I have the same tone as I did with Ms. Delay because I was surprised about I was expecting you to but it's great to see you and yeah this is a you packed a lot in the 30 pages I mean and so I'm really impressed and I like what I see and I read and I feel as if the select board has its marching orders with respect to a lot of stuff that can be done with buildings you know I think it's an opportunity for us to work with the ARB and to maybe get some zoning articles in some upcoming town meetings so if not the select board then certainly some people in town that I associate with me in fact yesterday at one of the meeting in the box meetings you know so if they're listening so I think we have a lot to work with here in and can accomplish some things with respect to that letter in the beginning I liked it and if I may predict you know to the governors from Arlington would be Cindy Freeman and maybe Sean Garber Lee or David Swanson you know just just just putting that out there and so something else I might suggest that we think about is that there's this transportation climate initiative that of the state I'm pretty sure it's going to join and that will perhaps give us some funding for some things that we can do in transportation so that may be be some funds available to us hopefully in the next year or two so just want to put that out there and also I think we're going to discuss of the leads on to the meetings me how we're going to meet potentially hybrid meetings and so I'd like maybe someone to think about the how how energy is expended me we have a lot of hypotheses or our thoughts about me what's more efficient me but it'd be good to have back that up with something so maybe calling on you Mr. Pruitt for some advice about there or maybe someone that you can point us to for some insights about that and and among the lines of things that maybe you'll do later I thought CES for the one about neighborhoods neighborhood heat pumps was exciting and what I like about that is that it gives another hook into community engagement because I think one of the best ways to get people to do civic engagement is not to say you should do civic engagement because well it's a good thing to do but have them kind of engage with each other meeting and almost clandestinely be do the civic engagement thing and I think that's a way that would benefit the environment and the community so I'm going to stop there and just end with there was on page 10 there's a letter on page 10 another letter where it was almost as if it was written by me because the person talked about connecting autonomous vehicles I just want to say it wasn't me but I really like that idea I think it has a lot of potential so want to work on that so thank you once again. Thank you Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmick. Thank you I echo my colleagues appreciation to the human clean energy futures committee in the department of funding community development for this this outstanding work it's a terrific report and and thank you Mr. Pruitt for the shout out to to ace I'm going to do another one ace.allentonmath.gov I have to say when when my household signed up for the 100% renewable it was really quick it was really easy it was also not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be and I would encourage everybody to go take a look at that nothing you can do at ace.allentonmath.gov is request a lot sign to share the word and the opportunity with your neighbors and help us get the word out about something that we all can do individually or many of us can do individually to act locally and like to act individually because that's clearly it as as Mr. Pruitt explained so well a big part of the solution so thank you again for this lens right these are our marching orders Ms. Rates right that this will require considerable will I would add that it will also can require foresight it will require us to think long and that's really hard to do as a society and in in government because there are so many short-term considerations and things but again as I mentioned earlier in the news right now the UN's climate change experts are telling us the world is on fire and you know the pandemic has culminated our intention but the climate is still an emergency this is the generational challenge and I'm really excited at Arlington's leadership and I'm excited to have this roadmap and these toolkits to do our part and I especially excited to be part of a select board and then the town administration that is absolutely committed to doing that to making some hard choices making some long-term investments that are essential to our survival into the world being the world that we want it to be for future generations so so thank you all for that thank you Mr. Helmuth Mr. Hurd thank you and again I echo my colleagues comments and thank you for the presentation I also didn't see a news report today that said that climate change is actually more dangerous and catastrophic than previously thought where as we knew that it was a catastrophic end it's the thought that it's more dangerous than we knew is really scary and essentially the window to fraction is closing and so we're lucky to live in a municipality a state that recognizes this and has done really incredible efforts to fight climate change but there's a lot of work to be done and I think this plan addresses that and I'm happy to endorse it thank you Mr. Hurd and I'm also happy to endorse this plan with my colleagues I want to thank you both for all the work that that you've done and I do want to commend you as well Mr. Pruitt for the product placement and we may have to work in getting a banner across some of our presentations but well said and placed in there very nicely so I thank you for that with a motion to endorse by Mrs. Mahan and a second by Mr. Diggins. Attorney Heim. Hurd? Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helman. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. It's your unanimous vote. Great thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thanks so much good evening. Okay good evening and good night. All right so as I said earlier I'd like to take items 17 and 18 out of order. Item 17 is a welcome to Dr. Elizabeth Homan the new superintendent of the Arlington Public Schools and then we will follow that with the Arlington High School Building Project presentation. Dr. Homan good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Yeah sorry about the delay here in getting to you. No worries. I want to welcome you officially to Arlington we had the pleasure of meeting at the reception at Town Hall recently and you started on July 1 and we're really looking forward to to your leadership with the with the schools and and working with you going forward so if you have a few words to say and I guess before I turn it over to you what better person to hit the ground running than someone who's completed multiple marathons across the country so thank you for being here with us tonight and best of luck in your new position superintendent. Thank you. Yes I'm not doing a whole lot of marathoning right these days but yes we have certainly hit the ground running in the school district. I have been in the now officially for a month and about seven days and we've been very busy we're planning for the fall return and making sure that all of our students get back to school safe and I'm very much looking forward this week to having some updates for families on what that might look like. I will say I've been receiving such a warm welcome in Arlington and it's been very clear to me since I got here that I am now working in a very innovative and progressive community as evidenced by the presentation we just saw and the one that we're about to see and that's really exciting for me and it's obviously also a community that's very dedicated to education. I've had the opportunity to meet with families in several listening sessions this summer already with staff in some listening sessions and the next part which I'm probably the most excited about is getting into some classrooms and meeting all of the kids so that will be my focus for the first month or so of school is getting out into our schools and into the classrooms with principals and other leaders to see what's going on in instruction. I have an entry plan that is very focused on doing a lot of listening over the next few months. I will report to the school committee on the findings of that entry plan in January and I'm really looking forward to the start of the school year and getting all of our kids back into school full time in person as safely as possible. That's really what we're sort of laser focused on right now. It's been very nice to meet most of you. I've had the opportunity to meet most of you and if I haven't yet we have something on the books and I'm very happy to be here in Arlington. It's clearly an excellent fit for me and my values and it's been wonderful to be meeting folks and collaborating with our incredibly intelligent teams both on the school side and on the town side. Great. Thank you very much. I'll just turn it to the board for any brief comments. Mr. Helmut. It was great to meet you at the reception. Really glad to have you and thank you again for coming to Arlington. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. Thank you Mr. Chair and I wasn't able to get to the reception but you were nice enough to meet me for coffee last Tuesday morning and it was a really good conversation and I am still buzzy for the fact that you see more potential in youth civic engagement than I do. I'm very hopeful about it but I tend to be pragmatic about these things at least I think I am but you see more potential there and that just drives me to want to do it more. Thank you for being our superintendent and being a part of Arlington. Thank you Mr. Diggins. Mr. Hurd. Thank you. Thank you Dr. I also got an opportunity to meet you at the reception and it was great to get to talk to you for a little bit. I have as I mentioned to you an incoming first grader and third grader at Dowling. So we're good memory. So we're excited and you know like I said we've been really thankful and appreciative to all the efforts so far from the Arlington Public School system in a really trying time and I did enjoy talking with you and hearing some of your ideas and your energy for the job. So I look forward to it. It's going to be a difficult first few years which you know but I certainly think you're up to the task and look forward to working with you. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Hurd. Mrs. Mahan. Hello Dr. Holman or when we meet Liz I always have a hollow correspondence. Call me Liz. Call me Liz but definitely have the credentials and education that Arlington is so grateful for.  I can't remember. Is it I'd like to both committees and boards think about in like 23-24 putting aside anytime we have a debt exclusion or override maybe once a year or maybe once every two years we have some sort of meeting or whatever is a good word to call it because one of the things that I've seen in the town is there's a townside in the school site and I'd like to see that mesh more. I'm not looking for a new word that we all fall under but I think that would be helpful to me and then the other thing I would say just as a word of advice but you certainly have the endurance and the expertise the credentials. Whether any decision big or small I would say something you already know you have a great resource within the school committee and its members I know if you don't know it you're going to do your homework and do diligence and check up one more time again and I would just say once you make that decision not that you ever would but what's always been successful to me is yes you keep an open mind but you see that decision out you know you kind of tweak it along the way so I'm really excited that you're here I'm super stoked except for we didn't get to see FASCO that's the next phase the tours that that were offered and I know we're going to talk that in in the next agenda item so welcome to Allington I look so forward to working with you working for you I'm here as a resource and hopefully see you soon in the near future. Thank you. Thank you Mrs. Mahan okay and I'm going to move right on to item 18 which is the AHS building project presentation to be led by Jeff Thielman the chair of the AHS building committee just before I turn it over to you Jeff I do want to thank you for setting up the tour but four out of four of us got to see the new high school last weekend it's very exciting and you know we'll have some comments on it after that but I want to turn the floor over you and really look forward to the presentation tonight. Thanks very much Steve thanks to the board for inviting the building committee to tonight's presentation as I you already heard you were here with Dr. Holman Jim Burroughs from Skanska is here Lori Coles from HMFH architectural firm Jim Burroughs represents the owner's project manager we have a slide presentation I'm going to run through it I want to thank all of you or four of you for taking the time to visit the high school we are very proud of what we're building with the money of the taxpayers and we'll make it available to other people and Mr. Diggins if you want to visit just email me and we'll make that we'll make a visit happen with Jim Burroughs and the staff so I hope you all had a great tour I heard good things about it I heard several other people in the town leadership are there so let's get to it the building committee I guess if you go to the next slide there you go the building committee is pleased to report that the project is on budget and basically on schedule the total cost is two hundred eighty nine point eight million dollars with approximately eighty four point six million coming from the Massachusetts school building authority or the MSBA the school is designed as all of you know for seventeen hundred and fifty five students but it can serve more than that if necessary I want to make a special note about the current grant amount from the MSBA after the town locked in lower construction costs from strong bids the MSBA lowered its grant accordingly the MSB also made adjustments based on some design changes that we approved as a committee and the grant is reduced by one point about one point four million dollars our bid savings are about a half a million dollars for an overall town cost increased of eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars and this could be lower if we don't need to spend all of the project budget so let's go to the next slide we have many partners in the project some of whom are here tonight HMFH architect Skanska the MSBA and then our contractor can safely construct as you can see from the this next slide the process started in 2016 and it will continue until the building is completed in 2024 with final site work including fields and lights scheduled for the spring of 2025 the opening of phase one which is the science technology engineering art mathematics wing the wing you all walked through last week and the performing art swings will be right after the February break of 2022 which is not that far away with the auditorium being ready for students in early April of 2022 the next slide please the detailed design phase of the project began in 2019 and during this phase the building committee with guidance from the design team refined and finalized the building and site design you go to the next slide you'll see the the final design of the mass at entrance and if you go to the next slide slide you'll see the final design of the athletic field entrance behind the school and the next slide I just want to touch on value engineering we are very mindful as a committee we have a diverse committee of people of many different perspectives from all over the community and from town government we are charged with doing value engineering throughout the project and you know always looking for ways to save the taxpayers both state taxpayers and local taxpayers money as per the design process multiple estimates were performed and compared to the budget value engineering is the process of making modifications to the original design in order to meet the budget while maintaining our educational goals and priorities at various points in time items were moved from the project and later when some bids came back lower than anticipated we were able to add some items back at the next slide this gives you an overview of our value engineering works several items the artificial turf lighting the minimum bikeway ramp and the mobile drive traffic light remain in the project additionally in response to COVID-19 the building committee voted to add HVAC ventilation and air filtration improvements and finally we made the decision to remove the ramp connecting Mass Ave to the athletic field and we modified some interior and exterior facilities and the next slide I won't in the interest of time I'm not going to go into the details but I think all of you on the select board know that we renovated the par mentor school is part of this project in order to accommodate the monotomy preschool during construction and the result when the middle monotomy middle monotomy preschool moves back into the high school will be a building that can be used it can be leased to others and bring in revenue for the town the next slide you'll get a sense of the par mentor project and then the next slide you'll see the entrance of the par mentor we go to the next slide I do want to this has been raised in many public meetings and many public conversations with people are contractors and subcontracts contractors have carefully followed COVID-19 protocols since March of 2020 there are numerous safety measures in place the construction crew takes this very seriously the men and women on the job are have safety checks every day and have been very careful and we've had a good track record there as you can see in the next slide you're going to get an October this is October of 2020 before we began work not that long ago when you think about quickly removing not that long ago that's an aerial view of the school and then if you go to the next slide if you look closely in November you'll see a white we put up the first what we call the first beam you'll see a white steel beam with the letters AHS on it this beam was the first deal raised and it was an exciting it was a rainy day but it was an exciting day in November to be out there with the construction crew the whole crew was just excited to get the project going and some of us from the building committee were there as well and the next slide you'll see that in December of 2020 the town of Arlington and our construction management firm Consigli Construction signed a guaranteed maximum price or GMP agreement that sets the maximum price that the town will have to pay for the project regardless of the actual cost incurred the combination of a competitive bidding process and pandemic related changes in the economy in 2020 resulted in approximately one million dollars in savings if you look at the next slide you'll see that we're exceeding our original sustainability estimates the sustainability features of the new school support a long standing commitment to reduce energy use across all town facilities and operations that kind of aligns with the conversation we heard earlier and we're on track to achieve lead gold that's leadership and energy and environmental design lead gold status and the next slide as planned there will be four phases of construction in order to build the school on the existing site and the phasing minimizes disruption of student learning and eliminates the need for modular classrooms the project is designed to accommodate the school and operation we have precautions in place to keep staff and students safe and away from the construction area the working relationship I can attest this after many many meetings with our construction leadership and school officials the working relationship between Dr. Janger his staff and the project team has been excellent there was a monthly indoor quality assessment done as well as regular desk monitoring reports I want to know that the return to students at the end of last year at the end of the 2020-21 school year was executed very successfully and we are ready for the safe return of students to school in just four weeks the next slide you'll see the four phases of the project in more detail as I mentioned earlier phase one will extend to February of 2022 and let me move to the next slide this is a view of the of the current look at the front entrance of the school compared to the finished design so you see that coming together and the next slide is a view of the entrance to the performing arts wing and then the next slide is a picture of our auditorium which will be spectacular and the next slide has another view I think it has another view of the auditorium as it does and the next slide has a look at the interior of one of our classrooms and the next slide is a view of the progress that we're making in the steam wing and the next slide oh I'm sorry this this is yeah the next slide and that that's a view of the light well and then the next slide is an aerial view of the project in from last month so the final slide lists the members there's another view of the project list the members of the building committee I do want to say that you know for the past since 2015 since we started this conversation we were led by Dr. Kathleen Bodie who retired on June 30th we're grateful to Ashia and Dr. Holman are still in touch talking as needed but Kathy Bodie was instrumental in getting this project to this point and a huge part of our effort and a big part of our committee but there you can see the members of the committee the committee has been working closely together since the end of 2016 it's almost five years together we know each other well we trust one another and I think we've made some very good decisions on behalf of the community I'm on a close by inviting the public to visit our website sign up for weekly construction updates and follow us on video and Facebook we believe work that this new school rising in the middle of our community will give everyone in Arlington or is giving everyone Arlington hope for a better and a brighter future so we thank you for listening Mr. DeCorsi said to keep it as brief as possible I tried to do that that gives you a brief overview where we're at and Lori Jim Adam is on the committee as well all of us can take any questions that you might have about the project great thank you Mr. Field when you went above and beyond that's I you know I gotta get you know I got a timeline I I got the memo instructions from the chair yeah okay thank you very much so I want to turn it over to board members for questions and comments and I will start with Mrs. Mahan well unfortunately Mr. Chairman I didn't get you memo but I will start try to be brief thank you my colleague Mr. Thielman Jeff for arranging those tours of the high school I was itching like crazy to get in there I have been down on the sidewalk haven't gotten further in know a few people have a relative that's working on the site but you know I waited my turn and I just want to say I am so impressed when we toured the building you know everybody comes into the building looking different ways first of all the whole I was there for 56 minutes I wish I could say longer but I saw literally one nail and it was next to a box I saw all the room swept nice and clean I saw on every floor I asked because I didn't see it initially but once someone from Consiglio or whoever it was I apologize pointed out where the fire hazmat stations were for the workers and there's three on every floor I saw only one piece of craft craft equipment that actually had a padlock and a chain on it and there's been no craft and I say that because when you bring together doing a project like that because I come from those roots you know everyone in the construction industry knows about recent Worcester project and it's those things when you're talking about worker safety when you you're talking about what you're going to get in the end as a finished product project as well as I could tell that and I can't remember the gentleman's name but when I asked him about you have safety meetings when are they there in the morning and and then when I noted that the rooms that they're using for temporary storage I could tell that the materials were placed with a craft order in mind meaning the worst thing to me a not organized project and not being done well so you can have those cost savings and you can get the finished project you want as you go in and you see you know the blue board or certain piping it's way over in the back and when I went into the two storage places that had all the materials I could tell what they were working on at the time because literally the piles you're like okay that's all the stuff that's at the end of this so I definitely was impressed with that so I run every piece of steel I looked at and I looked at a lot there were calculations on there in pencil again that's a testament to the projects people always ask they compare it to other school projects and in terms of materials in COVID-19 there was only one particular equipment that has been delayed for COVID but we only have to wait three months out I know construction sites that are waiting 12 to 15 months because it's such which again tells me that they're in contact with the industry and the other thing just for my early days with chalk lines being done manually because everyone always asks about the high school and you know how it's done it's laser now so you're going to get that 100% right and then the only thing that I just noted and I know Lori and everybody was on top of it but when we went into the arc space I just saw plumbing for two sinks at the same height and I heard most of what Lori said but in a big place like that and not all my hearing on the left I know she told me there's another sink coming in I think you said it was a trot sink and then that's where so we'd have four sinks and we would have a handicap if you could just answer that question because I just I didn't want to make you keep repeating it yeah go ahead Diane again let me just say no one has given that detail of an analysis of the building nobody else that's gone through the place no one not one elected appointed official of the town half of it half of it I'm not doing it I do it before Lori comments I just want to say that I do want to I do want to recognize the members of the building committee that have been very careful in reviewing all the construction bids coming in for safety so Frank Callahan from the Building Traits Association is on our on our committee Jetson Pierce who is a workman's compensation attorney both of those fellows have gone through a lot of the bids and we've actually said no to some bids because of the track record so we've been very very focused on safety and and so COVID safety as well Lori you can answer that question from I thank you all so yes every every room that has a sink has an accessible sink and in the case of the art rooms not only do we have the sinks on the perimeter that you saw we have and we are calling them trough sinks it's not a very elegant word but but basically very deep sinks that the students can actually stand on on two different sides so there are multiple multiple faucets just to get you know at the end of the end of the class period when a whole bunch of kids need to get to sinks it gives that many more access points to water to clean up so okay thank you it's just me going in every room and I see the plumbing I see the HVAC done I see the sprinkler and everything and I just I didn't see like if I saw the pipes for that other one so I just want to be a stickler I just want to make sure everybody knows like all members of the board or the school committee would definitely pay attention to everything because we appreciate the work that's being done and how it's being done so thank you Mr. Chairman. The building is fully accessible 100 percent. Thank you Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Jeff for the presentation and all the work that you've done I don't know if you knew knew how much work you were undertaken when you took on the chair of the building committee but certainly we appreciate all the efforts that you have there and thank you for arranging the tours I the only thing I can say about the tour is just how impressed I was at the workmanship the progress I had given how short a time ago was that we just saw the framing up I expected to go in and see studs and we went in their rooms that they had started painting so there's certainly a lot of progress being made in the layout just makes sense and particularly the arts area the the auditorium all the performance the even down to the individual practice rooms where students can go in and practice their instruments themselves to the chorus room and the band room it's just it was very impressive and it's certainly exciting to have kids that will go through the system and eventually end up at Arlington High School and in the all the facilities that they're going to have at the disposal is really exciting for the town and so thank you all for all your efforts. Great point John yeah and I just want to say I don't think people in the community are students realize yet how much bigger all the art labs are the science labs all those rooms it's transformational not just from a physical perspective but from an educational perspective it will it will transform the way we deliver education in that school. Absolutely. Thank you Mr. Hurd and Mr. Diggins. Thank you Mr. Chair are you expecting a motion of some sort for this? No we just well we can receive the report if you want to make a motion to receive that's fine but this was a an informational presentation that we thought we were at a good point in the project to hear from the committee tonight. Right well if we don't need a motion then we can save a vote and save a little time you know so you know sometimes there's an inverse relationship between how much I say and the degree to which I'm impressed being and this is going to be one of them Mr. Thielman you know I would expect no less from you and the building committee and the school committee past and present so thank you thank you. Thank you. It's very nice of you to say thank you. Thank you Mr. Diggins Mr. Helmuth. Thank you Jeff thank you once again I think every presentation I've seen you make on this has been concise compelling and just really clearly communicated what a great value the taxpayers are getting for for their money my tour of this of the school just reinforced that the quality of it the incredible impressive progress and in most of all that this is on schedule and on budget given the huge disruptions from in the supply chain and everything else from the from the pandemic just blows my mind in a very good kind of way and I think it just speaks to the quality of the leadership from you the committee the entire project team and you know I just couldn't be happier with that the space itself really is transformative that that's the word that came to my mind the natural light pervades everywhere which will provide human experience but also save on lighting and there's so much thought put into this some of the I can't wait for the public to see some of the the discourse lab the spaces the the interactive spaces for students outside the classroom to do small group work I was of course overjoyed to see the size of the performing art spaces because that that rectifies one of the great injustices of the old building and something that's near to my heart but it's just all of that and more in spades and you know I think this is going to be a great resource for our students for the communities and and just kudos for that and thanks again for the for the tours and for coming to us tonight. Thank you Eric those are kind of words thanks very much and we have we have a great design team this does the scans HMH HMFH can see the combination is pure gold they do great work so we're lucky. Thank you Mr. Helmeth yeah and I want to Ms. Coles and Mr. Burroughs are here tonight I want to thank you both for the tours they accompanied us and our our day was and we didn't have the detailed questions maybe that this is my hon had but you answered every question and I really appreciate it and I think people are really going to be surprised at how much natural light there is in the building and even even with the all the windows not put in and all the light well is not open it it's amazing how much thought get put into that and what a great learning environment is going to be created and I do also want to mention that the D lab space which really looks phenomenal it's going to be a highlight and it's a school building but I'm hoping that we can have some community programs and in that D lab as well to show it off to the community so I want to thank you for for bringing us through Jeff for reaching out to us and accommodating our request for the for the tours because it really made a difference really made us so proud to see what is coming on that site and what's ahead of us as a community and for our students. Thank you and I just want to add one thing I want to recognize I'm on you know we have a great committee there's our communications subcommittee led by Amy Speer who I think might be watching tonight well thought with the presentation by the way nice of Eric to say good things about my presentations I have Amy to a lot of she's really the brains behind this thing but our website and the transparency on the website the communication on the website really is an example and we get emails and calls from people all over the state that want to replicate our website so even Dr. Holm is that you know when you came on board this was a website to be emulated so when you're speaking to the your constituents all our constituents in Arlington tell them to get on the website get the information they need ask questions we'll get back to them we are very proud of the project we're going to keep it's been an interactive dialogue with the community over the past five years that's going to continue we are starting to talk about how do we get town meeting members we've gotten the leadership of this we have the select board we've got leadership of the town committees school committees been in there the building committee we're trying to figure out a way to organize tours for for town meeting members and we'll so just stay tuned we'll get that we'll get that organized later in the in the year so we thank you also want to thank at them chaplain has been dynamite and sandy on the finance committee keeping us honest and focused so we have a great group leading this project and we are grateful for your support great thank you very much mr. Thielen and keep up the great work and we're really looking forward to the first part of the first phase opening in February with the steam wing and performing arts later in the academic year so thank you all for being with us tonight sorry we're a little late getting to you but we appreciate the presentation our pleasure all right my friends thanks so much thanks for all your good work everybody keep up the good work you take care okay you too thank you i know okay um so moving back to item six um for approval annual doc permanent review uh attorney heim thank you mr chair i'm going to make this extremely brief these are your regulations for something that doesn't affect a lot of people but they're basically to approve floating docks in places like spypon and the mystic lakes there's only two changes that i'm asking the board make one is that it explicitly authorized the conservation planner who's currently emily solvon and to be your designee to administer this program and secondly i think this is uh i give me but i just want to make sure we're back to the board is that we would change board of select men which is currently reflected in the policy to select board that's it okay thank you attorney heim um mr helmet thank you little approval great thank you um this is behind um i will second mr helmets motion and ask for a friendly amendment that um we appoint emily solvon as our designee is that okay that's fine yeah yes okay um mr hurt no questions okay and mr diggins no questions okay and i don't have any questions either so on a motion by mr helmet seconded by mrs mahan attorney heim mr hurt yes mr diggins yes mr helmet yes mrs mahan yes mr de coursey yes thank you folks you know i spoke okay thank you before we go to the next might would it members like a five minute break at this point or okay why don't we do that i think we can get on get back on on on track when we come back but why don't we take a five minute break it's uh 938 we'll be back at 943 okay great okay well welcome back to the second half of the select board meeting this evening um we are now moving on to the consent agenda and this will be item 7 through 11 unless that item 12 be removed from the consent agenda item 7 minutes of meeting june 21 2021 item 8 for approval boston women's market at uncle sam plaza saturday september 11 2021 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. item 9 reappointments all terms to expire june 30th 2024 council on aging and brown disability commission michael rademacher item 10 for approval annual walter v moinehan tonday run september 18th 2021 joseph connelly director of recreation item 11 request for a special one-day beer and wine license september 11 2021 at robbins memorial town hall for a private event amy keating and brian silva on the consent agenda mr helmeth thank you and move approval thank you mr helmeth uh mrs mohan second thank you mr jen thank you mr herd no balance right mr diggins okay thank you so in motion by mr helmeth seconded by mrs mohan attorney hind mr herd yes mr diggins yes mr helmeth yes mrs mohan yes mr decorsi yes nana miss folk great thank you um appointments items 13 and 14 item 13 appointments to the community preservation act committee will take these one at a time uh alexander franzosa term to expire june 30th 2023 susan doctrine and david swanson for terms to expire on june 30th 2024 um these are first time appointments i don't know if any of the individuals are what that's tonight i believe mr franzosa is i believe all three are mr franzosa joining us right now okay great um so why don't we start with mr franzosa and first of all thank you for your willingness to serve the community if you could just tell us a little bit about your interest in serving on the uh the community preservation act committee sure thank you all for having me on this forum tonight my interest in serving on the community preservation act committee comes from my interest in serving my town i've been a lifelong resident of arlington and i love living here i plan on living here for quite some time i ran for town meeting this past year and i won and i enjoyed my time serving during town meeting and i've been looking for ways to serve in the meantime the community preservation act committee to me would be an excellent way to serve my town when i ran for town meeting i promised the constituents that i would support the interests of our town's infrastructure preservation of historic buildings and affordable housing and when i found that this committee would be serving in all those capacities i was very enthused and uh submit an application and i'd be honored to serve on this committee right thank you very much i'll turn it to board members why don't we go one at a time mr chaplain and then with the food we have for questions anyway i'm mr helma thank you thank you alexander it was great to meet you at the interview thanks for your willingness to serve in you know i was really taken with your your true passion for service in local government i think that's that's wonderful for someone at any age but particularly someone just starting out in the career it's exemplary so so we appreciate that and and i'll just say this kind of respect with respect to all all the applicants i think a lot of you know that the cpa committee is near and dear to my heart it was my previous gig before i got this new one and it is unique it is it's wonderful because there's a dedicated funding stream to do things that wouldn't get done because they're never a short-term priority but they're really long long-term priorities so i'm thrilled with with the quality of all the applicants that we received in the appointments that we are i hope make tonight and i think that it leaves the committee with fresh ideas fresh fresh blood and so good hard workers for for the task of sorting through all the different possibilities and opportunities that we have so um so thanks to you and and to the others for your for stepping up thank you thank you mr. Helm with mrs. Mahan thank you mr. friends also and also to uh this doctor oh mr. swanson um who um i have worked on endeavors with in the past and i look forward to um working with mr. friend so stuff um one thing i will say is i i'm really excited by your energy and your commitment and and definitely your follow-through as well as with um stew and david um just because i have you here um what i would say moving forward to continue on what um my colleague mr. helmeth and uh former colleague mrs. Clarissa row which is cpa as you know as all of you know is not a standalone um it's usually in partnership with um cdbg with allenton housing authority with the historical society and one of the things i've um found on cdbg is um we have a good framework in there in terms of making sure you know if we need to buy four pies um not only working together to get the funding but having that communication back and forth so that um we don't not saying this has been done but there was one particular item i think it was last year um and it had nothing to do with cpa but the request went into three different ways to be funded and it was funded all three different ways um and it was only about a 51 thousand dollar um request but my thing is where everything um every project is important you know whether it's has two zeros or five zeros four zeros um i want to make sure i do and everybody else does a better job with that as well as i know um mr. helmeth and miss roe uh have a good relationship with allenton housing authority but similar to mr. fran sosa and mr. doctoral mr. swanson coming um there are some new um people over there thearella bedilla who we appointed tonight um we have an acting executive director so whatever outreach um you can do with that because um i know during COVID-19 i felt a little frustrated because um i want to spend all the funding that we should that we raise and can do um but we couldn't do that because it's COVID-19 so but i want to make sure that um we'll always be dealing with COVID so that's not going anywhere just hopefully people take care of themselves um but moving forward uh you know the the monies are there i'm not saying spend it down every year but um and i know you guys are going to have the energy and commitment and knowledge um having town meeting and other committees with with you so sorry for that lengthy pitch and welcome thank you great thank you this is mahan uh mr. herd thank you thank you mr. fran sosa for stepping up to serve i know you would email back to meet up at some point hopefully in the early fall um but again just echoing the comments you know this is such an important committee and it like mr. helman says i love that cpa can fund projects that otherwise don't get funding such as the gutters at the jason house the russle house or renovating the town hall gardens and the fountain which with all our expense that we have it's hard to to fit those into a budget um so you do important work and i appreciate your enthusiasm and look forward to working with you thank you thank you mr. herd mr. diggins yes um mr. fran sosa really happy to have you um join the um the cpa a uh i'm partial to people with the science background and also i know i talk about youth engagement and it's not so much that i have an infatuation with us as much as it is that the the the policies that we make or policies that young people are going to have to live with a lot longer than we will be and so it's really important to have you have a voice in that and so i am thrilled that you are a member of town meeting in addition to wanting to be a part of cpa so thank you great thank you thank you mr. diggins and yeah i also want to echo the the comments of my colleagues first of all congratulations on your election to to precinct 12 not an easy precinct to to an election and so it's very impressive and um and for your interest in serving on this committee um what i think i will do we had questions from mr. fran sosa his he's got a term to expire june 30th 2023 why don't we bring this doctor and mr. swanson on together now and then we'll have one vote for for all three individuals mr. jacorsy may yes as long as no member has an objection to to pooling the votes if that's okay with yeah is there any objection to that okay when we get there thank you for that that attorney we will um we'll bear that in mind um good evening mr. dr hi hi um thank you for um for your interest in serving on the community community preservation at committee and i want you to tell us a little bit about your interest and see if there's any questions from the board sure and you're most welcome um happy to be here yeah i became interested in this opportunity not because of any specific expertise that i have in the three areas of interest because i'm really not an expert in these areas but i greatly value all of them i became interested more because of my enthusiasm for the cpa projects that have already been funded and how they touch our lives in town because they really do um and i had a lot more specific details in my letter so i won't repeat those here um in the interest of brevity but um i've lived here alm