ed and replaced with multifamily structures or large single family homes that can sell for millions. In these cases, the developers will apply for a demolition permit and then come before the historical commission for permission to demolish the building. In most cases, we declare that such a building is preferentially preserved but it triggers only a one year delay before the property owner can carry out demolition. We then spend time to work with the property owners or try to find alternatives to demolition. Over 50 years, we have often succeeded but in many other cases, the clock has run out before we can find a solution and the building is raised and it goes part of the way of Arlington's history and their buildings. In order to fulfill our mission of protecting and preserving the historic fabric of the town, the historical commission is seeking to extend the current one year demolition delay to two years. Extending the demolition delay to two years is not and I repeat it is not a measure aimed at penalizing individual homeowners. Instead, it is a recognition that while the one year demolition delay had worked well in the past to allow the commission time to work with the property owners to find alternatives to demolition. Now the dramatic increase in property values has led to more property owners, including developers who are willing to buy historic properties and simply factor in the one year delay as a part of the cost of doing business. When the original bylaw was passed in 1970, Arlington was in the forefront of Massachusetts communities with demolition delay bylaws. Now we're lagging behind in our effectiveness and that can be remedied simply by extending the period of time that we can work with homeowners and developers on ways to preserve and restore buildings instead of knocking them down. Other towns including Luxington Watertown and Milton have recently extended their demolition delay periods and there are 17 communities in all in the Massachusetts that have demolition delays over 12 months. Not every building can be saved. We have approved demolition of historic structures in cases where the building is too far gone and or presents a risk to health and safety. But far more often we have succeeded in saving buildings by working closely sometimes over long periods of times with homeowners and developers to help find solutions that serve the property owners needs and at the same time preserve part of Arlington's historic legacy. We have tried all along to help homeowners secure low interest preservation loans from funds and that are earmarked especially for historic restoration. We regularly keep a case open for many years many months and assign a monitor from the commission to be in close contact with property owners all through the renovation project. And we help guide people to historic sources and materials that are appropriate for their projects and give advice as needed throughout the process. In our experience it's relatively rare that we are forced to impose a demolition delay on a project proposed by an individual homeowner. In most cases homeowners are willing to work with us and often appreciate our help. Again the change from a one year delay to two years is not meant in any way to penalize homeowners and is simply a recognition that in today's economic climate one year is not enough time to find solutions that will allow us to fulfill our mission as mandated by the bylaw and to preserve and protect Arlington's historic structures. That's my two cents. Thank you very much. If you could just stay here for a couple of questions. Thank you for your service on the commission. Can you, I just want to clarify the source of the bylaw just for the public record. So according to our records this was filed by you and 10 registered voters. It was requested by you and not specifically by the commission. And I understand that the commission has taken a vote of support of this very well. And can you, you briefly touched on this and I was trying to take some notes. You mentioned that there were 17 communities that have delays of longer than 12 months. Is that right? They have demo delays that are over 12 months. And do you know how many of them go up to two years? Yes, I think that I'm not quite sure of all of that. I have a couple of, I do have some pictures and I called the Mass Historic Commission and asked about those kinds of things. But I know only that Watertown and Milton and Lexington are the ones that are now over more than. I think Lexington is 18 months and the other two are two years. I think attorney Cunningham may have some information. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Ms. Robinson. I think Lexington is 21 months. Hopkins 10 is 18. I'm not aware of any 24, but there may be. Okay, thank you very much. Well, there are some there. Okay, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I just don't know exactly how many. Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. Okay, so at this point, we'll turn to the board for any preliminary questions and then we'll go to public comment. So any questions with the board? Okay, let's go to public comment. I'm sorry, Mr. Diggins, there you are. Yeah, I get my hand up late, so sorry about that. So thank you, Mr. Chair. So you said 12 months isn't enough time. I'm not sure if I heard why it's not enough time, but let me ask the question a different way. What more resources would you need in order to make 12 months be enough time? The thing about finding people who can evaluate historic houses now are very scarce. And we try to ask the homeowner if we find something that we want to know about the house itself and whether or not it should be preserved or whether or not they come to us, you know, just as soon as they ask for a demolition and they come to us, you know, like two months into that and on top of that, you know, we don't have time because we're working on so many houses right now and it is very difficult to get the developer, for example, to go out and actually find people who are, you know, able to analyze the house itself. I just want to be clear. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, please finish. And on top of that, I think that the biggest, we do work over a year or maybe a year and a half or two years with houses that we have preserved and work with the owner. And so it takes a long time to do that in a lot of times. And there are not many contractors in some ways that could immediately jump in and help with historic buildings because of the fact that everybody is trying to change their houses and sell them for millions or just to get rid of them. And that's basically my two, the way that we work, we try to work very carefully with anybody that comes before us and we do not want to penalize anybody who has a house that really has to come down or anything like that, you know, that's okay. But in our LinkedIn, our mission is to preserve the houses that are good. I think I have an answer. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir, Mr. DeCourts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, on just a couple of questions. I know you'd mentioned Watertown and I think in Watertown, while they allow up to 24 months, I think they also have a procedure where an owner can come back to the, whether it's a historic commission or council, if they've done their due diligence and just have not found an alternative use, you're just proposing a flat 24 months demolition delay without any opportunity to shorten that if new facts emerge. We do shorten that. Okay. We absolutely do that. You know, if we find out something that is, you know, not, we don't just say that we want to preserve the house because it's historic entirely, but the status of the house and what the things are that have to be done to do those things, we have changed those things. Okay, and just to, I'm sorry. We don't put any pressure on them to not go ahead. Okay. And then just a question, two years, I think that will be the longest period. It did say Watertown, but there's an exception. I know other communities have gone to 15, 18 months. And I think Newton actually does it based on if the property can be on the national register of historic places, it can be 18 months, all of the properties are 12. Would that be something? The outside period feels like a long time to me, and I realize you've got to do your work, but I wonder if there's a way if you gave any thought to other properties that are not potentially eligible for listing on any historic registries for a shorter period or does that just happen through your proceedings that maybe it will take less than that period of time? We take those things into consideration and that's why I said that if we're working with a homeowner or something like that, we can work with that and we don't have to do that kind of thing. And we have, in the inventories, we have a lot of buildings and we try to work with them very carefully so that we feel that we're doing the right thing and preserving the right things. Thank you. Before we move to the public home, any further questions for the board? Okay, let's now have the public hearing for Article 18. Ms. Robinson, you can return your seat in case anybody wishes to comment from the room. Thank you very much. And we'll take Mr. Cook. And if you are in Zoom and wish to comment on this article, please raise your hand at this time. And we'll get to you next. Grant Cook, Precinct 16. I take the chair here to encourage you to keep the status quo. The comment that this isn't a penalty, repeated three times, of course it's a penalty. It's a delay in demolition. If somebody comes to an impasse, it's 24 months sitting on a house that might be unlivable, unrentable, or just an impediment to what they want to do with their own property. Right now it might be six or eight months of waiting, then it will be 18 months of waiting. Of course it's a penalty. It's saying do what we want or we'll make you sit on the house. Now the proponent says they work with homeowners that the homeowner is willing to do this. Then great, take 12 months, take 24 months to do the work. But I watched a hearing on this matter for a house on Warren Street. And the first thing was, she did mention that it's difficult to find engineers, it was very difficult. And they gave the homeowner a list. The list wasn't accurate. There were people on there that no longer practiced. So it wasn't, the people on that list didn't have a relationship with the town. So you're calling them out of the blue. There's no commitment to support. And then after one engineer gave a prognosis that was pretty dim, well then they did like my kids do. Let's do two out of three. Let's go find another engineer. Well I am an engineer. I'll tell you how things work. First of all, engineers don't deal unless it's safety and in deafness. Of course, with enough money and time, things can be saved. So the recommendations tend to be, well this is kind of how it could be. That wasn't definitive enough for the boards. They said, find another engineer. Engineers also don't like to be hired to impeach each other. In a small community and someone calls up, hey I want you to, Jim looked at this, well I want you to look at his work and if you have an issue with it, I want you to argue with them. So all of a sudden it becomes a debate between two engineers is to the right path. In the end, there was an impasse. And the impasse comes to be while the homeowner has to wait. So that to me, that seems purely punitive. So in the sense of it sucks that our homes have appreciated so much but it is the way it is now. In this case that the homeless demolished will become a two family. Two people will have homes. So that's a good thing right there. But I think 12 months is appropriate if the board, if the commission had significantly more resources and availability to help homeowners find a way to make this work, perhaps you could consider lengthening it but they haven't demonstrated that. So I would encourage you to keep the status quo as it is 12 months and vote no action on this article. Thank you sir. Do we have anybody in Zoom who wishes to comment? Anybody else in the room wish to comment on this article? See if there's any more public comment. Okay, so close public comment for this article and let's go to the board for final discussion and motions. Mr. Hurd. I thank you for the presentation. I am not in support of extending the demolition delay. My problem and we've dealt with this historical registry a few times. You alluded to it. This is 29 pages with, I counted about 45 houses per page give or take. There are way more buildings on there that can be then can be considered historically significant. And I said that I think last time it takes away from our actual historic buildings. I think when this demolition delay was created, I'm sure this list was dramatically smaller because we have some pretty awesome historic buildings in town. Just looking at this list, the house I grew up in on Colonial Drive other than being in the house that I grew up in lacks very much significance that I would see that would allow it to be on this list. And it's my understanding that most of Cal Managers got dropped on the list at one point and I know an individual that wasn't a developer that was going to not, he wanted to renovate his house for his family and he wasn't able to do so. I mean, as a real estate attorney, I can tell you that this is not part of a normal review. It's the determinant of your houses on Arlington's historically significant list. I think builders know that homeowners don't know that and there could be a situation where a family comes in and they're looking to live in Arlington because they want to live in Arlington because it's an amazing community and they find a property and they want to renovate it to suit their family's needs and they find out that they can't do so. Again, to me, it's the list. It's just so long that it takes, I think it's over inclusive of buildings and I just, I'm not inclined to increase the demolition delay based on that. So I submit a motion for no action. A motion for no action by Mr. Herd. All right, so further discussion, motion seconds for the board. Second. Second by Mr. DeCorsi. All right, do we have any further discussion from the select board? Okay, I'll just speak for myself. I think I also support the motion of no action. I'm appreciative of the work that the Stork commission does and I'd be very happy to find ways to better support the commission within the availability of town resources to move more quickly because I think that the work is important. But I think I agree with my colleagues at this time. We have a good workable agreement and I think further extension of that would require more detailed work to really make sure that Mr. DeCorsi was suggesting that there are some very specific and probably some very complex processes and exemptions built in. So I think we're ready to have a vote. So on a motion for recommending no action by Mr. Herd and seconded by Mr. DeCorsi, attorney Cunningham. Ms. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. By zero vote. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, this brings us to the last one article or hearing of the night, which is article 19 to vote to extend the time for artificial turf setting committee and report. And if the proponents would please introduce themselves. I'm Susan Stamps, town meeting member of precinct 339 Grafton Street. Eugene Benson, town meeting member precinct 10 Hillsdale Road. And what we're going to do is I'm gonna talk a little bit about this article and why we filed it and why we asked you to support it. And then Ms. Stamps is going to talk about our perception of how the committee's been working up to this point. Very well. I'll start by saying that Ms. Stamps and I filed the amendment at town meeting last year. That was voted favorably at town meeting that set up the committee. We expected the committee to start operating a year ago. It started operating only a few months ago. So we had concerns that they either wouldn't complete the job on time or that they would rush and it would not be as good a job as it could be if they had more time. As you may know, they were required to file their report at least 30 days before town. It's now fewer than 30 days before town meeting and they have not filed. We filed this motion to give them more time. We felt that if we filed this warrant article, excuse me, this warrant article and it was supported by the board, it would send a message to the committee that they didn't have to rush for judgment, that they would have some additional time to work on it and get it right. And that's why we did it and at the time we didn't know whether they would file on time. Now we know that they haven't filed on time. The other thing that we did, which we probably should have done last year when we filed our amendment, but we didn't because we didn't think of it, was require them to have at least one public hearing on a draft report before they file a final report. So the public has an opportunity to hear it and to make comments on it and they didn't do that because it's not in the current amendment. It would be in this. So we would like you to do this even though as the stamps will tell you, they're pretty close right now. So they can take a breath and if they decide they want some more time to work on it, to have a public hearing, that they'll have the opportunity to do that. And then file the report later this year. That's pretty much what this is about. So I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Stamps to talk about what the committee's been doing up to this point. She's been watching, I have not. Thank you very much. So the first meeting of the committee was on December 5th, pretty late in the game. And I attended and I have attended every meeting since then except for I think one. And they've pretty much been meeting weekly. They've been, I have been thoroughly impressed by their diligence, their integrity, their balanced conversations. It's been a startling contrast between the equanimity of the behavior of this committee versus what happened at Town Hall a year ago, you may remember when it was sort of the, against the anti-artificial turf versus the pro-artificial turf at Town Hall. And it became so heated that the police had to be called. And the reason that I'm telling you how great this committee has been is not only to publicly compliment them, but also to say I would hope that the town manager, Mr. Feeney might consider calling back this committee when and if there is another artificial turf field being considered by Park and Rec so that we don't, and I believe, Mr. Chair, we spoke about that recently, so that we don't, because they are a wonderful, they would be a wonderful mediating mechanism you had. And I'll just take a couple more minutes. There was one person from the Conservation Commission, one from Park and Rec, one from Capital Planning, one from Envision Arlington, the Director of Health and Human Services for her designee, a town meeting member appointed by the moderator, and a town resident appointed by the select board. That's seven people. These were, everybody came in different opinions. The Chair, Jim D'Aulio, the select board appointee divided the group into the three areas that our article asked them to study, which was health, safety, and environment. That's what they did. I invite everybody, I invite you folks and anybody who's watching on Zoom to look at the draft report they have attached to the March 12th, 2024 agenda of the Artificial Turf Study Committee pages 61 to 83 are the three draft reports of the committee. And I'm sure like I was when I read it, I'm sure you'll be thoroughly impressed by the work. And so I would just, they've done great work. Will they be done by town meeting? Will they be done so that it's time for, there's enough time for the select board, excuse me, and the community to see what they've done, review the report, I don't know. If not, we'll go forward with, we'll decide at the time, should we go forward with this or not? As Jean said, we want to make sure that they have the time they need to do this right, which I know they want to do. But also, I just wanted to give them a huge shout out for a fantastic job. And to say, and to ask the town manager who I think statutorily might have some purview over, Park and Rec, I'm not sure. I'll just quickly reading the law. To keep in mind, maybe reconvening this same committee, not necessarily the same people, they may not want to do it again. But the representatives of the same groups to get us through another difficult period discussing artificial turf in town. Thank you. I'll just add two things. One is, our suggestion is that you vote favorably on this article. If between now and town meeting, they file their report, then at town meeting, obviously this article would become moot. But if they haven't filed it, then we would go ahead and give them an extension. So we think this is a good interim step to either give them some more time or they'll file their report late, but before town meeting, and then this will become mooted town meeting. The second thing I'll mention is, this report, as Susan said, I think will be a really good step for the town. But the issues are constantly changing, both what's in artificial turf, what is being found out about the chemicals that come off artificial turf, the potential impact on people who are on the turf. So this is gonna be good. If the next thing that happens in two, three, four years is another proposal for artificial turf, we won't, we'll be able to rely on this as the starting point, but not the final word in three or four years. There'll have to be another look at this to bring it up to date because the science is changing as well as what the industry is doing. And I'm sorry, I forgot to, I did completely forget to mention the substance of this report, which was on the good side, it provides opportunities for exercise for the kids in town and get them off their screens, get out there, get some fresh air and exercise. But there's a big, long list of well-researched negatives, including toxins, damage to ecology, wildlife, heat problems, injuries. It's just an endless list of negative things. I'll just note that the report is now published, the draft report, sorry, is published on the committee's website. I read it last night and I know at least one of my colleagues did, so. Oh, it is? Yeah. So it is available, so I think the public can avail themselves of that. Very good, thank you. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much. I will now turn to the board to see if they have any initial comments or questions for their proponents before we move to public comment. All right, let's now do the public hearing, ask you to take your seats so that we can entertain people from the public. And if you are in Zoom, I wish to comment on this article, please raise your hand. And if you're in the room, I'm actually going to invite public comment, I think from the chair of the Artificial Turf Study Committee to come up and give the board the perspective that he may have. And if you'd make your comment of about three minutes and then maybe stick around, because I think the board may have some questions for you as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jim Ditulio, precinct 12 town meeting member and chair of the Arlington Artificial Turf Study Committee. And I can thank you for sticking with this committee and I can thank the members for making me chair. And I do want to say, Susan Stamps didn't know I was in the back of the room, so I didn't pay her to say any of those things. And it was a pleasant surprise to hear the kind words. I'll simply pick up where Jean and Susan left off. I think they gave a very good rundown of where the committee is. We did get a late start and I sent this board and the town moderator a letter along with my secretary of the committee, Natasha Whedon, sort of summing up where we are. And I think the letter was dated Friday, March 15th, so about a little over a week ago. And there's been even more progress since then. But essentially we did get a late start. We started on December 5th through no fault of anyone's, just that's when we got started. But the group, I mean, we got started right before Christmas but the group committed to weekly meetings. And we've met now, as of today, we have met 12 times. There is a plan to meet three more times. So when all is said and done, we will have met 15 times in a very short span. I guarantee if this committee has started a year ago, we would not have met any more than that. I'm on some other town boards. We meet once a month, very little happens between those meetings, no offense to those boards, but this committee, there is a lot happening every week. In addition, about a week after we were formed, we immediately separated into working groups, environment, safety, health. Those working groups have been meeting constantly between our meetings. So if you count those, there's probably been two, three dozen meetings happening throughout the course of this process. But 15 of them would have been public meetings when all is said and done. To Mr. Benson's point, our plan, well, I'll take a step back. We currently have a draft report out. It is a draft report, but it is pretty strong in my opinion, report that's pretty close to final. There will be tweaks. There will be input. We have a meeting tomorrow night where members have seen pieces of this, but they haven't seen it all together until a few days ago. So we'll have a very intense meeting tomorrow, I think, sort of going section by section, hearing where people are. That will be followed by next Tuesday, having a, well, all of our meetings have been public meetings, but it will be a meeting where there will be much more of an opportunity for public input. I do want to make a note that we made a decision. It seemed controversial at the time, but I stand totally behind it, and I think it's worked out very well that at our first meeting, we had to decide whether we wanted, we've met exclusively remotely, but we had to decide whether we'd keep the chat open or not. Many people did not want to keep it open. I decided we would keep it open and see how it goes and reserve the right to close it off if it didn't work. It actually has worked out marvelously, and there's been a lot of good comment made, very productive comment throughout our meetings. So although there hasn't necessarily been a place where people can go to a mic and speak, we have had people chiming in throughout our meetings, offering, have you checked out this study or please talk to this person at some point in your travels? In addition, we've submitted, we've taken written comment from the public, and we publish those with our minutes every week when we put out the minutes and the agenda for the next meeting. But next week, we will have something a little more closer to a traditional public input meeting where there will be microphones, it will be a hybrid format, and we will hear at town hall or in the annex actually hear from people about the report that's been out. And by that point, they will have had the report out for about 10 or 12 days. So it's still a short, it's tight, but we're hoping to hear from people. Our goal is not to have it turn into something like the town hall forum. That's not the idea, that the idea is not to have one side here and one side there. There's a report on the table. Tell us what you think, tell us if we got it right or if we got it wrong or if there are tweaks to be made. And then the idea is there'll be one final meeting after that. I think right now the plan is April 9th where we would take a final committee vote. And then probably there'd be some final formatting issues and getting it ready, putting the appendix together, the basic administrative tasks. And my goal and the hope of the committee is that you will have, you and the town monitoring will have in their hands a final committee report. Fall goes well by April 12th. If it doesn't, it may slide to the next week, but it will certainly be before, unless something very, very strange happens, it will certainly be before the gavel falls on the opening night of town meeting on April 24th. It is true we were supposed to, if you go by the amended article that passed last year, we were supposed to have handed this in 30 days before, so by my math that would have been March 22nd or even last Friday. We will miss that deadline, and we're very honest about that. We will miss that deadline. We could have made that deadline, but we would have sacrificed quality. Frankly, probably there would have been a lot of typos. The committee just didn't feel comfortable doing that. And taking, at the end of the day, I think it'll be three extra weeks to get it right, I think is the difference between a report we can stand behind for many years to come versus a report that frankly would have looked a little slap-dash. So that's where we are. I'm agnostic on this current article. I will say, Mrs. Stamps came to me when she was proposing it, and this was a very different time period. This was late January. We had no idea where we were going. I mean, we knew where we were going, which we didn't know if we'd actually be able to deliver on a very tight timeline. It turns out we did, but it was very uncertain in late January, and she told me she wanted to submit this sort of as a fail-safe. And I was fine with that. I said, I hope we don't need it, but it's nice to have it in case something goes wrong. I think we're at a point where I can say it's looking like we won't need it, but the final two or three weeks we'll determine that. But we're in really good shape right now to get this thing done before the town meeting starts. Thank you very much, sir. Stick around in case we have questions, yeah. Do we have any other members of the public who wish to comment on this article? Raise your hand and zoom or in the room. Okay, Ms. Mar. Seeing none, thank you. All right, we'll now turn to the board and we can have further questions, a comments of board if you have that of the chair or any other. I did have questions, but that was a very detailed explanation of the committee. So I was gonna open that I'm inclined to give you an extension if you want more time, but it doesn't sound like you need it. So I mean, I would, since the warrant article seems to be moved at this point, just submit a motion for no action in the event, in the unlikely event that you do need it, then someone can submit a substitute motion, but I would rather start with no action and then go from there if that's what the situation warrants. I think we could we also, could the select board also meet, you know, before town meeting and changes recommended vote on that occasion as well as an alternative? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll second Mr. Herd's motion and thank you, Mr. DeTulio for your letter that I saw also for your work as chair and Ms. Stam said I haven't attended every meeting I've attended a few of them, I've been very impressed and have heard a lot of positive things because you've had different viewpoints and to get through 12 meetings in a short period of time, but it seems to me that you're gonna have your public hearing, I did see the draft report that is on the website and also if the committee, it seems to me the outside deadline here is the end of this annual town meeting and if the report wasn't gonna be submitted prior to then, then there would be a reason to extend the committee's charge based on what you're saying. I don't see that that's necessary and I think having the vote of no action maybe gives you a little extra motivation to get things done before town meeting and if it doesn't happen we can revisit it based on what I'm hearing tonight I support Mr. Herd's motion. Mr. Mahd? First I wanna say very heartfelt, thank you. Amazed how much you've been able to get done in the committee starting in December. One of the things, and I've read through the draft report twice I'm probably gonna read it two more times but one of the reasons I say that is I'm very appreciative of the citations and the links as well as the qualities of those. I know down on town meeting four we had 11 amendments, 13, I don't know how many we had and I'll be honest I did not go through all the links attached to all the amendments because some of them I didn't recognize and not that you have to be of a certain caliber but you know National Institutes of Health you have Harvard EDU you have and then you have individual case reports on especially around athletic current athletic turf fields reports that have been put out and those are extremely helpful and I think an awful lot of town meeting members and the public really should avail themselves of you can't possibly read every single one that is my goal. I think one. I haven't even read every single one. I was gonna say I've been trudging through but please pass on from this board to our colleagues on your committee not only our thanks but with the studious nature with which you all have been going through and the process you and Ms. Stamps outlined in terms of how you parceled out what the mandate request whatever was to get that done and I'm really impressed. Not gonna ask you if the turf field at the high school would have passed this muster because that's a whole nother thing as they say and I do think this is a good starting point moving forward because I do appreciate that it does say in there although majority of the pages two thirds are speaking about negative impacts of artificial turf but then there's a third about moving forward and recognizing that the science is still evolving on that and we're gonna have it out there at the high school and that's where people maybe that's one of the things I'd pass on to you that quite a few people have come up to me largely in the sports family that have said you know, we're doing it at the high school that wasn't a problem and I try to explain the contaminants underneath and things like that it was there and one of the things I've said to them is wait and have sent out an email to say the draft report is out please avail yourself to look at this and it certainly is informative and I hope I know most if not all town meeting members will read I think it's 25, 28 pages long not counting the links so thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Chair. And I just simply say to that, you know I think he hit the nail on the head like we have members who came at this who started at the first meeting in a certain place and we had some people who started in no place I was fairly neutral on it we had some members who leaned one way or the other my goal and we're not there yet but it's looking good was we've seen other towns do a report like this and they have a minority report I did not want a minority report and it meant some people had to on each side had to give a little but I don't think we sacrifice quality or integrity to put out the draft report that you have right now and I'm very hopeful there will not be a minority report that this will be a unanimous or near unanimous vote of the committee that maybe doesn't represent everyone's views 100% but represents everyone's views that to a place where they're comfortable to put their name on it and put their vote behind it. Thank you very much. Mr. Diggins. Well that was an interesting comment just there. So I tend to like minority reports me especially when they, my folks wrote it it's always good to see like the other side of the argument in its full glory, you know but I understand where you're coming from and I wasn't going to say anything, you know but I am going to support the motion and look forward to seeing the report. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will also gladly support the motion. I like Mr. Diggorsi's suggested motivation in part to keep the committee's feet to the fire and I don't think there's going to be any need for that because you're clearly working very, very hard. I will say as a veteran of a number of town bodies I think that 12 to 15 meetings for a committee that works a whole year that's pretty good for a full year's committee so you've compressed that into a shorter timeframe but I know you've worked very hard meeting every week with the subcommittees. I also read the draft report last night and was frankly blown away with the quality of what I've seen in the thoroughness and the thoughtfulness and the fair mindedness of it and I know that it's not final so you know that you have a little bit more to do and I'm glad to hear that you're having a public input session. But I think for me I don't have any concerns that the compressed timeline affected quality and the lease. I think it's one of the better quality work products I've seen out of a town meeting committee frankly. So yeah I think we can reserve the ability either through a substitute motion if the committee comes to us and says hey we do need more time I'm sure town meeting would be glad to grant that to you. I'm glad to have this article because I think it gives that safety valve or this body the board could meet and change our recommended vote. I also want to give my gratitude to the proponents particularly who authored the amendment and town meeting to create this committee. I think one of the important reasons for this committee's success in addition of course to the very hard work by the committee and its chair is the very clear charge that was given to the community by the vote and town meeting that they did. So I think that you've done a real service to the town in spurring this work and setting the framework for the kind of quality report that I think we're about to see. So thank you all for that. Mr. Chair if I could just make one quick comment. Sure. Susan Stamps in my opinion is sort of the model citizen activist. She has been at, she says she hasn't been at all. I think she has. So I'm going to give her credit for all 12 so far. She's been sticking with us all the way through. Sometimes people do it more in an article and then they forget about it, they move on. She hasn't, she's kept us honest and we appreciate it. Excellent. Any further comments from the board? Okay we have a, I have to go back to my notes here. We have a motion for now actually by Mr. Herd. Seconded by Mr. DeCorsi. Turning on him. Ms. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Five-zero vote. Thank you very much. Can I make one last little joke? I'm glad my wife didn't submit a letter saying where's my husband been for the past four months but you only got a letter from me and I'm happy about that. I'll look forward to the bill. That's right. Please thank her for us for tonight. All right, thanks. Okay so that brings us to final votes and comments. We have articles for review. Articles six, eight, nine, 10 and 11. So we'll take these in turn. Starting with article six. Turn to the board for comments, questions, motions. Move approval. Second. Any discussion by the board? Okay. If I could ask, the room carries sound a lot better than we think and we have some really boring business to finish here but I need to make sure I can hear everybody so I can take our conversations outside please. Thank you very much. Okay, so we have a motion by Mr. Hurd and second by Mrs. Mahon. Any discussion? Okay, turning Cunningham. Mrs. Mahon. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Dickens. You're muted, sir. Sorry about that, yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Five-zero vote. Article eight, by all of my men, annual time meeting start dates. Vruval. Second. Any, we have a motion for approval by Mr. Hurd, second by Mrs. Mahon. Any discussion from the board? Mr. Dickens. So I thought we were gonna hear from the town meeting procedures committee before we did anything. I thought this was like a stop gap until we got more information and then we were gonna decide whether or not we were gonna take a position or not. So this is for article eight. We have a will report. So is your question, Mr. Dickens, about the voter or the comment? Or you're saying that you think we would do even this much until we heard from town meeting procedures. Right. I'm saying that we weren't gonna do this much until we heard from the town meeting procedures committee. My recollection of the will report was that we might wait until town meeting commenced and at that point see what additional input was available that could include town meeting procedures weighing in. It could include if the moderator chooses having a poll of town meeting. I think we left that open-ended but I didn't understand that we thought we would delay the vote of will report. Mr. Gorson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Attorney Cunningham and Attorney Munson did put in the comment that we will potentially seek input from the town meeting procedures committee. So I think that possibility is still out there. Right, right. But you see, this is going to town meeting though with us pretty much saying we put it all on you and we're not really giving you any recommendation, right? Is that a correct interpretation of this? I think that, I mean a will report means that we do intend to give a recommendation. It's just that we may do that at a meeting before, one of our short meetings we had before town meeting where we're giving ourselves more time to decide based on input that may we receive. Ms. Mohan. And also my memory is that Mr. Christiana said that the town meeting procedures committee may discuss this. He hadn't made the decision yet whether he would even bring it before them. So that's why another reason for the will report. So we don't keep discussing this over and over and over again. So right now it's a will report and it leaves the door open. If any of that other stuff happens otherwise we will report. We are committing ourselves over to reporting, yeah. All right. But we will report, it's not that we may report. We are going to report. It's a will report. W-I-L-M. Okay, all right. And just making sure that that is me, that that we are embracing that word fully. So okay, I mean that I will be at all positive action. I'm sorry, my urge was to spell it for you. We're not doing that with any kind of strong, songly recommended wording of course because we don't do that anymore. Yeah. A Trinity Cunningham has a comment, I believe. Thank you Mr. Chair. I just, hopefully that last sentence of the comments section Mr. Diggins addresses the concerns. I think that that accurate reflects the direction of the board and the board's intentions. Hopefully that captured it properly. Trinity Munson and I watched, rewatched the meeting about four times. My condolences. Thank you. Okay, and I'm all set. Thank you. Okay, any further discussion? All right, on a motion to prove I'm Mr. Herd and second by Mrs. Mahan, Trinity Cunningham. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Why yes. Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. 5-0 vote. Article nine, by all amendment revised town meeting start time approval. Second. Oh, you're making me pay attention now. Mm-hmm. All right, any discussion on this one? Can I motion to approve by Mr. Herd and second by Mr. DeCorsi, Trinity Cunningham? Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. 5-0 vote. Article 10, by all amendment start time for annual town meeting. And this is the start, you know, referring to the start date. Approval? Second. Silence dissent. You know how hard it is to keep my mouth shut. You guys are really hurting me. Any discussion on a motion for approval by Mr. Herd and second by Mr. DeCorsi, Trinity Cunningham? Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. 5-0 vote. Article 11, by all amendment fossil fuel by-law language changes. Approval. Second. Any discussion on a motion for favorable or approval by Mr. Herd, second by Mrs. Mahan, Trinity Cunningham? Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. 4-0 vote. Mr. DeCorsi was recused on that one. Very good. Thank you. Well done. And my compliments on the votes in the comments, I felt like you captured the board's sentiments very well indeed. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to you, to both of you. OK, this brings us to a new business. Accepting cases of emergency, the board will neither deliberate nor act upon topics presented in new business. Ms. Maher? No new business. Thank you. Attorney Cunningham? No new business. Thank you. Mr. Feeney? No new business. Mrs. Mahan? Just very briefly, I'm glad to have the town manager back. Appreciate your Herculean, Texas efforts to get back here. And I do want to say that Ms. Conley, as acting town manager, really did an exemplary job. She was answered very promptly my individual queries, as well as kept us up to speed. And I'm not playing the woman card, but it's nice to have a female acting town manager. But she really did a fantastic job. And I don't know if I actually emailed that to her. I meant to. So please pass along my personal thanks for that. Because I know I sent her one particular query. So not only the promptness she answered it, but what the end result was. I almost wanted to call to apologize for making all that work for her. But she ended up very professionally and efficiently. And it was appreciated. So thank you. That's it. Thank you for that. Mr. Hurd? She actually got married, too. Yes, he missed my journal. Oh, I meant to say, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Missed one journal, oh my lord. I just, a lot of people don't know her as. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I was just kidding. Mr. Hurd. Gets a little silly, you know, once everyone leaves the gallery. You're supposed to leave. Let me take it to the head of my board. No, I just, for the second year in a row, I'd like to congratulate the Arlington Might AAA hockey team for two-peating their Valley League championship on Saturday. It was a bon burner against the Belmont Might AAA team with some pretty good players. But they pulled it out. So we had some very excited Might players in Arlington this weekend. Who's it going? Dylan The Wall Hurd. Yeah, he's doing it like that. Sorry. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly, I had learned just today, we had moved favorable action on Article 56, which is a prudent investor role. I learned today that the finance committee actually took it up as well and they moved no action. And then wondering, asking the chair perhaps if we could put this on our agenda for a future. Maybe we discuss it, maybe we don't. But I think if there's a difference here, it behooves us to try to work it out prior to a meeting or get a better understanding of what their concerns were and incorporate that into our comments one way or the other. Thank you. Ms. Marwood, would you take that note? Maybe consider that for the next agenda and I'll speak with the finance committee chair in the meantime. Thank you, Mr. DeCorsi. Mr. Diggins, any new business? Yeah, I had no new business but I do support what Mr. Corsi announced, Justin. Very much so. Very well. I have no new business. So I think that concludes the agenda. I entertain a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. I'm motion to adjourn by Mrs. Mahan, a seconded by Mr. Diggins, attorney coming in. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. By his or her vote. We are adjourned. ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help.


See there Why are you hiding him? I'm taking it all back Show yourself The oceans over there Hey, we were on this side. Yeah, no sunrises Just let your ticket they just let you take it or both straight Republic Mr. President What did she say I think she said I can't tell you Helen wanted to know if you'd won the election Well, you think you're likely to win I Was I It's going to turn considerable attention out of the Senate race in Illinois where the ABC News now wishes to project the state of Maryland President A little baby crying out to the cameras. Mr. President all three networks have projected you as the winner. What's your reaction, sir? Mr. President assuming you do have a very broad and deep mandate, what are you going to do with it in your second term? Well, let me ask you What do you think you can do something new to get the Soviets to resume negotiations no no now They must deal with a very strong president Shake up sir I This is Reagan, how do you feel you? Mr. Are you going to be downstairs celebration tonight, what are your thoughts about being first lady Are you going to say he's one even if he doesn't Trick me In your second term, you think you'll get a chance to go to the Soviet Union would you like to This election campaign well, whether I wonder whether or not you'll be there or something else and whether it does continue It's a good thing Any new or different initiative on spending mr. President First Nancy and I want to Which all of you there at the shore hotel ballroom a deep thanks for all the people say how much help he had and What an outstanding job was done by it from our campaign the finest campaign organization I think in the history of America Thanks to the mayor and Margaret Hintz our deputy campaign Thank you Well, they give We Here in California One that would capture the intensity of our devotion to freedom Now your strength of our commitment to American ideals Well, we began to carry a message to every corner of the nation This electoral victory belongs to you and the principles that you cling to Principles struck with a brilliance and bravery of patriots more than 200 years ago part of that prairie fire that we still think Defines America a fire of both that will keep alive the cleaning together We rolled up our sleeves and began working together We said we would get inflation under control This election means the end of something we kept burning for two decades Best days


But first is Friday and here to discuss a busy news week. We welcome Claire Hattles enterprise reporter Jacksonville today. Hello Claire Hi, I do Tim Gibbons of the Jacksonville Business Journal Good to be here. Thanks, Tim. Dave Bearline of Florida Times Union in studio. Good morning, everybody and Rounding out the four some blogger and regular contributor Fred Matthews Fred. How you doing? Good morning, A. G. Great Fred. Well, let's talk about this week. We'll go to your calls in a moment<PHONE_NUMBER> You can also email us at firstcoastconnect at wjct.org Connect on our Facebook page or tweet at wjct.news. We're gonna begin with our top story Jacksonville today reporter Claire Hattles outlined how some of the laws new laws will affect Northeast, Florida Let's start with the big one a new abortion law Claire go ahead and tell us about that law Right, so this is Florida's 15 week abortion ban this was going into effect with almost 150 other new laws today and We saw these hearings this week and in really a late-hour decision yesterday afternoon a Leon County judge ruled that the law violates Florida Florida's privacy clause Florida Constitution Privacy Clause and Will file an injunction so he gave this verbal ruling but said that it won't take effect until he can file it Which won't be until Tuesday so Technically that law is an effect for three or four days But he is planning to file this injunction on Tuesday repealing the law Yeah, and you know regarding the the gap between Filing the injunction the inevitable appeal from the governor's office. I mean does that mean the procedure is already? Illegal basically, I mean how long will it be between those two filings? Right, so I mean I guess I should clarify not repealing a law blocking the law probably temporarily because the state will definitely appeal and Based on what the judge was saying yesterday, you know, really he felt like the state did not provide very good experts Very good argument, but the state could absolutely change that and they pellet court and with another judge It could go into effect within the next few weeks again So I think many Abortion activists felt like this was a win especially after Roe v. Wade last week But it's it's not necessarily a long-term win and and his ruling could be overturned Yeah, I mean in the coming weeks. That's very likely. I mean Dave through this the sans administration We've seen time and time again these new laws. They get preliminary Strictened down and then they're upheld that looks like the trajectory here How is it? Why is it working this way and how is it a sans administration able to basically overturn judicial precedent and legal precedent? Well, what remains to be seen if they do obviously the issue here is that there was this prior Supreme Court ruling Florida Supreme Court ruling that this privacy provision the Constitution Protects abortion access in Florida and so that was what this particular ruling was hang on So we've seen this before where a district judge in Tallahassee rules against the Santas administration that it goes to the appeals court who does rule in favor of the DeSantis administration now this time You know what does the appeals court do do they make their own? precedent and overturn a previous Florida Supreme Court ruling or is this something that's going to go all the way to the State Supreme Court. Look, it's a different state Supreme Court now than it was. This is a Court that's full of DeSantis appointees. So it's different judges different justices and could very well be a different ruling Yeah, and Tim, I want to get you in list too You know when when you look at this particular law the 15 week abortion ban I mean we obviously had legislation on the local level Trying to protect the right of city employees to circumvent that ban How does this play into the culture war here in Jacksonville this this abortion? Decision and this change in the law and what does the future look like in our city? You know what the future would look like. I think that's the big question where cultural issues have you know swallowed pretty much all of politics and You saw the protests in the streets after the Roe v. Wade decision Obviously, they're a local activist on both sides of this issue who are continuing the fight and Like like everything else in politics now it becomes the motivating thing of does this get people to the polls? Does this become anything that takes over elections? Yeah, I mean that that's a big question with this and we're taking your calls here<PHONE_NUMBER> It's a holiday weekend. So there's there's room in the queue. I want to move on with some of these other laws I'm Fred. I want to get you in here on the stop woke act that Governor DeSantis He he calls the bill that it bans ways of teaching about race and racism in schools and workplaces Fred what do you think drove the governor to to push this kind of legislation the base The base of the Republican Party here in Florida those who will vote for Republicans and anybody with the red shirt no matter what and There is a feeling as you travel around Florida, especially certain areas of Florida that that they are quite frankly offended by the number of people who are Or not heterosexual that are moving up in government that are That are involved in politics in a deep way and and quite frankly people a number of people are offended by that and That that have those people that are offended by that largely are members of the Republican Party part of his base And it certainly doesn't hurt For him to to move with that because and by stealing the word woke he's stealing it from From young rappers. It is that's where it came from the Rappable, but he's stealing that from them from their end of it to to make this to make this work It's just an appeal to the base. That's all that's all it is That's all the governor has been doing for the last year and a half to shore up his conservative credentials When we you know, again, we get the government we voted for Yeah, and that's that's very true and we do have a version of democracy in the state Five four nine two nine three seven four calls. I'm clear I want to get you in here Fred made a really interesting point about Inverted the previously positive adjective woke to mean something negative and sinister Is that the cultural war plate of Republicans make here? I mean Why did they use this terminology and how did this bill come to be? right, I mean, I think With a lot of the laws that we're seeing taking effect We saw Democrats criticized the Republican supermajority for focusing on these issues that appeal to the Santas's base These issues that he was heavily advocating for rather than things like affordable housing or other issues that are impacting people's daily lives and so for him to name it stop woke is really I think a signal to his base as To what his motivations were the language of the law You know is can be really broadly interpreted and what the plaintiffs who are suing over it and tried to block it this week And a judge, you know rejected their their request for an injunction What they're saying is that this will really have a chilling effect because it's it's not really specific about what you Can teach and so it will likely lead teachers and workplaces to cut back on discussions about race Yeah, which I think was the goal of the Santas. Yeah, I mean and I want to get this this corollary issue in here Also, this this book challenging thing that's happening We're seeing this in school boards and and Dave I want to get you in on this I mean you're you're apparent obviously you don't have any intention of challenging any books clearly, but what Are people doing the challenge books and what kind of books are being called out for potentially problematic content? You know it often deals with sexuality I think that's some of the books that have been banned but you know there's also been moves to ban books to talk about race and I think it is a effort to kind of control What kind of art let's face there are books young people are exposed to at schools and it highlights this idea that this sort of fear factor that when children are outside of the home that parents have lost control of what kind of cultural exposure they have to different ideas different thoughts different viewpoints and that does resonate in some part with parents who feel like you know, there's That we do live in a culture that's got a lot going on in terms of online, etc. etc, so I think that's part of it, but it's also just this idea that You know that they are out there trying to indoctrinate your children and you should be very afraid of that And that does resonate with a certain amount of people. Yeah Got a couple more here. Obviously got 150 of them Fred I want to get you in on this act of shooter drill schools are gonna be required to hold emergency and active shooter drills at least once a year You know, can you talk a little bit about about this and what it says about the evolving Mindset of schools. I mean, obviously we were in school decades ago. It's a little bit different then You know, so what's the mindset between behind these active shooter drills? Well, the mindset behind them is is fairly obvious and clear it is to get everyone prepared for what Today seems to be Inevitable activities in randoms what could be inevitable in your school. Nobody knows when or where It's it's taking the place of the fire drill Frankly, it could take the place of the old fire drill or if we go back to the early 60s It could take the place of ducking under your desk in Preparation for the next nuclear strike a civil defense Act remember that I mean well, I know you don't remember it But there's some of us do ducking under the desk and actually Actually preparing for that nuclear strike. This is the new normal now That is happening and this is a preparation for it for For our getting our kids and the teachers prepared for what could happen at any time It's unfortunate, but these are the times we live in. I don't think anybody can really oppose this Because we just don't know when aware so It's probably a decent thing for the legislature to have done. We'll see how it plays out We'll see if it does take the place of the fire drill Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean we we've seen this evolution in our lifetime is read from being worried about external enemies this country to the enemy with them and We're seeing that as a subtext of a lot of this legislation that came through also the stop look act particularly I got one more. I want to get you in here in this Tim Local governments are gonna be able to ban the smoking of filter cigarettes on on beaches Fernandina Beach is going to do this You know, what's what's the logic here? Why can't I smoke my Winston light on the beach? well, and and you can still smoke on filtered cigars, which is the The ideas that the filters themselves Are litter that the beach gurus don't want Just real quick. I'm going to circle back to the stop work act Yes, a lot of the attention is focused on the educational system. There's actually a big concern for businesses because it Many of us have gone through various Sensitivity training and things that The DEI space is huge in American corporations now and there is a real fear that All of that mandated HR training sort of thing suddenly is going to open up companies to lawsuits. So One of the things I find ironic from a pro-business state is many of the Things the legislator take legislature takes up is designed to insulate businesses from lawsuits This opens up a whole new can of worms that companies actually are concerned about Yeah, and we saw that with the Santa's vetoing the bill that ban local governments from posing honoris Ordnances on local The ban on that would end up and the veto on that was I was not familiar people expected me that bill would have opened up Governments to a range of lawsuits from companies Obviously had had business backing on that but various government agencies were very very opposed Yeah, and that was a priority of of local Travis Hudson of St. John's County So, yeah, a lot of bills went into effect today. There's About 150 others we could go into them further. We're not going to we got a busy agenda 5 4 9 2 9 3 7 for your calls and I want to stay with Tim here because we're talking about a new train that could be happening Commuter rail from Jackson, Augustine could happen before the close of the 2020s according to Jackson Business Journal It would take hundreds of millions of dollars and the federal government make this happen the JTA Jackson Transportation Authority says that it could happen anyway Director of economic development Richard Clark told the St. Augustine City Commission There could be service between Jackson was saying Augustine three to five years the most difficult parts getting the local Government's aligned and getting the north with six hundred million dollars needed no big deal, right? But in a perfect world Clark says you could have an operating train in three years Laying track is a less than 12 month process He says commuter traffic I-95 is a mess Tim We we've been here before we've been on the show together for over a decade I think we're on the same panel where somebody discussed moving this having the skyway run to knock a T So people have some great ideas about this. Is this more feasible? I Here's the thing and I as you know Both of us try not to let cynicism ever enter the Conversation but but it it's hard to look at light rail and say it's something that Um Voters on the first coast would support that state government, which is not a fan of mass transit would support You look at the issues that the bright line has in central Florida, but the bright line is underway and you know, there is You know, they have trains running and they're they're looking to expand it So there are obviously are people across Florida who have gotten Transit projects like this done what I think JTA is saying and it is an interesting point that the actual infrastructure Building is not the biggest deal the right of way is there the the Ability to lay track and that's pretty easy. I mean I find estimations of a year God knows how many projects we cover that that timeline ends up stretching But it really is a political will and a money issue and the economic impact could be huge I mean you think of all of the workforce needs you think of all the people who are traveling back and forth from st John's County to downtown having another way of doing that without building more highway lanes could have a huge impact Okay, thanks Tim. Um, we're gonna We're gonna take a call here. We got Greg Burton on line one Greg Burton school space safety specialist. He wants to weigh in on an active shooter drills Go ahead Greg Good morning. Thank you for taking my call and I'm also the chief of school police at the ball County I just wanted to give more clarity on the active shooter drills been doing these drills That's 2018 with the introduction of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Act also state schools We not only do active shooter drills. We're required to do one a month and two in the month of August and Then we also do emergency drills which include fire drills So you end up doing two drills a month one for active shooter and then one for either hurricanes other drills or or fire drills and Also, the office of safe schools Faith in the consideration the fact that these drills are sometimes Traumatized they sometimes from traumatized young kids and so we're taking active We're being active in ensuring that we have less of an impact on the Mental trauma side of what these drills that cause there's a lot of Resources being built into that some of these we may do tabletop drills not all would be active drills that People are actually physically going into so the office a school that's looking into this and for the parents out there who who are concerned about Very young children in effect that we are looking at that and making steps to to make sure that their children are Less traumatized Greg. I've got a comment here from another listener in a Tom McGuire I wanted to get your take on this Active shooter drills are just a signal for failure to prevent weapons getting to the hands of those who would harm them These drills cannot help but be traumatizing to our children Greg I'm going to ask you is the problem here guns You've got a wife who's running for sheriffs. So I mean this is a salient question politically So I can't speak to the fact whether it's guns or not I wouldn't touch that because that's a very Controversial issue my job is to ensure that if guns are involved to ensure that we take all Actions to prevent the guns from coming in and we're doing that by a number of means the We live in a gun culture Is that a positive thing? I mean, you know, we we're in a country that has most mass murders of any in the world And we call the gun culture. Is that positive? I I I'm not going to say if positive or negative, but that's the culture we live in like as Fred said These are the times that we live in and because these are the times that we live in We can't On an individual basis in our school system change that but what we can do is address the possibility of Because we are in a gun culture Society address the Everything we can to ensure that our children are safe. I get that but I want to push back a little bit because I mean we've been discussing I mean clearly the state believes has compelling interest in anti-woke education education about gender about race And all these issues is very prescriptive and we see it with like government instituted civics training But on gun culture were suddenly agnostic. I mean that that seems like a cop-out Well, it's not a cop-out. It's the world that I live in in the world of safety and My job is to ensure that the children are safe and we do this by many means either by hardening the school by addressing mental health by Ensuring that schools the children are not bringing or young people are not bringing guns to school Okay This is the society that we live in and It's been created over years and years and years, but we are here and because we are here We simply have to do our part Not just in the school district, but the parents as well Yeah, and and speaking of that as the next sheriff need to do something about guns on the street I mean do we need to do more aggressive gun confiscations or you know Just I'll leave that to the candidates for sheriff. Okay understood. All right. Thank you Greg. I appreciate your call We're gonna move on appreciate it So I want to get you back in here on the train thing Claire Moving on What with this train would you take it the same Augustine? I mean you're relatively new to the area I mean something that would appeal to you. I Mean maybe I might take it to the beach I think when you open to this segment, you know, you said train in vain question, which I think is a great point Really, they're thinking about it for these commuters that are coming from st John's there's more commuters coming from st John's and to do vault and the other way of course, but Jacksonville is such a sprawling city I think many of those commuters aren't going to downtown. We have all of these parking garages What will happen with those and downtown? It's I just have a hard time imagining the demand for a workday commute from st John's County to Jacksonville for everyday residents. I want to go to the beach that sounds great But for a 600 million dollar project, it's hard to imagine the band demand is there Yeah, this sounds like sounds like Richard Clark dream weaving a little bit Dave. I want to get you in on this I mean st. John's County. It's a car culture You know that their solution almost anything is to expand a road Would people be really trainable to take this commuting option? Given the fact that when they get to Jacksonville There's really not reliable ground change rotation in a way commensurate with other big cities. Yeah trainable That's a good way of putting it a G. I you know, I no pun intended I think I've seen over the years all sorts of different studies that have been floated on this Now, I don't think the demand is there I think it would be running empty trains with empty seats Yeah, I was driving around town the other day at rush hour and they built these Express lanes where people can, you know pay a toll to be able to get there faster Very few people that I saw in those toll lanes So if you're not having people using toll lanes to get from point A to point B faster Why are they going to get in a train? In order to quote beat traffic that you know, they they're they're not getting into toll lanes right now That I've seen in great numbers. So I just don't see it really happening It's probably fine to plan for it. But the idea that by 2030 You know, there's gonna be a train running between Jacksonville and St. Augustine for commuters I just don't see it. Yeah, and there's also the right away issues.  I don't think mr. Clark is mentioning Right, I mean, you know, even right now to do people ride the buses in great numbers in Jacksonville I mean, I just don't see it as being transit and You know, are there really that many people from Southern Augustine to go to Jacksonville? You know, maybe from Northern St. John's County for work But St. Augustine's its own little sort of ecosystem down there in terms of where people work and live and our people in a kitty gonna drive to a Train station and then chop on a computer train to go downtown Which isn't as big of an employment hub as it used to be. It just feels a little bit of Wishful thinking going on here. Yeah, and and that's that's a very interesting point I think that's where we're at. We'll wait and see how this develops obviously, but You know, they've got a show improve. I guess is what we're saying. I'm speaking of showing improving. We've got Corinne Brown She's running for office again. Can Corinne deliver? Politico playbook has covered the story this week I brown has jumped into the race for Florida's 10th congressional district That's the Orlando area as we know but there are unresolved issues with her qualification for the ballot. Go figure Brown was in Congress until 2016. She was defeated by a loss in the primaries We know after her district was reconfigured then convicted in the one drawer for education charity fraud case The commission was thrown thrown out, but then she pleaded out on one count Before there was a new trial. She owe $62,000 in restitution She was dropped from Florida's voter rolls and she registered to vote again in Duval County in November 2021 Also, she signed a candidate oath on June 14th of this year That said that she'd been a registered member of Democratic Party for 365 days for qualifying Which would supersede that oath? The State Department is saying that they basically accept the oath is provided to their office. They don't confirm or deny Brown's campaign manager Corey Bradford who is local has not responded to Politico's questions on this Florida's voting laws concerning people with felony convictions requires that these people must pay off all fees Fines and restitution for they can vote Is brown an eligible candidate? That's an open question Fred I want to get you in here on this Cory Brown's political comeback. How do you think it's going? Well, if you listen to Cory and Brown, it's going well Now, you know that those are all of the Questions that you know that most voters and folks who are just observing this story Were all would be all puzzled about paying the fines back that would be there Certainly, she got a great deal and accepted a great deal that gets her out of the judicial system per se But it just still goes to the core question of how can a convicted felon be running for office? And of course those of us in the know know that she's a federally convicted felon and and she's running for a federal office and that does not The federal laws do not prevent her from running for that office now the key here is That realize that you know, koreen is not doing this by herself I've had a couple of conversations with her over the last week or so and basically Her and her daughter chanterelle are the ones trying to work through these machinations to get this done So they can you know get on the ballot in time and I mean she's registered But but get through all of this and make sure she's on the ballot to run in this district where she where there A lot of democratic candidates already in there running So it's going to be interesting to see in the end if she makes the ballot But I haven't seen any ads no political activity That's going on yet that says that this can this candidacy is actually for real But again in talking with koreen and those it's real for her. She's bounded determined to do it And um, you know if they can work through these last all the things you talked about to get to make sure she's on the ballot She'll be there, but her winning is going to be a whole entirely different thing Yeah, I want to get you in here this claire.  I mean she's running in orlando She's served orlando for parts of her congressional career, obviously Um, and her statement of filing for candidacy said her heart has always been with the people of orlando um, that's that's a claim that may or may not be true, but As a voter if you saw a jacksonville candidate come into an orlando primary with jacksonville campaign managers and this and that Would you be inclined to support that candidate or would you as an orlando voter? Say maybe not go with somebody who's spent the last four few years dealing with felony charges I mean, I will say if nothing else she does have the name recognition Probably across the state not just in jacksonville even if it is notoriety from the felony charges so I think you know, she probably will have some of that name recognition to voters in orlando the The question of her candidacy. I think you know based on federal law It's clear that she can run this question of whether or not she was registered to vote in time As far as I can tell from the state law It seems to require that you're not registered with any other party within the last year But not necessarily that she had to have been registered with the democratic party for the full year So I think Legally, it seems like she is a qualified candidate can run Absolutely It's these questions that really will come down to voters whether or not they see these as as suspect And I think that's hard to say. I mean, she did do some good things But of course that's been overshadowed in recent years over these felony convictions Yeah, and and dave and this is an interesting interesting point here I mean one of the opponents she has in this race is natalie jackson I mean we we covered the corine brown trial the first one and natalie jackson was briefly a defense attorney for corine brown Could that come into play in this race or Or no It's coming into play right now agey I mean, it's kind of unusual to run against your old defense attorney But I didn't realize that what a small world. Okay. Um, yeah, it could I mean the the deal there is They have so many people running that you just need a plurality Uh, you don't have to get 50 you just have to get the most votes Of the bunch. So this pile gets sliced a lot of different ways. Maybe corine brown has some hardcore base that puts her over the top My sense of it is that she's uh, She hasn't been there in several years Yes, she did some good things in orlando in that area, but you know memories fade And I just know my sense when I saw her in doing some of her interviews In some ways she seems like A different person. I mean she's older That's going to be a real grueling campaign If she's not up already doing a lot of barnstorming It's just hard to see her coming into a district that is not in her hometown And pulling it off through some sympathy tour of unbacked type of Approval over getting back in the ring. Yeah, I mean that's the thing about it and um You know when you look at the situation at corine brown, it seems like she is diminished Um from the trial time and we we saw her in the trial and she basically did a one woman defense it was like performance art as her as her defense and It was an amazing performance that didn't do her any good legally, but I don't think she could pull that off today And you know in a race with younger candidates with candidates that have more local connections More local motivation. We we have to ask is if there's any there there with this campaign I think that's the question got another comment from um A listener once again corine brown bends and breaks the rules her long history of doing this is well known I think that is why she's seeking office in orlando where her various scandals may be less well known Um, we will see we will follow this race obviously from afar Five four nine two nine three seven four calls This has not been a banner day for calls, but if you want to get in you still have time We have another story here to get to Silences golden for jackson old city council Cheering foot stomping sign waving Out of bounds for the public a jackson old city council meetings under new rules approved this week The council voted up a bill 14 to 4 defying and abandoning disruptive behavior at meetings including making shows of support for political candidates using threatening language Making offensive gestures ignoring time limits on speaking The the cruelest cut of all or making any other display of excessive noise sounds or movements This bill was introduced in march by council president sam newbie. Who's no longer council president Saying it was necessary to define disruptive behavior um so So dav I want to get you in here. Um, this is part of a long trend of sort of clipping the wings of commenters, right? Yeah, it's obviously they have 90 minutes for people talk about everything under the sun and uh, so that does happen to some extent in those Uh, those meetings, but you know, the real disruptive stuff is when you have really hot button issues and people show up in groups and they Uh, they respond to some of the comments and it can get a little bit unruly It seems like it's almost right a passage now every council president has to close the chambers and throw everybody out in order to show that they're They're tough at running the meetings You know, it's going to be open to interpretation You know some of the You know making gestures. I mean, how does that get enforced? But uh You know to the extent that it's a collegial meeting and everybody has a chance to say it and isn't drowned out by anybody I guess it can be it can be good as long as it's applied evenly and nobody is singled out in terms of how it's enforced Yeah, and fred I want to get you in and hear on this too. Um Will this be fairly enforced? I mean because it seems like the people who make the controversial comments are the hard right people or people Objecting to some A curtailing of civil liberties by the city council. I mean so Is there a prospect of this being evenly and fairly enforced in a way that makes People who aren't on the city council currently happy Well No You know, honestly, I mean this is a stop me from expressing my opinion And my my concern about your act that the city council is not a courtroom Where uh, you don't want to influence the jury by having comments of someone standing up um and making comments back in the uh back in the audience to That may influence the jury one way or the other and the judge wraps his gavel and has that person thrown out You have the the council and all public meetings without throughout the state have a period of time where folks can speak Uh for a period of time three minutes And it can be 90 minutes total for the public hearing at the beginning and then each bill Had that is uh For a vote at a certain time has a public comment A period available for that bill It's just surprising That at a time in which we're going to have back-to-back African-american presidents of the city council We get a we get a we get a some legislation that adventure that essentially says we don't want to hear it And we want you to stop now clearly we've always had cops in the in the in the room to stop any unruly behavior Any uncivilized behavior and if you're going over your time limit the bell rings there you have to stop But this business of I don't want to hear anything. I don't want to see anything I don't want any noise while we're doing it It's purely a measure to protect the sensitivity of the elected city council members Who are supposed to be in tune with their constituents who are in that audience? I think it's a bad idea, but that's what we got again We get the government we vote for and for some reason the city council members at least 13 of them feel threatened by these outbursts Yeah, I mean that 14 to 4 vote. I mean that that cross-party line So um, we don't have to break down on that vote, but that was pretty unanimous. Um, tim I want to get you in here sort of a devil's advocate thing I mean we Jacksonville has been a city for a long time dealt with a lot of controversial issues over the years um, you know the school integration issue like 50 years ago was A really tough issue for the city to endure Um, but it seems like in the last few years, you know really since the end of the human rights ordinance expansion debate We've seen the ratcheting up of these restrictions the scott wilson presidency May have been when it really started when when scott wilson got upset over some outbursts in the crowd Um, but it feels like we're on a slippery slope here. Um You know, why now why why can't the current council presidents the current council leadership Run the city council in the way that it used to be before where you didn't need all of these rules That's what surprised me about all of this having sat through interminable hro um Council meetings and all the debate that went on all of the Um, you know, frankly people who felt very passionate on both sides of that and yet they were able to Have city council meetings and go through without having to put in these additional restrictions I do wonder how much of this is a post pandemic sort of thing though You know, you talk to people who work in the service industry and they'll complain about people, you know Forgetting how to be out at bars forgetting how to act in a restaurant that after a period of time where people couldn't be in Council chambers now they're back You know, does the council forget when it's like to deal with actual voters Though do the people who are showing up to voice their opinions and how they should behave at a council meeting? I don't know if that comes into play as well. Yeah, and um, claire I want to get you in here We got a second part of story too the council rejected to build a pushback public comment to later in the schedule um Right now a public comment is pretty early in the in the agenda Before a lot of things actually happen So you get to hear the usual suspects room for 90 minutes. Why didn't they want to push it back? Well, one odd thing about this bill is that the person who filed it. I believe it was terence freeman But the person who filed it had filed it as an emergency measure Which really didn't make sense for it to have been an emergency and so I mean they rejected the bill and This this request to make it an emergency measure, but really it seemed to be an effort to Save time for the people that they're granting awards to or that are there for really short consent agenda sort of business But you know, most of the council agreed that our schedule is that people come for comment And we shouldn't be doing more business before public comment as to the The the one about how to behave in council meetings I think the context of that bill is important. It wasn't written by sam newbie himself I was written by the legal department in reaction to a lawsuit against the city When erin bowman was council president of free speech lawsuit someone who was kicked out and says it was unfair. So really this This new rule is about protecting the city's legal interests more than it is about protecting People's free speech rights and it's you know, a direct outcome of someone suing the city over over free speech violations As as they're claiming So it's hard to imagine these rules being evenly enforced because it's such a wide range of Of demonstrations, but I think it's important to to recognize that it really is For the purpose of protecting the city's legal interests. Yeah I want to give you a little bit of good news here. Um, it's freedom week and you know what that means You got tax savings Consumers in florida are going to have the chance for some relief by saving more than half a billion dollars By not having to pay sales tax on kayaks diapers energy to fish and appliances starting july 1st Um, you know, these tax holidays have varying spans of time One last a week another last two years Freedom week runs through july 7th that applies the fishing equipment camping gear Pull supplies other necessities for enjoying the outdoors The first such tax holiday was approved last year Um, tim, I want to get you in here on this on these tax holidays. Um, do they really say people money? I mean, what what's the point of these tax holidays? Are they good for politics or good for people? I mean, we see estimated savings there Um, you know, they they add up, but are they really savings that people take advantage of reliably? They people do take advantage of them small retailers tend to like them Because it can drive people into stores the the actual impact on the economy though is fairly mixed the Economists who who look at sales tax holidays Generally say that they don't have any sort of long-term growth It just it moves around when people are are buying things now Obviously if you're getting a kayak for you know, 600 hours, you know, take sales tax on it that that that saves you some money, but the the Reason for the proliferation of these sales tax holidays is it's a great easy way for a politician to say look We're doing something without necessarily having, you know, any huge amount of impact Um, you know, see making the strawberry shortcake the the state dessert You know same sort of thing it makes somebody happy, but the impact is is muted Yeah, and there's some others too. We've got a year-long tax holiday for energy star appliances and for diapers and baby clothes This runs through june 30th of next year Um, there's a two-year tax holiday and hurricane hardening for your home Impact resistant windows doors and garage doors that run through june 30th 2024 When you look at these appliance and hurricane hardening things Claire Um, are these regressive tax breaks? I mean, they see the benefit people actually own things But if you're renting, um, you don't really make out on the tax break to you Not necessarily and it does seem like The state celebrates these tax breaks Maybe more than people really benefit from them. I mean you might save 10 or 15 dollars this weekend I mean, maybe the hurricane hardening for homeowners, but it's hard to imagine it materially Improving people's lives to have a sales tax-free weekend. Yeah, and there's a couple more to there's three more here I've got a slow slow scroll on my screen story A two week back to school holiday from july 25th at august 7th That'll be your schools your school stuff like clothes shoes backpacks, etc I'm a week-long sales tax holiday and equipment used by skilled trade workers from gloves to power tools to safety glasses And then you've got your fuel tax holiday. That's in october That'll save you 25.3 cents per gallon. We'll see what 25 cents is worth Um in october. It's not worth much right now I think it's about time for us to go to our lightning round right on cue Okay, um fred matthews. Um, give me your lightning round. What are you doing this slave this independence weekend? I am going to enjoy the city. I'm going to get out and roll around a bit But I've got I've got a bit of history florida jacksonville tied together real quick The time jay brown jackson takes her seat as associate justice at the u.s. Supreme court She's from florida by the way the two florida senators voted against her val demics congressman. She's from jacksonville She's running for the senate. Uh, she was the representative of the orlando area and his representative of orlando area in For this past term and interesting enough. She's a former police chief Also running as a former police chief from jacksonville running for sheriff Of course is lakisha burton who would be the first female to run We just talked to her husband. Yeah, you just talked to her husband to run and I and uh, and ironically you've got uh, She's from jacksonville born and raised and surprise surprise the next sheriff. That's a lot of lightning Will be an african-american All right. Um, thank you fred for that. Um, tim tell us what's on your mind. What's your working for independence day? Oh, uh, looking at what's happening in downtown jackson. A lot a lot of activity of, uh Buildings training changing hands and uh development plans that uh, if it all comes to be uh, could really be transformational Right on uh, dave. What are you doing for independence day? Or where are you looking at? Well, so among the laws that took effect today is uh, strawberry shortcake is now the official dessert for florida So I will be eating some strawberry shortcake and putting down the key lime pie for this uh, fourth of july weekend Pictures or it didn't happen claire. What's up with you? You know, I don't really have plans for the weekend But I will point out great reporting this week for my jacksonville today colleague will brown On how black workers are central to the maritime industry check that out at jacks today dot org Check out the whole jacks today and that's not all you need to check out We've also got a medical show this weekend doctors as physician citizens This means that medical professionals extend their sphere of influence from daily practice into the public arena This is not for power's sake But for the sake of community health Tune in saturday at 4 p.m. Thank you so much to our round table Participants, uh, fred matthews and tim gibbons remote in studio. Dave bearline claire heddles. Thank you so much For making a great round table. Have a great fourth of july


For all your NRG innovation product needs make sure you check out driveenerg.com. That's d-r-i-v-e-n-r-g.com. What's up everybody I'm EvilRabbit here today to give you guys some of the video clips from this weekend. So this weekend I got a chance to head out to PA to compete in Misri Bay Event 1 SCCA solo. I got a chance to take out my Veloster Turbo which I have not put onto a track by any means so far yet. So it was actually a fun time getting that car, getting the shake down a little bit, see how the car reacts and find the grip levels of the car and potentially the limits of the car in a safe you know sanctioned environment. Misri Bay put on a very amazing event. I was actually very very impressed with the handling of that car out of the box at his bone stock. It just has an intake filter change because by rules I was running an H Street which is a stock class for stock cars. So very minimal mod you're allowed to have such as like a cat-back exhaust, rims 1 plus or minus 1 inch of factory size, a 200 foot tire or minimum which is probably the stickiest tire you can get other than Comperace tires, as well as you can have seatbelts modified and stuff and very minimal suspension like springs and stuff like that. So it's basically meant for stock cars. I was actually seriously impressed with how the car came out. I actually ended up taking first in the HS class which was an amazing time to take that car out for the first time, take first in the class with that car and you know have a good time.  We got eight runs apiece. I took the first few runs kind of conservatively still not super slow to get a feel for the car and get acclimated to the track layout that they had because there was a crossover that was pretty bumpy. You guys will see it in the clips. I have a couple camera angles from outside of the car and the car and as well on the roof and my fiance recorded some outside as well. So I'm going to show you guys all the clips from this weekend. I hope you guys enjoy these clips. I know I had a lot of fun doing it looking forward to doing some more racing this season with Missouri Bay as well as possibly Akron Sports Car Club. So I hope you guys enjoy these clips and we'll see you guys next time. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video clips from all most of my runs at the SCCA event. I ended up picking up two cones in one of my runs. It's unfortunate but it's also fortunate that I picked up two cones in one run and not cones throughout the event. I only hit two cones the entire event. Each cone was worth two seconds so that run was pretty much done and void as soon as I hit one cone because the times were so close together. So until next time guys I appreciate it. And as you know you guys can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Twitter and Instagram all that's found in the description box below. So until next time, thank you guys for watching. I'm EvilRabbit and I'm out.


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