Welcome to the Board of Selected Meeting for Monday, October 7th. I apologize for starting a few minutes late We were next door at a budget and revenue task force meeting Which I'm sure you'll be able to see on cable when you're interested I'd like to remind everybody that this meeting is being recorded. Our first item is a proclamation for the International Day of the Girl and so I have a Signed proclamation, but I'm going to read for everyone and we We actually have excellent come on up. I'm going to read this for you Proclamation whereas the need for international and domestic recognition of women and girls is called for to help galvanize Worldwide enthusiasm for goals to better girls lives providing an opportunity for them to show leadership and reach their full potential And whereas one in four girls in America do not finish high school and the dropout rate is even higher for girls of color Worldwide thirty five million have never gone to school and only thirty percent of girls are enrolled in secondary school And whereas one in three adolescent girls in the United States is a victim of physical emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner And whereas the quality and universal access to education for every girl and boy are among the United Nations Millennium development goals supported by a hundred eighty nine countries including the United States and Whereas the United Nations established October 11th as the International Day of the Girl child supported and co-sponsored by the United States in 97 other countries and Whereas the day of the girl campaign calls on communities across the globe to recognize the girls worldwide face many injustices such as discrimination gender stereotypes child marriage and lack of education and empowers girls to fight for their rights and Whereas the town of Arlington joins female students of the Arlington High School the Zonta Club of Arlington and other Organizations and supports increasing girls participation in sports science and math related activity High school graduation rate and providing equal opportunities for all girls by speaking out against gender-based injustices Celebrating all girls potential and encouraging all girls to pursue their dreams now There are four be it resolved that we the members of the board of selectmen hereby do proclaim October 11th 2013 as the first day of the girl child in the town of Arlington and it's signed by us all Tell us about yourselves I'm Julie Harris. I'm also a junior at Arlington High School. I'm Carrie Anderson. I'm also a junior I Have a thank-you note on behalf of all of us My friends and I are very lucky to grow up in a society where we can go to school Marry who we want and vote We need to use our voice to speak out against the injustices faced by other people especially other women and girls across the globe With this proclamation, we hope to raise awareness about girls in other places who aren't as fortunate Girls worldwide suffer from numerous injustices from forced illiteracy to sexual harassment to simply not having a voice The International Day of the girl child brings much needed attention to the challenges girls face and Advocates for the progress of girls rights around the world We thank you board of selectmen on behalf of the girls around the world who aren't as lucky as us The ones who are forgotten the ones who are abused left illiterate and alone Thank you for helping to recognize girls rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world Together, we will make a difference one girl at a time Excuse me. May I ask your name again? Sorry. I'm Stewart. That is absolutely one of the very best Presentations I've witnessed in 25 years very well done You can also thank the public speaking teacher mr. Dangle at our So I was talking about this proclamation today When I was reading through my packet, I was happened to be sitting around with some friends and I learned that What one of when I was talking to she said well, let me give you all sorts of other information that you need to know I said, alright, and she said if you are Under age 18 under age 18 and you don't have a child you if you can keep that girl in school She is incredibly much more likely to both stay in school and not have a second child And that was her that was her message to me for for girl child proclamation day was Having a child in high school means stay in school because they'll keep number two from also coming down Joe, I want to I want to thank the young women for bringing this to us I'm the father of two daughters, and I know that Before they could talk I used to hold them. I used to say you can do anything you want Since they've learned how to talk they reminded me that they can't be major league baseball players And they reminded me of a number of other things. So it's important to always keep this In front of us. So thank you All right Moving on to number two. We have a second proclamation about st. Agnes school Steve would you be so kind? Yes Thank you, Dan As I mentioned last week under new business St. Agnes elementary school is celebrating It's 125th anniversary and our office was so kind as to put together a proclamation I'm celebrating such an achievement. I I will say that I was a third generation attendee of st. Agnes school with my grandfather Starting off and then my father and then myself and my brother and quite frankly after three generations of Awesome shock that it's still standing after 125 years, but It really does it's a great asset to the town and I'm Very happy to be able to read this proclamation So here it goes Whereas St. Agnes school is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year And it's been an integral part of the community for over the over the past 125 years playing a major role in the education of the youth of the town and Whereas the teachers at the st. Agnes school have taught many students who have achieved great honor and recognition Some of who have become town officials doctors craftsman lawyers and other professions and Whereas St. Agnes school is an important part of the community Helping develop our most important resource the youth of the community now therefore be it resolved that we the members of the Board of Selected would like to take the opportunity To congratulate the members of St. Agnes parish the teachers the sisters and clergy Who have been involved in the success of st. Agnes school over the years and we ask that all residents Join with us in recognizing this outstanding school celebrating its 125th anniversary Signed the five of us. Thank you, and I am I'll be sure to make sure that this gets to the school Thank you Anything for another on st. Agnes all right moving along consent agenda We have a request for a drain layer license for GW equipment company of Sudbury Metro paving of Wakefield We have appointments of new election workers Joanne del Yanni Patricia Hagan Linda Heatherman Margaret Manion Ruth McAllister We have a request from the Arlington Chamber of Commerce for free parking for holiday shopping November 30th December 7th December 14th December 21st, which is something we've done in past years We have a request for a one-day beer and wine license here at town hall for a taste of Arlington Which is also the Chamber of Commerce. Is there anyone here who is here to talk about any of these consent agenda items? We come on up Chamber of Commerce, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to tell the town a little bit about taste of Arlington I don't know if you have any questions, but it's going to be on Tuesday October 22nd here at the town hall from 6 to 8 30 PM. It's being sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the town of Arlington It's a biannual event to showcase and promote Arlington restaurants We'll have over 20 food vendors here, and they'll be pulling out all the gourmet stops Including restaurants, bakeries and caterers There'll be six local wineries and breweries here to provide taste samples Coffee tea and water will be available at no charge a jazz trio We'll be playing music and you can buy your tickets online the Chamber website ARLCC.org or by calling the Chamber of Office Chamber of Commerce office And if you purchase by October 15th the tickets are just thirty-five dollars Any questions? Sounds good to me. All right. We'll sign you up. I was just wondering what exotic food is coming out of to taste out of us You'd love to see some samples wouldn't you? I'll see what I can do Thank you. Thank you, and I saw in back someone else who wanted to Sorry, I couldn't see in back.  That's all I'm saying. Yes So we're asking for free parking get in December is just to encourage people to come to the center and park their car in shop and dine And also on the agenda is about first lights. Yeah, go for it. Okay, so basically The chamber did this I don't know back in 2007 the previous executive director Organized it and we're going to bring it back. It's going to involve two trucks on Saturday, December 7th noon to five Two trolleys going up and down mass. I have transporting people along the avenue They'll be strolling carolers in each section of town and then every business is going to have their own kind of promotion to get people to Come in and then in the middle of that of the day a certain selectman will be our Santa Claus and Come down on the fire truck. Hopefully down to Mass Ave at the end of the Evening around 435 in each business district. There'll be a tree People will gather to to carol around the tree and then the trees will be lit up Simultaneously and then after that the stores will be have their windows decorated with lights and those will all go on and again Hopefully encouraging people to kind of you know, go into the shops and spend some time in each district shopping great, and I have Pablo from Derby farm and Jan with it from Artbeat and this truly is a town-wide event we're all working together to Make this happen. So in the town And so we're talking about free parking in the municipal lots Russell Commons lot on Munich Mystic Street in the railroad lot on Lampson Way, right for those four Saturdays, right? We have a motion approval on all items Second proofs and second any further discussion All those in favor, please say aye. All right five zero. Thank you. Thank you very much Next up appointments Ellen I'm moat and Tracy's Gahan. I apologize. Please come on up to the mic and tell me how I should have pronounced your name Tracy scan I apologize. It's okay. Everybody gets it wrong. Well, thank you for coming. No problem My last name is a real challenge. It's Ellen. Oh, Matt. The two a's are pronounces an O They thank you very much. Welcome. I apologize. We're getting it wrong. I Would have been astounded So tell us why you're interested in the Dallin Museum What do you bring how thank you for volunteering tell us about why you're here and what what brings you to the museum? I've spent the last 20 years working for United Nations headquarters in the Department of Peacekeeping and This is an opportunity for me New to the town of Arlington, but from not so far away. I grew up in Waltham to get to know and contribute to the town of Arlington and I think Cyrus Dallin is an incredible Inspiration He inspires me and I'm sure he does all of you. So I would like to contribute to that Thank you. Not sure I can say much more than Ellen just said but same thing You know just want to volunteer and help out and do what we can Yeah, thank you very much and I would just like to point out It's really great to have new residents that are moving in the town wanting to get involved in volunteering and not You know, you'll hear many times the how much we rely on our volunteers and I thank you very much for wanting to contribute And piggybacking on that I just say one thing often leads to another we may well invite you into exercise your peacekeeping skills when town meeting rolls around I have to have a mandate to do that Trace it may ask are you also a new resident? I'm not a new resident, but I've been living in Arlington for about eight years now So I'm a little behind on getting into my volunteer mode Choosing now to do so. Thank you Marie will let you sort out who got the second I think Joe Any further discussion seeing none all those in favor, please say aye Thank you very much Next up citizens open forum Except in unusual circumstances any matter presented consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon Nor decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established It should be noted There's a three-minute time limit to present a concern or request as they're in here for system open forum I come before you very quickly tonight in my guys as the co-chair of the Arlington recycling committee Gordon, what's your last name Gordon Jamison? Thank you So very quickly the Red Sox were up one nothing Bottom of the fourth they tried to score in the fourth, but we were unsuccessful First I wanted to give you a quick update on recycling and trash tonnage in the town That's the graph that you have before you on the far left That was about nineteen thousand tons that we incinerated each year ten years ago over the course of ten years We have reduced that by one-third To this past year down to twelve thousand six hundred through the efforts of the residents the recycling committee the DPW and with your support You'll notice on the right that there's a big difference between FY 12 and FY 13 We attribute that almost completely to the change in contract to weekly recycling and JRM and That's just really working swimmingly We will be back to you soon with new ideas how to make another step function down To that fifty percent of diversion target that the board and the committee have set as a target for us to go to short term Yes, the total amount of savings over that ten-year period of time is two million dollars Yeah, so so the municipal solid waste is is is solid trash Recycling and yard waste we run about twenty one thousand six hundred tons. We've stabilized there So eight ten thousand hundred would be a fifty percent diversion where fifty percent of that is either composted yard waste or recycled Which would put us in the upper echelon of? towns of this density and in the commonwealth The other reason to quickly appear here was to request our annual proclamation for our Langton recycles week From the tenth to the sixteenth of November Community collection day will be on the sixteenth And that we we do that that week because it's convenient and also it's the same week of our America recycles day Quick update there. There'll be lots more information in the press and we're distributed a town day We will be doing foam collection again. We will have a paper shredder on board We will be collecting sneakers and a quick word about we will be doing e-waste And of course e-waste you think you can drop off at the DPW during normal working hours every day every day of that They're open on textiles. We only want to collect Children's and women's clothing on collection day that is lightly used the stuff that you don't just want to get rid of You can bring to Goodwill put it in the stratum box or the platen planet aid box They all make money even if it's not usable by recycling the textiles which are used in things like car soundproofing like that. So again, that will be on November 16th and we'll be back sometime in the interim early November to further publicize and have someone read the proclamation So thank you Yes Styrofoam we will collect again this year. So yes. Yes styrofoam. Yes sneakers. Yes shredder and and usual collection of goodies I personally would be delighted to do the proclamation, but we'll put that up for a future meeting. Yes. Yeah Yes, we were just excellent. Yeah, November 4th. Okay. We'll look forward to scheduling it then Thank you mark kept line 11 Palm Street I'm here to speak about an item last meeting there was the lane restriping issue and I have a couple concerns one is Sort of lack of opportunity for public input on it. It was rather minimal tack minutes aren't posted timely to the website and Simply with a bicycle committee. So there wasn't much public discussion of it second the Specifications of how much space is needed for shared lanes and bike lanes There seems to be two sets one applied to East Arlington in a different set applied to this project So they're much more relaxed. It was claimed that a minimum 10th wide Parking space and bus spaces were needed in East Arlington. Yeah, when it comes to putting bike lanes for the West only eight feet are necessary and There are claims as far as why four lanes wouldn't fit in East Arlington That minimum 15 feet of shared space was necessary on the outside lanes and yet here The 15 foot shared spaces barely met in the widest sections Instead Bike lanes get shoehorned in which require yet more room and it's not there. So it's going to be tight And it's just sort of two sets of rules being applied whatever needed to install bike lanes That's it. Thank you. I'm curious mark Have you had a chance to share your thoughts with the DPW director? I did Mike Mike has been very gracious He forwarded me the drawing Right away after the meeting when I asked him for it and it's been posted online on the DPW area under projects So he's great about that and it offered me Offered to meet me on Thursday. Do you haven't met with him yet? No, all right Although, you know the tick marks are there on the street It seems ready to go So I don't know when it will get painted, but perhaps before or after that meeting with him So Mike's been great So I'm unclear. Are you against this strike? Oh, I'm against Having two sets of rules one for East Arlington and one when it comes to putting in bike lanes elsewhere My brother have one consistent set Well as first how much width you need You know FST engineers said oh you should have 10 foot wide parking spaces and bus stops for safety But then over here, it's only No, not striping cost walk striping of bike lanes No objection to crosswalks Anyone else I Just here tonight to open up a dialogue between the town the select bin and the Guess newly formed Arlington Heights business group Also here to invite you to our next meeting, which is Thursday the 17th at 8 30 a.m Cape Ridge Savings Bank enter around the back and The meeting room on the second floor At our last meeting I thought I'd step in and try and help everybody out up there Before we all get too upset about some of the changes that have happened with the last bit of construction, which apparently I missed the plans in 2011 or if I passed us all but one of the major changes That's affecting the businesses on the east side of Park Ave is the bus stop was Super-sized and Give an idea. I have a picture here. We're actually going at five and a half parking spots. We're going from From the intersection all the way to classic cafe. That's almost half of the business for bus stop Wouldn't be lucky to have a bus show up and in this giant spot They don't use it There was a lot of discussion about the bus stops and about the lengths and the amount of parking spots We lost when we read did the heights and everything and I think somehow that was just lost in this plan And the MBTA probably said this is our standard and you know, it probably went through so That's one concern if we can find a way to just open a dialogue to see what we can do with that They have not striped or painted yet. They have marked to stripe and paint Seems to make sense to me that whoever is you might want to hold off on that or if we can While we're discussing this keep things as is until Everybody so how do you know Chuck that there aren't parking stripes going to be placed in some of the space To claim as a bus the signs there show they've actually already moved the sign Yeah, yeah on that one there that they've moved the sign from just past Capri pizza Usb bus stop 15 minute two hour and they brought that all the way back to the cafe Diane you had something as well It was it's going to be a part of my new business But I take advantage of the opportunity now and I had a conversation with the manager mr. Chapter Lane Directly afterwards I went up Visited one of the local businesses in that stretch that mr. Pappas Chuck is referencing And it turned out to be a sort of an impromptu with the businesses The flower shop the soon-to-be salon my salon and all the way up there And they had cited this particular issue that basically It's not in uniform or in concert with what's across the street Did take a handicapped parking space to a total of four or five parking spaces. I spoke with the manager I don't know if you want to add anything to that or If you'd like me to this point or if you want to let you have to finish Mentioning the bus stop Part of the concern is also not seeing the plans and knowing the plans Is whether or not they were going to do the same to the other bus stop? Right, and we find the exact that's what exactly what was pointed to not across the street But if the manager can give a better answer than I did you have other items you wanted to talk about first though this Speaking as a resident to Simple things just point out that's the cover for the this might be a water shut off on this one It's two to four inches below You know and that that's a finished It's hard to see these on without the contrast of the black. See if I can find one At first we thought it was binder coat and What you can see in this picture Is it's not completely? Compressed it's actually already breaking apart and that's what all this white is versus here where it's been smooth and compressed You can see the seams were not smooth Which we know what happens when the plot goes by on the hat And then as they go to the curb it's hard to see but if you can see this has never been compressed And this again is just a showing that it's already breaking back down to the white Granules in there, and that's these are just particular spots where you can see it and just Other spots again where they've gone over the shutoffs and just left them I don't do any thoughts. Yeah, so on the bus stop I know Laura Wiener of the Planning Department has been working with the MBTA and they did have as you mentioned a series of public meetings About all the bus stop changes But it's always that challenge about getting people to come out to a meeting and then something's implemented and Concerns are raised then but with that said the reason that the bus stops extended is so they can pull the bus in fully to the curb Contrary to what the picture demonstrates so they can get right up to the curb and when the bus now You know the bus kneels that's the term I use so that People with disabilities can more easily get on and off So the move is is meant to allow the bus to get up despite where cars might be right up to the curb But with that said I think I've been up there and I've checked it out My opinion would be you know, it seems a little excessive and I know it is within the board's prerogative to ask the MBTA to shorten that up So I'd I'd like to talk a little bit more with our town engineer and Planning Department and shore up that recommendation and Determine whether or not we should be looking at tightening that up a little bit as for the paving I believe the areas you're looking at are where national grid paved after they did all the main work over the past couple years And I've spoken to Mike Rademacher about that and he's gone out and he's inspected it and though there are areas of concern He's pretty thoroughly looked at it and doesn't think it justifies asking them to rip it up and repave it But like we would require them to maintain a patch if they were just doing a you know a quick patch in the road We'll certainly stay on national grid to make sure that any Sort of imperfections that Accentuate over the winter that needs to be repaired that they'll be back in and it's on it would be on on their responsibility That was actually my recommendation. I was going to say that's our more of a concern rather than Peeling it up and redoing it, but rather just making the response that fails Dan And Sort of are in that vein and what I would have said under new businesses when I went up to the height Earlier this week had sort of an impromptu meeting with some of the businesses on that side They pointed out basically what you're saying, you know the small utility caps some of them a level but then With the pavings level to them, but then some are low lower So what's going to happen is the snow fighters are going to check and clip it But I think I'm hearing that mr. Radamak in the town manager world to see that the other thing is they started bringing up Some other concerns and I told them this was not an official meeting and Ted fields is appropriate But it became apparent to me that because they were talking about the the crosswalks and perhaps getting they like the brick facade Up higher didn't but down by the de Agostino's block. I'll call it did say, you know patrons had slipped There perhaps we could do a stamp design something like that But what became apparent to me is something that the town manager had mentioned when we went through the international crosswalk design and whether we do thermoplastic is Coordinating some sort of a meeting through the manager and the planning department with the business owners Representatives from the town and any one of us who want to be there because there were other things pointed out in this One of your pictures encapsulates it between de Agostino's and Charlie's pizza Right in the middle of the brick sidewalks there are these metal grates and I know in the winter time not to step on those because you just go sliding and they said quite a Few patrons and they were wondering is there have slid on that and fallen Is there something that we can do to that that we can treat to it make it a little more corrugated pour Something like that or and then they brought up some other concerns about you know the very nice Lanterns that need to be painted. So what I would like to say is I Encourage the manager after mr. Maranelli came out and That's sort of impromptu look at the heights as well as whoever can make the meeting on October 17th that Whoever you think should be at a meeting in a proper venue. Definitely we should have that I think that's a very good suggestion you made from mr. Maranelli's presentation and I'm hearing it over again tonight. So Just let us all know Yeah, I think Ted will be representing the town at that meeting and, you know, I think Ted started to build a good relationship with all the, you know, the three business districts and the elders and starting a dialogue. Yeah, Ted's been attending them all and been doing a good job at them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else for Citizens Open Forum? All right. Next up. Master Plan Committee Selection and Liaison. Steve. Yeah, thanks. This won't take very long. I'll start by moving that Mr. Curell become the new board liaison to the Master Plan Advisory Committee. Very disappointed to have to make that motion, but I am not able to attend the meetings any further. As many of you know, I'm getting my master's degree and unfortunately I have class the night of the meetings. And I really do think it's vital that the board has a strong presence at these meetings. And Mr. Curell's involvement with ATED, I think he is an excellent candidate for this. And I hope that you support my motion. Colleagues, thank you. Second. Kevin. And but I second sadly, not because of the quality of the replacement, Joe will be excellent. But I think you've done an excellent job, Steven, and attending all the meetings that you have and keeping us as updated as you have. Thank you very much. Thank you. Further discussion? I'm 150% behind Mr. Curell. I certainly couldn't commit the time. But maybe in the future, usually when appointments come up, the full board, everybody's aware of it in case somebody else expresses an interest. I certainly wouldn't. So I'm not saying that this is something. But maybe we can do that in the future. Duly noted. Yeah. I didn't know who it was either. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Approved. Next up, Arlington Visual Budget. Adam and Michael. All right. So I'll quickly introduce it and then let Michael walk through a presentation. He'll start setting up while I speak, and then I'll get out of the way. So tonight we wanted to show the board the new online budget visualization tool that we're going to call Arlington Visual Budget. It really is the brainchild of quite a few people. And I think it builds on a legacy that was started by, in fact, I think Gordon Jamison and others from the Vision 2020 fiscal resources. Task group. In terms of some of the aspects it has. But this is an online town financial tool or town budget tool that was created in cooperation by Involution Studios, a private online design firm here in town, by participation from Alan Jones from the finance committee and Annie LaCorte, former select board member, as well as participation and a lot of effort by Andrew Flanagan, deputy town manager and Mike Boutin, management analyst in my office. So we're very proud of this. We think it's a very unique offering in terms of allowing residents to interactively look at departmental budgets within town, look at how their tax dollars are spent, what portions of their tax dollars go where. So with that, I'll let Mike walk through the demonstration and then let the board ask any questions they may have. And I'll get out of the way here. Is it basically you wanted to put pictures on the budget for people like me who's going to follow the... I didn't say that.  Or how are we going to do that? Joe, do you want to... Can you move that one? You can take Joe's mic. Or the standing one. That one will reach over there. If you take Joe's, flip it towards it. Joe, is that work? It's a good way to shut me out. Oh, I don't think so. No, you're just going to have to point it in this direction. He's going to have to try to speak into it. Yeah, I think... No, you don't have to hold it. You can just put it on the desk. I think he's going to be standing over there. Marie, can we lower some lights? Is that all right on cable, Jessica? No one needs to see me. That's fine. All right. Go for it. So as Adam said, this is our individual budget. What we had tried to do, setting out... We'll leave it in March 2013. The group that Adam mentioned, meeting every couple of weeks or every month since then, just try to conceptualize what the budget, a municipal budget looks like, and how to introduce it to people who may not be familiar with municipal budgets, how to show it in a new way that's more easily understood and more accessible for people, rather than just seeing spreadsheets and numbers and things like that. So the first thing on the screen now is the homepage. We came up with several different ways to approach this. The first that I'll go through here is to start the tour function, the evolution bill. Going in, you click on that and it starts to walk you through how you can use this website. So now it highlights see the basic financial summary and high level data story of the town. If you click on next, you get built into a timeline. We took data from five years ago starting in 2008 and we used the long range plan to project out numbers to 2018. The beauty of this is also it's a simple set of Excel spreadsheets. We can backfill information as far back as we want. As the new long range plan comes into effect, we can add that information as well so that it can continuously be updated. One of the neat features about this is you can scroll through this timeline and see the proportionality change year over year. How different things are adjusted over the year, how different line items shift, shrink, grow and you'll see that the dotted line represents projective numbers the solid line represents actuals. If we click next, this is what they call the X-ray of the financials. What we've done is gone in and put in what are called tool tips things that when you roll over, a bubble pops up, gives you a little bit of background on what you're looking at. We thought this was especially helpful as sort of an educational and introductory tool for people who may not be familiar with lingo, different terms that are used, whether it's in town meeting or things like that to give them greater depth into what these terms mean and try to call out certain trends within each thing if there are such things. If we go next this is another function that lets you go back through different years or go forward wherever you like click on it and it brings you through. So if we go back to the home screen we also try to anticipate a couple questions that maybe frequent users would want to know or people just visiting may want to know. So annual cost of the fire department, how much we spend on schools if you click on how expensive is snow and ice removable. It shows you how to get to it and then it gives you the actual line item itself. Snow and ice is one of the more interesting ones and I'll get to that a little bit. The other feature that we used in building on something that Gordon I believe had been pushing for some time is you can enter in how much your property tax was and proportionally it'll show how much you spend on town services how much of that money is spent for salaries and expenses in certain departments on snow and ice removal other services. So just for an example to plug in $7,000 you hit start and it brings you to the expenses page shows you what you're putting in for all expenses you hit next then it lets you explore things. So for schools your contribution would be over $2,500 for schools insurance $1,100 and you can dig in town departments public works you spend $545 going back to snow and ice which I think is a good indicator on $7,000 you're only paying $100 a year on snow and ice removal for the entire town whereas if you extrapolated that out and wanted to pay for your own driveway you could not come close to that so that's just one of the interesting tools and then we go back to some of the other items one of the challenges we had early on was sort of showing municipal budgets aren't just a balance sheet of revenues and expenses per se there's also, especially in Massachusetts things like the Override Stabilization Fund and other funds that both we spend money towards and we collect and we had trouble trying to conceptualize how to visualize that so we came up with three options you see at the top, revenues, expenses and then funds and reserves as well to sort of explain the budget process just going through revenues we want to show a couple interesting things for instance property tax if I go into overrides we thought this was a great way of showing how the 2006 and then 2012 overrides reflected the level of property tax in the town it shows over time how that changes so the dark blue on your screen is the first override in 2006 and then the 2012 override on top going back, if we look into expenses we can see a few different trends that are interesting if we go into insurance you can see here if you follow the cursor this 2010 2011 we go back down or leveling off and then increasing up and this is indicative of when we joined the GIC it shows visually what happened over time when we joined the GIC it's just an interesting way of sort of graphically looking at that we go back again I promise to show you Snow and Ice again and you can see how sort of dependent that is on something like the winter where we project evenly but depending on the year we have to spend or not spend or spend and that sort of follows the trend of the weather that we've had over the past few years so those are a few of the interesting things and then we also have in funds and reserves the stabilization fund and the override stabilization fund so right now we're in 2011 but if you were 2013 you see that we're making contributions to the override stabilization fund the dark orange for a number of years and then beginning in 2016 we start drawing on that override stabilization fund and you see it falling so it's just another way to sort of paint that picture and explain to people how municipal finance works how Arlington is spending its money and just showing them showing users ways to play with it and one of the key things that we were really interested in doing was providing the data to show just where these numbers are coming from so if you go into the bottom on open data and code you can click through and you can download these spreadsheets that directly feed this and you can look at the raw data yourself because you see some of those numbers are rounded up to the nearest million or things like that so it doesn't tell the exact story but if you wanted to go in and look at the hard data itself and look at those Excel files yourself and seeing the numbers yourself and like I said it's something as simple as once we have the numbers annually we can add to it going out and we can begin now backfilling data before 2008 and really growing it it really is not limited we can add levels of data just all we need is the data itself Any questions? Just because I want to be able to take advantage of having you there Is there some way could you go to the homepage and say show me what steps I would take say I wanted to look at legal the legal budget I want to see what you're clicking God bless you so I want to look at I guess under expenses legal so if you can just tell me go to expenses and then you would say to yourself so where is the legal department it's a town department click on town department so this has all of the town department are very small so for instance the Board of Selectment is also here Whoa, whoa, whoa We get 12 bucks Off of a off of a $7,000 annual tax bill Board of Selectment your contribution towards the Selectment is $12.35 Is there another ground show and the importance is different so what I would do is just keep going on the different you would keep going and you can click on legal and show salaries and expenses for that department it saves me 30 minutes trying to figure it out what would happen if we typed legal into the search how good is the search the search had been working but what we also have is a tabular view which has not been working as of late but what that does is it will highlight individual line items and show individual trends among those line items and that should be working very shortly Involution is already aware of that problem I think this is totally awesome I absolutely love it It is, I'm excited by it I just wanted to get the cliff notes on how it's doing This definitely sets the baseline for every other town if you don't have this you're being left behind We demoed it at town day as well we had members of the state legislative delegates who come by and look at it we're all impressed as well we've shopped it with several different working groups several different beta tests and things like that trying to get as much feedback as possible to try to make the usability as easy as possible That's where So, projected when this is up live or is it now? It's up live And really it's a credit to Involution and to the group of other people as well that worked on this as Adam said, Involution to this pro bono I don't think they knew exactly what they were getting into but they gave us a lot of time and a lot of hours and they did a great job I think we should have them They're in local Arlington right across Mass Ave We should actually go there They have a really neat office space Well, we haven't been invited Actually, that's where all these meetings were so I can't claim I did zero of the work but I did show up at the kickoff meeting and I watched the group and waited a couple times and they really did do a lot of work and then back to Kevin Thank you and Annie and Alan and everyone else who worked on this I got to see this right before the roll out and the only word that just kept rolling through my head was award-winning This is really extraordinary I recall at one time seeing a similar drill down the New York Times with all of their vast resources on the federal budget going down and to be able to give that type of a view into our budget it really helps redefine transparency into all you techno geeks out there you have CSV and you have JSON and you can download those We always get requests to be able to get data files in their original form so that people can play with them and really look at them and manipulate it themselves and to have that now is just extraordinary so thank you to everyone who worked on this Kevin I really would like to move with Alan, Annie Andrew, Adam, Mike, whoever that we send a letter to this involution thanking them but we need to put more meat behind that and inviting them here so that we could thank them publicly I understand you're saying they'd have us there I want them on cable I think it's maybe they don't want to come were they invited tonight? we've already taxed them so much I mean not but anyhow I made that motion maybe leave it to Adam how we go about this and you Mr. Chairman they should be thanked and I thank them now but I know just asking not asking inferring anything seeing this I see that we can go on different areas and see how much is spent on each department including schools I'm just wondering I can see people who are really into this sort of information and having access to it saying I can see what we do for Board of Selectment and I can see what we do for Snow and Ice and I can see a general number that goes to schools but a next step so that the school side can also why are you into the system I guess maybe I would ask the manager if it hasn't already been offered and or discussed if we could let our colleagues and administration on the school side know that this is available because I can see a lot of parents saying I'd like some more similar detail with that we can give them the overall budget this is how much money that the town sends to the school side but nothing else and it's not under our purview to get that information and put that up but I'm just seeing the next question I can see somebody saying well I'd like to do this on the school side so if you could whenever you think it's appropriate with Dr. Bode or whomever I don't know if there's the IT group that meets if that's the proper venue to have this discussion it's just this is fantastic so I'm going to have fun with it and be calling Adam or Mike probably when I get stuck and I can't get somewhere but I can see that is going to be maybe perhaps the next question and thank you so much unlike Deloitte or Deloitte that the state's been having involution is the exact opposite experience and I really appreciate it I have heard some discussion about this along the way that they've really gone above and beyond they got in there and saw that they turned it to whole garden and they really gave it their all and I do appreciate that thanks somewhat to Diane's point just to correct me if I'm wrong the level of granularity on this right now is the budget that's presented to town meetings is that correct or is it more granular you said there were Excel worksheets it's Finance Committee report the town meeting to have personnel detail or expense detail below the top line and the long range plan is driving the projections correct so I can go online and see what such and such officers salary is not through this tool I'm sure we should and I know that's available well as part of our transparency efforts in the future I want to consider something like the state does they call it open checkbook where you can go on and access basically every vendor payment they've made every check they've cut and you can look up the salary of employees of the state so there's still some discussions to have and software to potentially buy or look at to do that but I know it's a goal of mine to try to continue to amp up the transparency I mean this is a transparency piece but I think it's also an education piece so it gets the budget out there and hopefully an easy to use format and help people see how municipal budgets come together and hopefully not intimidating way I'm sorry, may I ask one more I'm sure it might be from colorblind do the colors mean anything in particular are they there's no you're looking for some red state blue state action you know red and black it looks like we might have been extending our town meeting budget to be by a couple nights with this perhaps we may have extended the town meeting budget for me just in the last meeting I said I wouldn't talk about it for two months but 2019 is a big year and this is how we talk this is how everyone in the town gets on the same page where we talk about what we pay for and what we get and I think this is absolutely fantastic it's very cool all right we have a motion in a second is there any further discussion or comments all right all those in favor please say hi hi what's the motion what you said oh that motion that silly little thing who said that all right Adam rfp for the lease of space at parmenter so before the board tonight thank you before the board tonight is a memorandum in two rfps along with two model leases in regards to putting out an rfp or a request for proposals for a long term lease for the two spaces currently occupied at the parmenter school currently there's two tenants there the international school of boston and the arlington children's center or the acc and what's contemplated before you is a request before the board to approve the issuance of these two rfps separated for each of the spaces that are currently occupied I'm going to let Mike who's done a lot of work on this talk about how the leases or excuse me how the rfps were drafted the methodology that was put into it and then we can let the board discuss the rfps and the model leases one point I want to mention up front is since the placement of this item on the agenda Mr. Foskett Charles Foskett has mentioned to me his interest in a discussion on whether or not the parmenter school should be considered to be sold by the town which would obviously need much more action than the board tonight would need to go to town meeting next year but I wanted to make the board aware of that sentiment before any action that we're making tonight but with that Mr. Chairman I'd like to ask Mike to run through the efforts to put this together right so in the interest of saving some time I won't run through my entire memo but I'll just touch on some of the highlights as Adam said that currently the parmenter school is leased to international school Boston Arlington Children's Center has been since 1983 in 2010 the building was surplus board of selectmen for 30 years through 2040 it's part of a historic district which causes some challenges in terms of capital improvements especially on the exterior and in speaking with some of the tenants there and other tenants in other buildings that we have they are looking for long term stability especially educational institutions that would occupy space like this in order to recruit students and parents to commit to those programs over time especially they were looking for the longest term leases possible and it was also somewhat in the town's interest to entertain those leases for longer terms as well just for long term stability of our own and for planning purposes on our own in terms of financials we have been renting and I would suggest continuing to rent the space in as is condition it's something that we've done in the past and I see no need to change and in 2010 also as part of the town meetings decision whether or not to sell off the Crosby and Parmenter was up as well there was a market rent study done which roughly set the market rate for those spaces to be around $8 a square foot using inflation from the CPI the last five years an average of that it would roughly equate to $0.25 square foot in today's dollars that puts the current rate of ACC is being slightly below and ISB is slightly above so my recommendation was to set the base rates for the new lease term of ten years with a possible five year extension a total lease term of 15 years to set base rates at an increase from what they are currently but consistent with the increases that these organizations and any potential organization would see have been seeing so right now those two organizations are on a one year lease so that we can issue a longer lease and they've been consistently paying three percent in the past few years annual inflator on their current rents before that in other areas in town we do a CPI inflator what I'm suggesting to do is to take the average of the CPI over the past five years and just hold instead of using the CPI hold the flat percentage increase of two percent which is slightly above inflation but slightly below what organizations have in the past been taking the numbers are there in my memo if you'd like to look through them but one thing that we've also been included in here is a capital contribution because as I said this building is an older building and capital costs can be rather high we anticipate the need to supplement the rent with some sort of contribution on behalf of whichever tenants occupy this space and by asking for a base of a modest square foot would yield more than $11,500 per year and over the life of the lease over $100,000 for 10 years and $174,000 for the 15 years which would help to fray some of the costs of capital projects for instance that building has a slate roof I've talked to our building department and they don't foresee it needing to be replaced within the life of this lease but it can be prolonged they're also an old boiler that may need to be looked at over the life of this lease so requiring a capital contribution would help to defray some of those costs in the future Diane I guess two areas and because I'm always challenged by graphs and numbers and things like that I was just wondering looking at the two RFPs Space A and Space B Space B is higher because it's a larger area etc. I'm just trying to rectify in my mind that the RFP for Space A you have for not less than $9.25 per square foot and then if I look at the Space A graph you have rent per square foot going from $6 to $9.24 and then if I look at the RFP for Space B you have for not less than $7 per square foot and again if I look at the rent per square foot it's $8.25 up to $8.25 it seems to me like do those numbers match up or it seems like it should be reversed the graphs on the left should be labeled Space B that's what I'm saying the corresponding numbers are the same I mislabeled the titles of those charts okay so really Lease of Space A is defined on what we have the RFP that's what I'm saying it wasn't adding up and it's because I'm challenged by things like this that so when the RFP does go out we will make sure that Space A on the RFP matches I don't mean to belabor the point I'm just trying to understand the argument and you know how we all are crazy about that and then the only other thing is I don't know if the manager has any idea on the answer to this I understand Mr. Foskett's suggestion and I certainly take it at face value and seriously where I would be at in terms of beginning a community discussion about selling the Pommenta would be if it were for some other school use and short conversation with the manager about this today one of the things that I'm concerned about and this would go to the 10 year Lease for 10 years I know there's been a lot of talk and we're getting our elementary schools done we still have to finish on Stratton and then we have the Audison where are we in terms of when we talk about doing anything major for renovation, rebuild, reconstruction for the infrastructure of Allington High School if you said to me we'll 7, 8 years out that will be a serious discussion that's where I would ask do you think it should not be a 10 year lease it should be an 8 or something else so the Long Range Planning Committee has a meeting scheduled for later this month which based on some schedules may be rescheduled but it's the intention of the Long Range Planning Committee to have a meeting within the next month that is solely focused on a discussion about a potential building project in Allington High School and prior to having that discussion it's hard for me to say anything absolute and even after that discussion it might be hard but I would say that a best case scenario would be a 5 to 7 year timeframe before we would be looking at a building project at the high school after all the MSBA process and internal process would be done in terms of putting together a funding plan and as for lease term as Mike had stated we are obviously very interested in the long term stability if we weren't going to be selling this building which has been the assumption we've been operating under for some time after town meeting had voted to not sell the building several years ago a long term stability with a capital allocation that could defray capital costs would give us administrative stability and financial stability knowing that we had tenants who were tied to leases but with that said if it was the Board's prerogative to pursue a shorter term lease with the potential to have a further discussion about disposing of the building in the future but certainly the Board's prerogative to lessen the amount of time that we would put this RFP out for lease so I would make the motion to change I'm thinking should the 10 year be 7 year but I haven't done enough homework on that I'll leave it to the rest of the Board it's something that's out there but I was just saying when you said to sell the pommeter that's the only way I would look at it seriously may I just ask a question on this issue Joe I know you have an answer so just one if we do execute this doesn't mean we couldn't sell it for 10 years well I mean we would be committing to a 10 year lease with a 5 year extension so yes so I have to admit that this one sent me running to my spreadsheet tools I didn't have a nice visual tool to work on I had to do it in old school and the first question I was asking is it in our interest to be floating two separate RFPs or should we be looking at this property as a whole as I looked further at it and researched it further I understand the town did actually make some investment at some point a number of years back to physically separate the two spaces actually put investment into physically separated so you know I'm satisfied that there is precedent and there actually are some qualitative differences between the two spaces my understanding is the space A actually has larger common areas common spaces city views you know more restroom facilities more administrative areas so after looking at that I think that the differential can be justified but I did look at it as a blended rate a hypothetical blended rate taking the whole amount of revenue off of the manager's proposal and hypothetically looking at what the rate would be against all the square footage and it comes in at 842 which is just above the market rate taking the assumptions that are in the memo to us so I think from a perspective I mean we are we are at market in the proposal so I'm feeling comfortable with that I looked at I did the same calculation on the capital contributions so over just to repeat what Michael said over 10 years looking at $116,500 capital contribution 15 years to be 174 8 so I pulled out the next thing I did was I pulled out the five year capital plan and I see two items in the five year capital plan one is a for fiscal year 2015 an oil tank removal at 15,000 2017 roof repairs to slayton gutters 20,000 so it's a total of 35,000 but that only captures a third of this potential lease term so has there been any analysis done of potential capital needs beyond that Mike spoke to the two real large ones and that would be boiler and HVAC work and then the potential for a roof replacement the building was built when some 90 years ago so it's a slate roof we got about 110 years out of the slate roof in the library so sometime probably during this lease period or maybe towards the end of this lease period we would be contemplating a slate roof repair I don't have quotes that I can intelligently speak from but I would be guessing we'd be looking at a $200,000 expense there and for a boiler again I don't have quotes in that regard but I think we'd be looking at somewhere between a $50,000 and $100,000 expense for a boiler replacement for a building of that size so there's definitely some systems that during a lease period of this length we'd be looking at spending capital costs so if that were the case then the capital contribution is as great as it is it would not cover all of those expenses and there's one aspect of this that I'm a little uncomfortable with I think I feel comfortable with most of the proposal as it is but I do feel a little uncomfortable with setting a flat capital contribution amount that remains in place over 15 years 15 years from now I know it's going to be worth a lot less and I do question why we don't apply the same inflator to the capital contribution amount that we would to the rents themselves I think that's a fair point and again if it was the board's prerogative to alter that we'd be happy to change the RFP to add in an inflator for the capital allocation I'd feel much more comfortable with that point of clarification though as things currently stand even though we would add some transparency with the capital contribution amount here any amounts right now that were collected under that would just go into local receipts and go right into the general fund we would need town meeting action to segregate correct wouldn't we to be able to have that segregated out of this town meeting if we chose to go by a revolving fund or create a special fund yeah that's all I have I feel comfortable with the proposal with the exception of the capital contribution being flat I feel that should be inflated at 2% per year as well Steve I think that's a good idea from Mr. Curell regarding marking or changing that capital allocation but I would like to say kudos to the town manager and Michael for including that in this proposal I think that is vital a very important step that we're taking to hold our potential tenants accountable for building that they're also committing to for an extended amount of time and I think that we do owe to these new tenants the security of a 10 to 15 year lease if say they are potentially the same the same tenants that were there in the past they have been good to our community I'm not saying that that will be taking into account but if perchance they are they continue to be there I think they do deserve a bit of security and they I'm very and I guess that's it I'm happy without this going Kevin I mean you know it seems to me Adam has just gone through what potentially major costs they might be and we don't know the unknown is unknown obviously but so I mean I wonder if instead of an automatic 2% year inflator we did something like a reevaluation after 10 years and we see what's been done and what has been spent of that which has already been put in versus just automatically inflating something we don't know if we're going to need it Joe do you mind if I I think I'd like the board to consider only five years and here's why I say that so I supported the four town meeting that we the select one made to sell this building and town meeting shot it down a shot it down hard it lost by a voice vote and I respect that and you know that is a decision that it's there it's town meetings decision to make and and I and so that I'm not that is why I think that putting out an RFP is very appropriate because I don't because I think that that is the will of town meeting that we visit I'd like town meeting to revisit that at any reasonable time where it's ready to do so and I think that we do have a couple big ticket items coming up and I think that we should so it's fairly apparent to me that we're not going to be able to use this to pay for Straton but there's no reason we couldn't use it to pay for either Minuteman or Arlington high coming forward and so if I think about like if I if we went to town meeting this spring with let's sell par mentor and by the way it's going to help pay for this project we might actually get a different result so I'd like us to consider five years I Joe Joe a couple things you just you just gave me a couple of things to chew on and I will tell you that as I've been mulling this over I mean I mulled over whether we should actually be able to mulled over whether we should actually be looking at at least at least to buy option but I fear that with the timing right now for the very same reasons that that's probably not not an option for us because the only way that we could execute I think at least at least to buy option would be to go back to town meeting and say that we're we're basically locking ourselves in at that point can I say one more thing I apologize so one of the things that the reason that the two votes went differently at town meeting I think is because the town loved the tenants and the tenants of the other school were ready to buy whereas the tenants of this building were not ready to buy and one of the things that the five year warning does is it does say fire a starting gun and say you know start your fundraising now here's where it would be and that would be a different way yeah sorry well that was that was one point and I actually I'm willing to entertain with a shorter shorter term but I do think that what Steve says is also key some stability is is needed and what I would hate to see us come out of here is just another one year extension what not I went through this when I was sitting over across the street because the school committee used to have to periodically declare these buildings temporary surplus and the difficulty with which the tenants approached that it was extraordinary because they didn't know whether they should be looking to potentially move or potentially renew or what not so I think that we you know we're we're sitting right now on a one year extension right now so I think that we do have to decide what way we're going to go on the RFP I just want to explore what you said because initially I and I agree with your premise I'm just at the five versus the seven I know in terms of contracts releases one three five seven ten and then beyond that it's every five every ten and I'm thinking of the tenants who are looking for some sort of long-term commitment which is why I initially said the seven year and in terms of marketing the property for current tenants and or any other tenants that may want to put in the five versus the seven in terms of an investment and getting you know the proper this is just my experience I'm not saying this is the case in the real estate market but you know have delved in that I hear you saying the five I'm sort of leaning towards the seven in the sense that hearing what we heard but I didn't factor in Minuteman so maybe that's why you're saying five but in terms of the seven that gives us the opportunity that when we stop making decisions around five to six years on the high school that's up and coming and that also gives the tenants an appropriate amount of time whoever they are I hope it's going to be the current tenants seven years gives them a an indicator that this may be something in the future that may be sold b gives them enough time a seven-year campaign to sort of build it into their budget whereas a five year is really kind of sort of hamstringing them so I guess I would put before you you know would you be open to the seven-year yes Kevin I think Steve sorry yeah thanks I mean and I do understand you know tenant for going this way and there's a certainly a financial you know part to this conversation which we're having right now but I think that there's also a human part and that's with these kids that will be students in this building and where if you're a parent getting ready to you know send your your child to a school are you going to send them somewhere where in five years it might not be there you know that we're saying that they might start a fundraising campaign for this or they might just say you know we're going to go find somewhere else and it's you know probably not going to be in Ireland and I think that you know that that's a pretty serious risk to run where I think that you know if someone if there's an education or institution looking to come to Ireland in the call this you know this town home that we they deserve the longevity of a ten-year lease and a commitment from the town saying we want you here we want you to send children here and I don't think I think a ten-year lease says that whereas a five to seven-year lease does not say that. Kevin so I'm with Steve on on this from the point of view of if I'm running a school I got a plan on students for eight years or whatever I guess ISBA years is it I think it is K-3. But I wonder on other properties in town we do have something about if the town were to need to sell the property the lease could be voided with a given certain number of years notice could such a thing as that because let's what's the worst case scenario that building goes empty because we can't find tenants the ones who are there are saying no I'm not staying for only two years or so I think we're all on the board when they came before us about this and then as we took a report to town meeting so but I just wonder if there's another way is there something in there I haven't read the whole thing I apologize but is there anything in there about potential sale by the town of that property I don't believe so believe we have express an express could we Mr. Chair do we need to vote this tonight number one no we do not need I mean is it going to hamper and Pete anything just a for the points that have been raised I'd like to get it back before me so that I see an RFP that the first one that says 925 per square foot says seven and then the reverse on the second it gives you further time and I understand you know you're also a little hamstrung with the town council issue but I think Ed Malinger or anybody else that you want to so maybe you can come back before us when the I'm personally okay with us talking about it later but I think we should thrash through a little bit and see what we want I would strongly urge the board to give us direction for approval at a subsequent meeting not further discussion Kevin I mean I Mr. Chairman and Mr. Vice Chair your logic is very good very strong so it's hard to argue against but in the practical world of leasing so I would favor if we can find that we do the ten perhaps we completely drop the five-year extension or so I don't know but and Mr. Chair I know you didn't say these words but five years would also happen to bring us very close to 2019 wouldn't it? Yeah though honestly that wasn't what drove it I know you were I'm really yeah because I definitely I definitely subscribed to the capital for capital and so I wouldn't envision using this for an operating yeah yeah we have few enough assets you know hold on to them clearly we haven't used this one for quite some time so I think it would be appropriate for someone to make a general motion sorry oh I apologize I think I'm hearing some board members talk about a want for stability for the tenants and some board members appreciating that but also wanting off-ramps for the town at certain integrals so the board could consider sort of a shortened down version of this on both the initial term and an extension with possibly a five-year initial term and possibly a five-year extension or a three-year extension which would give an off-ramp at that year five if the town was thinking about selling it but with stability for those tenants to know a five-year option was available or a three-year option was available so just want to put that out there is something for the board to consider but the extension is mutual agreement right yes yeah so we okay Kevin and I don't if I'm saying something illegal here it's only me talking nobody nobody else will help but approach the tenants who are there now about this well I mean obviously they're going to want ten years of five but I'm wondering where will they stop biting I'd say this the tenants have expressed a want for longer leases they want stability but with that said I don't think they've ever had anything longer than a three-year lease in their entire tenure can you question if I'm wrong you're right because prior to the board having control of this building it was surplus in three-year school committee that's correct so any territory we enter here now is new territory for all of us in terms of lease length Steve I do want to make one comment about so you said that they deserve a couple things you said about deserving a ten-year and also if you're an educational institution do you want to be here and first a group for these two particular groups who we know I think that the town has given a track record of paying attention to them and what they want and we also have set a pretty good example with I think how the Crosby went that they can we can reasonably say we're going to act in good faith and we're going to try to keep you if we can and I don't feel I can support five or seven years because I don't feel like I'm sending them a wrong message by refusing ten this is one of those balances where you talk of where we say on one hand we've got this financial thing and on this part we've got what they give for the town and personally I'm more comfortable with the shorter time being the right balance of those two things which reasonable people can disagree on for sure I'm ready to make I'll just say I'm ready to make a preliminary motion the only thing that carries on that is if and I'm going to define it in my terms I apologize if there is the opt out option language that we can put in there that Mr. Greeley that Kevin spoke to it would change my vote that's why I'm saying maybe this because what would my motion be right now it would be to issue an RFP for the lease of space a for no less than $9 per square foot and to issue an RFP for space B for no less than $9.25 $9.25 per square foot with a five-year lease or over the course for five years but if the town manager and whomever else does some research and finds out we can put what I'm going to call the opt out clause in there then I would just take the first two pods of my motion and you have already incorporated that opt out language in there and then we have the five, seven, ten year option so how do you want to handle this Mr. Chairman or Mr. Town Manager and then I know Joe had some thoughts I will absolutely look into the opt out language but as I'm sitting here thinking about it in terms of messages to send to either the current or potential tenants I mean there's very little to no security in a lease that allows the town an absolute opt out so we would benefit from the pursuit of that but I'm not sure how interested tenants might be so do you have a motion I have a motion for the correct language per square foot and for five years it isn't technically seconded yet it's just on the table that's a motion to get us started okay could I move it along a little bit more I'd like to suggest then that we let's direct the Town Manager to bring back a new proposal the five year lease the five year extension by mutual agreement at which time the capital contribution will be subject to renegotiation as well if that's if that's legal I don't know if that's legal it is it'll be subject to and it'll be subject to the needs that are specified there so what that gives us is that that gives us a potential of a 10 year lease period which is a period of security that keeps intact the financial calculations that have been made by the manager by Michael but allowing us to reset the capital contribution at the five year period rather than putting in the money made if it is the will of the town at that point because it's a mutual agreement situation and we do feel that we need the asset for another purpose or to fund something else then I think that also makes that available to us as well so maybe instead of a motion the Town Manager has heard our sentiments this seems to be two things I'm not making the motion so Joe just made a motion to direct the Town Manager I call mine on the table and second Mr. Keros Kevin did you have some I supported I did not realize they had only had three year leases up to this so I think five year with the five year option is a window of 10 but it also gives us flexibility is there any further discussion all right so we have a motion made by Mr. Keros seconded by Mr. Mohan all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed five zero and I'm fine with the no off ramp I mean other than the off ramp would be the term of the lease okay so we'll have that before the board edits parliament are done next up lease agreement all right so I had put this on the agenda asking for action by the board tonight in regards to a lease agreement with John's son however based on the need for a further approval for this proposal by the zoning board of appeals I'm not going to ask for approval or action by the board tonight but I still want to run through the proposal so that when action is requested the board I've already heard this and the public will have already heard about this in regards to a small part of the bikeway connection project or the project that is addressing the intersection of Mass Avenue 60 trying to make it easier for bikes to get from where the bike path ends on Pleasant Street and get over to where the bike path continues on so on place or vice versa so as part of that project there was a public hearing held over the summer and at that hearing the number one comment or problem raised was the issue of door ring or enough space being available to retain parking spaces on the west bound side east excuse me east bound side of Mass Ave in front of Cambridge Savings Bank and also having a bike lane to allow for bicyclists to get over to the bike path so Mass DOT came back after that hearing expressing serious concern and wanting those parking spots eliminated for the project to go forward I had concern about the center of commerce had concern about that the center business group or business or merchants group had concern about that we didn't want to send the message of just eliminating seven parking spots in the center business district while we were trying to promote economic development and business retention. So myself Mike Rotemacher and Laura Wiener started with Mike and myself actually down in that area for looking at that piece of property that's in the Jam and Java Plaza that is currently some brick patio some benches some bushes that's sort of just adjacent to the entrance and exit to the bike path so in the agenda there is a sketch of that area you want to turn to that page seven of the document under the agenda item what we did was we sketched out the possibility of replicating the seven parking spots that would be lost on the roadway in that space in the Jam and Java soon to be kickstand cafe parking lot. So that's it started with Mike sketching it out progressed to us beginning discussions with the landlord or the owner of the property the company's name being John's son LLC and ended in the sketch that you have before you being agreed upon in principle by both myself and Mike Rademacher and Laura and the owner of the property to add seven parking spots as you can see off of swan place head in spots that would be available for complete municipal public use they wouldn't be limited to just people using the Jam and Java Plaza and the deal that we struck with them would be to rent those spaces for $1,000 per year and also contribute $10,000 one time towards the resurfacing of the entire parking lot and restriping of the entire parking lot and then those for a 10 year period those parts would be ours spots would be ours and we'd be able to renew in the future we thought it was a we think it's a pretty creative approach to utilizing existing space maintaining parking while still retaining the benefits of the bikeway connection process project and having a bike path come through our bike lane so eventually I would like to be asking the board for approval and their signature on this lease again we will need one more vote it's for a special permit to allow for cars to back into a public way from their parking spot and then assuming we get that approval once we get that approval I come back to the board but with that said I'd be happy to answer any questions the board have it so how unique is this Adam the town renting parking spaces from private ownership I think it's extremely unique here in Arlington I do too I don't know how unique it is frankly in other other communities so yeah I guess I would say it's quite unique I'm worried about it but I don't know why I assume the bank is the one most harmed by the loss of the public spaces in front of the bank are they willing to contribute anything towards this I can't say that we approach them about that okay Diane different question but on that trying to question you know the uniqueness and is there something we should be worried about the only thing I could possibly foresee is that I congratulate you all on coming up with this idea of being out there for something else and I don't want to see the loss of parking in the center but I can see the merchants in the heights saying you took some people say four and a handicap so five spaces up how come those weren't replicated or duplicated so I just put that on the table as well as if you're going to pursue perhaps something with Cambridge savings bank I had was the only because I can feel even though she's not sitting here amongst us removing the four trees can we just do that on our own we don't have to go to the tree committee as well as do we need to replace them somewhere else yeah well the sketch you gave us is remove four existing trees so why don't I just leave that with you since you're coming back anyways yeah one I really like to see you know all the time departments really working together to come up with creative solutions to issues and two to asking the bank to chip in I don't know if they'd be willing to because they actually they have parking spots behind their banks so I'm sure they wouldn't be thrilled at the idea of us knocking on their door and saying hey why don't you pay for these as well but but either way I do support it I think this is shows what happens when we can get creative Joe yeah I support it as well and I think this point on the bank it seems that this is an action that we're taking away the parking spots on the street so I think this is creative yeah I noticed the trees as well I will say that one benefit I see to this is that the benches and the tables they will be rejuvenated because they're kind of a mess right now yeah and that is a nice little space so it's a gateway for a lot of folks who are coming from from Cambridge at the bike trail into Arlington so I support this and I think we're voting we're being asked about approval no we're not he's going to bring that after we get the approval for special permit to allow cars to back into that there was a technical issue that I put this on the agenda I had not aware of I'll say when Adam first told me about this I stopped and I thought and I was like really it was just I was surprised and maybe a little bit stunned just because of everything like this and the more time I've thought about it the more comfortable I've been with it and I really like it back at my kitchen cabinet of Sunday going through the packet which truth be told is sitting in front of the Patriots game and so I pass around the diagram to you know to a bunch of people who live in town some of them have lived in town all their life and I say what do you guys think about this and my friend looked at it and he's like that was a waste of space anyway so it passed you know my survey group of five it made it through perhaps if you had paid more attention to the game there would have been a different outcome I needed to avert my eyes my eyes alright so do we want to take a general sentiment vote no for us you heard what we had to say I'm undecided I want to talk to them Mark do you have a comment Mark kept lying Palmer Street I too thought it was creative and fortunately it goes against the spirit and law of a lot of zoning ordinances which encourage buildings to be accessible from sidewalks and streets and have the parking behind so creating additional parking in front of a structure and not having it hidden by landscaping are two immediate problems in the spirit of the zoning some technical issues are the close proximity of the parking spaces to Massachusetts Avenue it's got to be a 50 foot minimum distance from an intersection so there's that the width of Swan Place to be at least 24 feet for a vehicle to exit a parking spot at right angles like that there's specifications on the width of a curb cut that's allowed and here you are of 59 and a half feet of curb cut that's involved in traversing a sidewalk and then the vehicles will be right there where the pedestrians and cyclists are exiting from the Minuteman so I'm not sure if it's a safer plan overall and in general many aspects of the center plan they seem to need to be vetted this should be vetted by MassDOT clearly the zoning board and appeals board I think the bike track in front of local Sam Park is great there's no downsides to it we're not talking about the whole town center thing right now we're really just talking about the spaces but trying to do a bike track on this side is just really problematic and it has tradeoffs unlike elsewhere and I'd hope that somebody looked at the number of accidents caused by riding on the sidewalk really justifies all this work and money because bicycles and pedestrians coexist on the bike path for about 10 miles and here you have this one block where you try to segregate them and bring your hands over what to do thank you next up is new business Adam I don't have any new business Kevin just one quick thing one is that Miss Kruppelker and I met I have my apologies that I missed the last meeting I got that flew or something that had been going around we're the Nagoka Keio has sent a delegation over that we met with to discuss the upcoming 30th celebration and that will be here in March April the mayor and the delegation of maybe as many as 50 people will be coming from Nagoka Keio and then in that in November would be our chance to go and visit Nagoka Keio and they'll never forget us if we do as Stephen tells me so Sue Scheffler and I are kind of going to serve as co-chairs of the delegation with the European Commission Mr. Chairman of the 30th anniversary celebration from our end of things which is basically one night at town meeting a welcoming ceremony which we would put together a dinner in town hall and I intend to put together a committee that I would bring back to this board for your approval to work with Sue Scheffler and myself in planning and coordinating as I say we'll have to do some fundraising so just an update I think that sounds great did you hear that you were appointed something while you were gone? something about people held their nose while they voted for me not exactly but close enough Adam had spoken to me about it and I'm honored to serve and I appreciate the reasoning behind it which is I'm the most technologically dinosaur like on the board I think you got it simply because you weren't here thank you for the honor Diane just two things I had four issues that I discussed with the manager today that are ongoing and I anticipate we'll get some information on in the future like the comparable pay study and other things but just two light things first undefeated for zero we play Winchester on Saturday in a weigh game is it the cheering do you think that's really causing the team to play so long? it's the coach Dubinsky and his coaching staff they put in a plan and it's also last year in the year before those high school students who basically gave their senior year for a rebuilding year and bought into a system in a coaching style not to say they couldn't have gone further but they really gave a lot and usually a plan like this doesn't hit until five years out and he's hit three years out plus we also have his dad who's a very renowned Everett High Pop Warner football coach who's gone to nationals and then on October 30th at six o'clock down at the high school I will be hosting the Middlesex County Middlesex League cheerleading competition oh my god really yes six o'clock all the teams from Burlington Arlington is a force to be working with not just because I'm that way we scout each other's teams I know we'll do very well I'll be shocked if we don't come out but knock on wood and make it to regionals and we definitely have a chance at a state bid which is really exciting the sports at Arlington the high school girls sports have been very successful after five years and now as have some boys track swimming which is co-ed but now we also see some of the varsity boys sports really getting up there and I think it's really exciting and I just want to share it with you all and you're welcome to come down the day before Halloween at six o'clock thank you Joe thank you and I noticed today that coach was named Patriots coach of the week and the Patriots are giving a thousand dollars sometimes that's great just a couple things I wanted to update you on last Friday Adam and I attended the MMA legislative breakfast and it was interesting they went around and asked local officials some of their priorities it was hosted by Needham the Needham police chief was there and he raised the same issue that chief Ryan about the extra extraterritorial powers and we took the opportunity to also chime in on that and put it in front of the legislators who are attending as well as the other local officials and it seemed like it wasn't really on the it struck me it wasn't really on the MMA's radar actually when I talked to some of the staff they said that it hadn't really been on their their radar before that got another bite at the apple the next day I went to the Mass Selectments Association conference Charlie Flaskett and I drove down and there was actually a special presentation fascinating special presentation there that day by the Watertown police chief and the superintendent chief of the Boston police on the marathon bombings and we had a chance to make another pitch on the extra territorial powers so I think it is out there it was a good opportunity to try to help our local chief get that grievance aired a bit and see if there could be some forward motion on it I would also say on the MSA conference Charlie was there because he was giving a presentation on capital budgeting and he used Arlington's example in Arlington's experience and it was fascinating even having been around this so long I learned a lot just listening to the presentation and I started thinking Mr. Chair that when you had suggested that we try to pull together some kind of a citizens academy this was a great presentation before that and I will tell you that the selection admittedly a lot of them were from much smaller communities some of the folks they were really I think impressed with the process that we followed and some of the folks we met when we told them but our multi-year planning process were really impressed because it's much more ad hoc in a lot of other communities so I just wanted to mention that I also want to thank the manager on Russell Commons parking lot I know that when we had had the preliminary presentation on the parking study I think we had voted take some short term actions and I know that there had been some inconsistencies in the time limits that were posted down in the lot and I know that those have been now updated but thank you I would hear a lot about that I think there are still some issues remaining down there though with adequately marking the hours of operation for the blasted machines and noting that the permit spots are actually free spots at night and I think we especially given some of our recent approvals of establishments nighttime establishments down in the center I think we do have a responsibility that we push forward on that along those lines I had had a conversation with the manager and then coincidentally at town day one of the local merchants approached me and said have you ever thought of looking at a valet parking program in the center which is kind of interesting I don't know if that would be a valid thing to feed into the parking study looking at other communities experiences with that and try to make sure that cars get to the Russell commons and that we do have some flow especially meaning the town of allington provides such a thing I don't know what models have been followed elsewhere I can't imagine the town or a contractor a contractor a contractor right a location yeah the same merchant asked about the merchant parking permits it's all parking you know it's you all been here so long it's all parking with us but I don't know some of these things might be valid for the the parking study so I just I put those out there but just going back thank you for forgetting the times consistent down there that was pretty key did you say we could blast those machines yeah I mentioned on my cross-country journey this summer I was in Asheville North Carolina and they had a pay-by-phone parking system which also had a manual a very simple manual system with a a unit with slots with numbered slots corresponding to your parking space you either put your money in or you call a phone number and pay by phone or you pull up the smart phone app and you pay online there were like three different ways to pay for parking without using a machine like we're dealing with so I don't know how we get traction on looking at some of these alternate methods I think I saw in Washington D.C. also they had something like that well I don't say this glibly there's no sarcasm so don't read it I mean you do it by doing a paid street parking and that's how you get the economies of scale to be able to afford that kind of equipment and make it worth a while say that again you do what you do it by charging for parking on the street as well as your lots oh I see no other business I just have one item eight days from today October 15 yes our rep Markey has become Senator Markey and his seat is City and we are holding primary so if you are in one of the major parties or you are what they call unenrolled then you can vote on the 15 personally I think the open checkbook is a fantastic idea and I think we need more ideas like the open checkbook is there any further any other business adjourned


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