Okay, I call the third session of annual town meeting 2022 to order. It's 804 p.m. on Monday, May 2. Tonight we're starting with a new performance of the National Anthem performed by, let's say, I don't know if I have the pronunciation, let's say, I'm just getting word now. The performance is by Katya Shubotkin, who is a student at Arlington High School Class of 2072. So thank you, Katya, for sharing your talent with us and play the recording. And also a special thanks. It's like we're getting a double header. And a special thanks also to Mark Kepline, who connected us with Katya and her music teacher. So thank you, Mark. So let me start with just some opening remarks. I just want to speak to last Wednesday when we closed the meeting, like kind of overtime with Article 8, which had two amendments. I've gotten feedback from several town meeting members that it wasn't entirely clear what we were voting on at certain points, especially the client, the Kiel amendment, which had a bit of a kind of a double negative changing what was in an ineligibility list. And I apologize for any confusion about that. Going forward, I'm going to ask proponents, especially proponents of motions to amend to more clearly explain the precise effect of their motions, a motion to amend amends a main motion which often amends a bylaw. And so the layers of changes can be confusing. And then we're clear, especially as we head into voting at the same time, I would hope that when we're debating an article and it's subsidiary motions, whether it's motions to amend or motions to substitute that it isn't the first time that that members are reading it to help stay up to date with upcoming articles and their subsidiary motions. I published a progress dashboard that has the latest information at Arlington MA dot gov slash town meeting progress. And this should have been in town meeting member email list message in recent days and we'll have that at the top of messages going forward to remind folks to look there. So I'll show you progress on articles we've already voted on and what's coming up. Hopefully that makes it more clear what homework town meeting members should be doing ahead of each meeting. Okay, so are there, let's see, by a show of hands, I can can we enable raise hands and zoom. Are there any town meeting members who need to be sworn in, like if you're unable to attend last week or you missed the swearing last week on Monday and Wednesday. Do we have any hands to be sworn in as a town meeting member if you're newly elected or appointed to your seat. I see one hand. Okay. So, Julie, can you bring up the oath of office. Okay, so for anyone out there who needs to take the office I see Sean keen if there's anyone else. Just follow along as well. Just repeat after me. I state your name will participate fully and will fairly evaluate all matters before town meeting. I quote in the best interests of the town. I support free speech and will treat others with mutual respect, and will conduct myself in a civil manner that is becoming of an elected town meeting member. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially perform the duties incumbent upon me as a town meeting member of the town of Arlington in accordance with the bylaws. Recording in progress. Sorry, my zoom window is kind of doing things here. Are we all set with the oath. Was there anything else from from the panel. We're good. Okay. Okay, I recognize the chair of the select board. Lynn diggins. Thank you, Mr. moderator. It is moved that if all business of the meeting as set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, when the meeting adjourns it adjourns to Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 8pm. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Great. Thank you. I don't want to call for any announcements or resolutions to have any announcements or resolutions. And let's make sure we have raised hands and able to zoom for that. Okay. Seeing none. Let's move on to, let's say, let's call for reports that are ready to be received. Mr. Fosca. Mr. moderator, I move that article three be removed from the table. Do you have a second. Okay. Article three is now before us. We can now receive reports. Let's say we have three hands. Let's say it's a miss bloom. Second from Mr. diggins is movement to, to move to Wednesday. We don't finish. Yep. Great. Thank you. Yeah, we have that covered. Thank you. Let's say, and next we have Mr. fieldman. Good evening, Mr. moderate Jeff fieldman precinct 12. I want to give the high school building committee report and submit it. Please, please go ahead. Okay.  So First, I'm pleased to prevent present this report on behalf of the Arlington high school building committee, more than 2000 people toward the school on Saturday. We thank you, and we hope you enjoyed our visit. Next slide please. reminder that Arlington high school is where we have monotony preschool district offices, community education programming and of course our high school. And tonight I just want to give you an overview of where we are on the project next slide please. We're pleased to report that the project is on schedule and on budget. Student teachers are in the new steam and performing arts wings on what was once the front lawn of the school, and they are thrilled to be using these beautiful spaces. Due to low interest rates and higher than anticipated premiums on our bond sales for the high school, the amount of tax increase for the average household is $100 less than the original estimate. In addition, in December of 2019. We locked into a guaranteed maximum price for the project, which meant we were not impacted by higher prices on goods and services due to inflation, or the pandemic related shortages next slide please. This slide shows the layout of the school school. Next slide. In this slide, you can see each phase of construction and where students are attending school work is taking place. Next slide. We opened the steam wing on schedule on February 28 and the auditorium opened on April 26. Throughout the project we have kept the public informed through our website and regular forms. Next slide please. Phase one, which is open and operating includes science classrooms and labs, art studios, maker spaces and a 120 seat discourse lab. And it includes the performing arts wing, which has an 826 seat auditorium dedicated and enlarge band and chorus rooms, eight music practice rooms and a digital production lab and studio. Next slide please. This gives you a view of the outside entrance of the school and the next slide gives you a view of the inside entrance of the school. Next slide please. Next slide this is the discourse lab. And then the next slide please is a picture of one of our science classrooms. The next slide is a picture of math and art rooms. The next slide is a view of the light well from the first floor. The next slide is a picture of one of the interdisciplinary maker spaces, which many of you toured on Saturday. The next slide is a picture of the auditorium. And the next slide is a picture of the band room and the performing arts wing stairs. Next slide please. We are now beginning phase two of construction. During this phase, we are taking down the old auditorium and column house. And we will be constructing the central spine library cafeteria courtyard humanities wing district offices and monotony preschool next slide please. On this slide, you can see where we are building the humanities wing. Next slide please. This slide shows the project to timeline. We are scheduled to open this wing in September of 2023. Next slide. This gives you a view of how we are using existing space as we begin phase two. The blue gym is now the cafeteria. The library is an old hall and the pit is now where students can study and spend time with one one another. Next slide please. This is a view what the massive lobby and life sciences skills cafe will look like in September 23. Next slide. This gives you a view of the form stairs and cafeteria. Next slide. Here's a view of the new library. Next slide is a view of the courtyard. Next slide is a drawing of the exterior view of the humanities wing from Pierce field. And the next slide is an interior and exterior view of the preschool. Next slide is a list of our committee. We have been working together in a collaborative way on behalf of the community for the past six years. We are all committed to seeing this project through to completion in 2025. Next slide slide please. If you have not done so, please go to our website and sign up for updates on the project. On behalf of our committee, I want to thank town meeting and the public for your support of this project that is transforming the educational experience of our students and offering beautiful and inviting spaces for the public at large to enjoy. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you, Mr. Damon. We have a hand raised by Ms. Rowe. Ms. Rowe, do you have a report? Yes, Mr. Moderator Clarissa Rowe precinct four. I asked that the Community Preservation Act committee's report be accepted by town meeting. It is exactly. Yep. Actually, do we need a second for that? I don't recall. We get a second just in case. Okay. We have a second. Go ahead, Ms. Rowe. Sorry. No, I will. I'll be talking about this later in the warrant. Okay. Thank you. Report is received. Let's see. I see Mr. Thielman's hand is, I think, just still up from before. Are there any other reports that are ready to be received? All right. Seeing none. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Yes, Mr. Frost. I moved that article three be laid upon the table. We have a second. Second. Okay. Article three is now laid upon the table. And so that brings us to article nine, article nine is now before the meeting to article nine was initially on the consent agenda. Excuse me, as a recommended vote. Excuse me by the select board of no action. Can we bring up the, can we bring up article nine, please? And let's see. I want to be able to allow, so Mr. Warden requested that this be removed from the consent agenda. And so I now ask for a substitute. So basically there are two valid actions that we could take from here. We could use a substitute motion, which I have not received in advance, or an explanation that maybe the, you know, the removal from the consent agenda happened. You know, incorrectly or unintentionally where there was some error. So can we bring up Mr. Warden. Ideally we do this through the speaking queue so that we can actually see who's speaking and have a timer going but. We have a point of order from Mr. Miller. And just want to remind everyone that this is a no action article and as far as I know we still do not have a substitute motion so let's let's all try not to burn too much time on this place. Mr Miller, are you there. Yep, that was a mistake on my part technology sorry. No worries. What is your point of order so I can end that name and precinct please. Oh, that was a precinct 11 that was actually relevant to the oath. I'm a new member. Sorry. Sorry to hold up the meeting. If you if you still need to, do you still need to take the oath of office is that what you're saying. I did it but nobody heard me, but whatever is appropriate according to the meeting. I haven't been actually having people like audibly like on the call, giving the oath of office it was just kind of like to yourself so you know. Okay. Yeah, I'll take it offline. Thank you. Great. Thank you. No worries. And so we have Mr. Warden. Do you want to explain the either a substitute motion or was there an error in this removal from the consent agenda. Yes, my audible. Yes, I can hear you Mr. Thank you Mr. moderator john word and precinct eight. To my knowledge, I did not ask that this item be removed from the consent agenda. Okay, so it sounds like an error, so I don't know how my name got there. Okay, thank you so. Seeing that they're okay and so looks like the speaking queue just cleared there was someone there but they disappeared so seeing the speaking queue is cleared. Let's let's take a vote on this actually I'm just going to say, let's enable raise hands and zoom so you can dispatch this really quickly. If there's any objections to this recommended vote of no action by the select board on article nine by law amendment achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions from town facilities consistent with the town of Arlington's net zero goals. Do we have any objections and if you have an objection raise a hand and zoom and seeing none. It's unanimous vote that I declare so we are now done with article nine. So let's move to article 10 article 10 is a bylaw amendment tree that preservation and protection and proponent that will bring up for this is miss stamps. So if we can open the speaker queue and, or just have her come on directly but if we have around the speaker queue then, then we can actually have the time we're going as well. Oh, do you want me to head back over to the speaker queue. Oh, just so we could select you from there if you if you just, we'll play anyway. Yeah. Yeah, it's just an extra technical hurdle that makes things like raise point request there we go. There we go. Yeah. Okay, you can go ahead name and percent. Okay, thank you Mr moderator Susan stamps precinct three and a member of the Arlington tree committee. The just a little bit of background. The select board created the tree committee in 2010 to promote the protection planting and care of trees and Arlington. Oh, I'm sorry I have a slide show that was supposed to be the first slide. Do we have it here is this a Yeah, I submitted it. Am I supposed to be on the zoom. Sorry everybody the zoom screen to look at the to see the slide show. Oh, do you not see the zoom window right now because that's where it's being presented. I see. Okay, all right. Okay, thank you. Sorry about that. Next slide to please. Next slide. In 2015 and 2016 the tree committee wrote the tree bylaw to address increasing loss of tree canopy in town from development. The 2016 town meeting passed it with almost unanimous support. This bylaw applies to major projects on residential and commercial property. Those major projects are one demolitions to construction increasing the footprint of structures 50% more or more over preexisting structures and three new construction on property with no preexisting structures. The tree by law applies to trees defined as quote unquote protected trees on the property. Currently a protected tree is defined as a healthy tree located in the setback of the property with a minimum eight inch diameter the for anybody who doesn't know the setback is the frame around the property the minimum distance that a structure must be from a public way or a lot of the adjacent plot line in Arlington the setback is any more anywhere from 6 feet to 25 feet depending on whether it's the front side or back of the structure or what kind of property it is and what the zoning district is and so on. So it's just those streets around it's not any street on the property and a certain size which currently is 8 inches. If there are any protected trees on the property in one of these major projects before during doing any work on the property the builder must submit a tree plan to the town's tree warden and have it approved. The tree plan has to show all the protected trees on the property. The actually not ready for that third slide but that's okay. The tree plan must show all the protected trees on the property and nearby street trees. It must show which protected trees will be removed and how the roots of the remaining protected trees and nearby street trees will be protected during construction. If the builder plans to remove any protected trees he or she must pay the town a mitigation fee of $375 per inch of total width lost. This and we that was that amount was determined by the town manager's office and consultation with other people at town hall and the tree warden as far as what is the cost of buying and planting and caring for a tree for the first 2 or 3 years and that turned out to be 375 inches per per inch $375 per inch. This bylaw also applies to protected trees removed within 12 months before the builder or property owner applies for a building or demolition permit. The money collected under the tree bylaw goes into the town's trees please fund and is used to plant trees in the vicinity of the trees lost or elsewhere in town if planting locations near where they were taken down are limited. Next slide please. More article last for poor changes in the tree bylaw which will save time for the tree warden the building department and builders. It tightens up the definition demolition. Second and increases the number of protected trees. Third it makes the tree plans better for the tree warden and for it holds builders more accountable for knowledge of tree bylaw. Next slide please. On the first item of tightening up the definition of demolition currently demolition is loosely defined as my paraphrasing here. We move in a structure. We're starting to remove the structure and this has caused unknown number of disagreements with the building department the tree warden and among the them and the builders over at what point does work on the property turn into demolition and this was a real need this needed to be straightened out and so in consultation with the tree warden the building department and the town manager's office we came up with an extremely clear definition of demolition. I won't read it to you here if you want to look at the the select board report they are in favor of these 4 changes. They have it right there but it involves if you remove a roof that's demolition if you remove and then 50% of the wall area that's definition it's very clear so that she's pretty much removed arguments. Next slide please. Thank you. looking to we're asking that the meeting to reduce the size of protected trees from 8 inches to 6 inches and diameter again this like what is a proofs of all of these changes. Because we're still losing too much of our tree canopy to construction. I'm sure this is not news to anybody listening to this and therefore this article would reduce and so we're looking to reduce the the the with 6 inches to save more trees. The 6 inches is consistent with area town bylaws today when we wrote our first wrote our tree bylaw in 2016. We looked around the country and around Massachusetts we found very few bylaws that were regulating removal of trees during construction but we found 2 good examples right in our backyard Lexington and Wellesley and we really modeled our bylaw on them and since 2016 both towns have reduced the size of the protected trees to 6 inches since then some other towns have instituted tree bylaws Cambridge and Concord have 6 inch and some of the and Newton have new bylaws and there are 8 inches but we think Arlington is very dense and 6 inches is certainly well with them. The tree plan that has to be submitted under the tree bylaw because we allowed the builders to basically do the tree plan themselves just draw the trees on the you know the site plan they were there using the construction plan they were using and we were we're trying to make it not complicated but what's happened is that builders are not tree people and they don't necessarily know how big a tree is or you know they don't have they can't identify them properly. I wouldn't be able to either. There's something they're in the wrong place on the plan and so it's caused a lot of delays and and again problems with getting on the same page as the tree warden so that they get going with their project. She wouldn't have to go out and take his own measurement measurements and so this requirement. This adds a requirement that a tree plan has to be done by a certified arborist or registered landscape architect and you know and I'm happy to report that there are some builders in town who actually do do that right now. And so that should be like really clear. And then the last thing is that sometimes somebody especially a bill that come out of town will just go ahead and start doing a demolition or doing work clearing property and then when they come in and apply for their building permit. Somebody mentions the tree by law they they say that gosh I I didn't know there was a tree by law well. So sorry to those trees down and what this excuse me that work is done after they like the building permit they get the building permit. They do the work on the property. They don't realize there's a tree by law. And so what this does is it adds an affidavit to the bottom of the building permit saying I the builder. It certified that my project does not fly the tree by law and I am aware that there's a tree by law. So it's right there for them. So that if there is work done outside of the tree by law then they can be held accountable and they're really don't need to be any questions asked. And so those are the 4 changes that we're asking for. And so we hope that you will vote. Yes. 10. Thank you. Thank you miss stamps. We have another speaker in the queue. Let's take miss Weber. Name and precinct please. We were precinct 21. I just wanted to ask miss stamps if we have to get in touch with the tree committee if we have trees on our property that my neighbors think are going to fall on my house. I don't personally think that but this small maple trees and I wanted to know if we have to have permission to cut them down if the need comes about. It's not that is that within the scope of this of the changes. I would just Mister moderator. I would just if I have permission to give a very brief answer to miss Weber to explain why it's not in the scope of the tree by law. Sure you have 6 and a half minutes of miss Weber's time but please don't use all that. No, no, I just simply to say that that the tree by law as I explained in my presentation only applies to major developments, Dalish and etc. So a couple of trees on your property because you're having an issue that the tree by law doesn't apply. It's a good question. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take miss Gruber from these speaking queue. Name and precinct. Once you're able to connect. Yes, Rebecca Gruber precinct 10. I just had a quick question. I know that everyone is aware that there's a lot of conversation about warrant article 38. And a lot of that has to do with what demolition will occur under work article 38. It's approved and supported in general. I guess my question is it seems to me that your amendments will do more to protect trees from significant development on lots. Do I understand that correctly. Miss dance is that accurate. Oh, thank you. Yes, it will in the sense that it it protects a wider variety of trees with minimum tree size 6 inches. So it's going to include more trees and minimum then down to minimum size 8 inches. So yes, it will protect more trees. Thank you. And I just want to say that it's interesting to think about the warrant articles in connection to one another. And in this case, of course, this particular warrant article is potentially going to help us as we think about other warrant articles regarding development of properties. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Of course, since we do go to let's take let's say miss may clue. Clue next. Let's just remember what we're bringing them up that what's in scope is the articles that are before us. There are interactions between them, but it's the responsibility of the select board mainly to put the sequencing of the articles. So we can't think too much about the interactions of future articles. When we're discussing this one, go ahead name and present please. Good evening, Mr. Moderator, McKayla may precinct 20. I moved to terminate debate on this article. Okay, we have a second. And we have seconds. Okay, so let's let's open voting for termination of debate. Okay, so if you are in favor of terminating debate on on article 10, you want to vote yes. If you want to continue debate on this article about regulations for tree removal, then you would vote no so we can continue debate. And this is a two thirds vote requires two thirds to terminate debate and then move to voting on the main motion. And I did not remind folks to vote in waves. I apologize for that. And that's now gotten us into trouble. Take a note of that. Make sure we do that going forward. I did put that in my notes for the main motion but not for termination of debate. And I apologize for that. We're still missing several voters. So let's hold up a bit. Because I think there's been some issues with folks getting through to get their votes in. We're only seeing 160 votes cast, which is fairly low. So let's let's say there's several folks who have zero idle time, which means that they've been active just now and have not submitted their vote or not been able to do that successfully. So let's just wait a bit. So this is the termination of debate on article 10. Here are the 216 votes cast. Some folks who have not been idle, which means that their active users in the portal but have not gotten a vote through yet are Mr. Tremblay, Ms. McKinnon, Ms. Kelleher, Ms. Stamps, Mr. Zimmer, Ms. Jean, Ms. Preston, Ms. Leahy. And now we're up to 222 votes for getting there. So let's just wait a little bit longer as the votes are still coming in. We don't want to cut people off as there's active voting from several folks. Ms. Thornton, I see you on your vote has not gotten in yet according to my screen. Mr. Brody, Mr. Ames, Mr. Kerbal, Mr. Batts, Mr. Tremblay was idle negative minutes ago. I'm not sure how that's possible. Ms. Farola, Ms. Preston, if you're having trouble voting through the portal, you can anyone for that matter can enter their vote into the Q&A. Let's see. Do we have the instructions up in the Q&A? Did that get through to folks about the various ways you can get your votes in? I should be verbalizing that away as well. I apologize. Here we go. You can enter your vote into the Q&A if you're having trouble through the portal. Apologies again that I didn't send folks in waves. Or you can call the town clerk, Julie Brazil at<PHONE_NUMBER>. And folks who there's still a handful of folks, Ms. Farola, Ms. Sada, Ms. Preston, I see Ms. Preston's vote got in. Okay, let's just give another 15 seconds because it's just a few folks left. This is for termination of debate. So it's not going to have any permanent consequences. It's just like five more seconds to give folks just a little bit more time and apologies for the delays on this. Again, I'll make sure that we vote in waves next time. Okay, let's close voting now. Again, this is on termination of debate, not the main motion. Okay, and so the motion passes 206 in the affirmative 26 negative. So debate is terminated. So let's just run through the screens. And then after we're done running through the screens, we're going to take a vote on the main motion, which is the select board's recommended vote of favorable action on Article 10 bylaw amendments related to treat preservation of protection. And I'll I'll detail what's specific like a very, very brief summary of what that means when we get to the voting screen for the main motion. Right now, we're still looking at the the votes on the termination of debate. Okay, so we're done going through the precinct. So let's open up the voting for the main motion for Article 10. And while that's coming up, just explain that yes vote here means that we're this is my summary. It's obviously oversimplified. Because I'm not going to read the entirety of the of the main motion. But very brief summary is that vote yes, if you want to tighten regulations around removal of trees to try to preserve the tree canopy in town and vote no, if you want to remain with the status quo on the current tree removal regulations. Okay, and so let's first start with precincts one through seven. If you're not in precincts one through seven, hold off on voting please. Just precincts one through seven for now. We'll just wait about 20 seconds before we move on. So if you're precincts eight and above, please don't vote yet. Okay, so if you're now if you're precincts eight to 14, please go ahead and vote. Again, vote yes, if you want to tighten regulations around removal of trees to try to preserve the tree canopy in town, and vote no if you want to retain the status quo on the tree removal regulations. So okay, let's now if you're in precincts 15 to 21, please vote now. We'll go for another 30 seconds just to give everyone time. Okay, we still have several members who are active in the portal but have not voted yet. Mr. Tremblay, Ms. Noah, Ms. Jean, Mr. Hamlin, Mr. Bats, Ms. Spear, Ms. Florent Hurtlow. Okay, now we just have three missing voters. Mr. Hamlin, Mr. Bats, Ms. Farola. Okay, and so I think we've had enough time here. Let's close voting motion passes 222 in the affirmative 10 and negative. The main motion of article 10 passes. So let's run through the screens. Okay, so let's now open article 11 bylaw amendment related to domestic partnerships. It's recommended vote favorable action by a select board. And while that's coming up, let me just call on. Let's see before we get into this, we have a point of order from Ms. Dre. Good evening, Mr. Moderator Elizabeth Dre, precinct 10. I'm wondering before we get discussing this article, if you could let me know where I could find the policy that governs what is allowed to be posted on the Tom Warren. In my brief tenure, I've only seen amendments and reports posted on the Tom Warren until recently.  I did ask more experienced town meeting members, but they were unable to help me. So I'm wondering if you could let me know where I could find that or if you could perhaps explain that policy. Thank you, Mr. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I'm going to consider that out of scope for this particular article, but it's a very good question. I will make sure that in our communication going forward, hopefully by tomorrow, or at least in the coming days to specify that policy, because I think that it hasn't been super precise, what exactly the policy is for what gets posted there. And so I'll make sure that we communicate that. Thank you. So yeah, so let's bring up so we have do we have that open here? Article 11. Okay. And so before we get started here, let's let me give the chair of the select board an opportunity to Mr. Diggins. Do you have anything to say about the recommended vote from the select board on this? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, and I'm wondering in select board chair. So the select board be voted unanimously to support this this article, we support the expansion of the excuse me, we support the expansion of rights being given to non traditional groupings. I want to say couples, but clearly not couples, but relationships mean and and so we, we understand that there are some potential financial implications made from potential abuse me but but we feel that there are ways to mitigate that or not so much mitigate that but but address it mean and so we feel that rather than the acting or not giving people more rights me out of concern in for potential abuse, be less move forward and deal with these problems as as they come up. And so overall though, we we we think it's a good article and that we can we can we can support it. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. So let's bring up the proponent of this article. First, and so can Ms. Ryan Volmar actually can can you add yourself to the speaking queue if you haven't already and we'll just take you out of order. That way we can we can show the timer so that it's more consistent with all the other speakers, even though we'll be taking the first is looking for Susan Ryan Volmar. Yep. Okay, so I'll just play you up first. So, so you're the proponent going to speak to this article and summarize what exactly this is changing and your motivations for this place. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm Susan Ryan Volmar town meeting member from precinct 19. I'm also one of the co chairs of the Rainbow Commission which placed article 11 on the warrant. I'm here with Amos Meeks, a town meeting member from precinct three, those of you who present for now meeting last year will remember Amos as the courageous driver of the town's groundbreaking domestic partnership bylaw. Arlington should be proud of being the first town in the state to enact the bylaw recognizing polyamorous relationships. Our bylaw was reviewed for any potential conflicts with state law by the Attorney General's office after passage. It was found to be entirely proper and legal. The most urgently needed benefit accorded through Arlington's domestic partnership bylaw is the right to visit your partner in the hospital. Some of the proposed changes to the town's bylaw and article 11 affects this right so its vital article 11 is approved. The push to legalized domestic partnerships in Massachusetts began in the late 1980s when an HIV infection was death sentence. Many hospital administrators routinely denied visitation to partners of gay men dying of AIDS. So having a piece of paper in hand certifying that you had the legal right to visit your life partner as he lay dying was life changing. Today, hospital administrators continue to turn away loved ones nontraditional relationships. The first requirement to be able to visit a loved one or designate the loved ones who can visit you is for your relationship to be recognized in some official form. If you don't have that official recognition, you don't get hospital visitation. Under Arlington's domestic partnership bylaw, if one member of a partnership dies, then the entire partnership is dissolved. Article 11 will update that language that the death of one partner will not dissolve the loving relationship of surviving members. Dissolving a polyamorous relationship even temporarily, such as between the time of one partner's death and the time when surviving partners can reregister, needlessly exposes loving partners to the emotional devastation of being turned away at the hospital door. Other changes to the town's domestic partnership bylaw that will be made with the passage of Article 11 include a new section on employment benefits that town employees and registered partnerships would be eligible for. Those benefits include pay bereavement, sick and parental leave. These employment benefits will not cost the town any money. The number of days a town employee can take for parental leave is governed by state law. The number of days a town employee can take to care for the sick parent of a partner is governed by the federal family and medical leave act. The number of paid bereavement days an employee can take is five days per death. If an employee needs more time off than allotted for parental sick or bereavement leave, they must use a crude personal or vacation leave before taking unpaid leave. Town employees who register for a domestic partnership will not be able to extend their health insurance benefits to their domestic partners. That would violate state law. Since the domestic partnership bylaw was enacted, there have been three registered partnerships in Arlington at $30 per registration. The town has collected $90. No town employee has registered. Finally, Article 11 would remove the provisions that people in registered domestic partnerships must share their living expenses and live together. It's true that these provisions are common in domestic partnership bylaws. That's how they made it into Arlington's bylaw in the first place. But the provenance of these provisions relied in the deep homophobia of the 1980s and 1990s. As a young news reporter in Boston, some of the first stories I ever covered were of the raucous Boston City Council hearings in early 1990s, during which several different domestic partnership ordinances were debated. At those hearings, I heard every argument that's ever been made against any proposal whatsoever that would grant recognition to non-traditional relationships. By far the most ridiculous, yet strangely effective argument was the claim that heterosexual employees would pretend to be gay in order to extend their health benefits to friends and family. To counter this anticipated onslaught of fraud, it became common for municipalities and businesses to impose stringent requirements on employees seeking domestic partnership benefits. That's why it's much harder to register for domestic partnership than to get a license to marry.  To register for a domestic partnership, all partners must come to the town hall, pay the registration fee and quote, jointly proclaim under the pains and penalties of perjury that they have made a commitment of mutual support and caring for the domestic partners, that they reside together and intend to do so indefinitely and that they share basic living expenses. When compared with the strength of protection offered by marriage, domestic partnerships are like soggy pieces of spaghetti. It makes no sense to impose greater eligibility requirements on people seeking to register their domestic partnership than those seeking a license to marry. I want to conclude my introduction to article 11 by expressing my deepest empathy for Amos and his family. My wife and I met in college when we were 18, we became parents after we'd been together for 20 years. I could speak for days describing the insults and injuries, which include denial of hospital visitation, that we endured throughout the horrible time when our relationship had no legal protection. We spent tens of thousands of dollars throughout those years on legal fees to adopt children I had given birth to. Legal fees on domestic partnerships and other arrangements such as health care proxies and power of attorney, we would not have needed if our relationship was legally recognized. In addition to those literal costs, there are other costs in which no price can be attached, the cost to your own sense of well-being and the toll on your relationship when it isn't recognized by health care providers, town clerks, tax accountants, and sometimes even members of your own family. It is shameful that town meeting has any power whatsoever over Amos' family. No member of town meeting has earned that power or deserves that power, any more so than the representatives who debated marriage equality in Massachusetts had done anything to warrant the power they once wielded over my family. But this is where we are, this is how things work. Since I'm a member of town meeting and I do have this power, I intend to exercise it judiciously and with humility. I urge each of you in the strongest possible terms to do the same. Please reject the more amendment. It may have originated with the best of intentions for the town, but it's rooted in a legacy of homophobia. It's based on a complete lack of understanding of laws governing paid parental and family and medical leave. Please support article 11. It is the least we can do for Amos, his family, and our other neighbors who need this recognition and protection. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Ryan Volmar. As she referenced, we do have one amendment that's been proposed. Can we take up Mr. Moore, please? I believe in the eighth position to introduce his amendment. Is there something I believe this amendment you want to move to introduce, Mr. Moore? Yes. Christopher Moore, precinct 14. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I move to amend the select board's motion under article 11 with the text that's been distributed before the meeting. Do we have a second? We have a second, and Mr. Moore, do you want to speak to your amendment and what exactly it would change in the main motion? I'd be happy to. There's a point of order if you want to address it first. Oh, yes. I saw that earlier. I apologize. Thanks for noticing that. Can we take the point of order from Mr. Kepline, please? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It was a technical problem. I was, I put in, I was the first one on the speaking list and then suddenly I was gone from it. I was, I don't know, how did that happen or when does it get cleared or do I have to keep an eagle eye for when these flushes happen? I'm not aware, we'll take that question offline and we'll keep an eye on that and we'll have someone investigate that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just, someone from the staff on the panel can look into that, please. Mr.  Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I think what we're talking about here is not rights. We don't have any power over anybody's family or anybody's relationships. We can't tell them what to do. What we are talking about is providing benefits in law and if those benefits should be limited and half. It's not about rights. It's about benefits. I appreciate much of the change that's proposed in Select Board's main motion under this article, in particularly the extension of benefits to town employees who are members of domestic partnerships. As the previous speaker said, we can't presently provide healthcare to members of domestic partnerships due to state law preemption issues, but I hope that that will change at some point in the future. Unfortunately, one thing that's very important here is that the definition of what a domestic partnership is has been significantly changed in the main motion by removing the requirements that members of the partnership reside together and intend to do so indefinitely, share basic living expenses, and that they are not married. Now, the previous speaker commented that marriages don't have these kinds of requirements and that's quite true, of course, but there are some other differences. For instance, marriages are limited to people and that they may not, and those people may not participate in other marriages. In this case, if the main motion passes without my amendment, we really only have two substantive requirements that the members of the domestic partnership have a commitment of mutual support and caring and that they're not related by blood closer than with our marriage in the Commonwealth. They also have to be 18 and legally competent. So the main motion would allow for partnerships of unlimited size consisting of any number of married or unmarried people living separately or together and even people who are members of other domestic partnerships or marriages or who live in other states. It's very broad with no real limits to how large these partnerships or partnership networks could be. That leads the proposal to easy abuse. For instance, any number of married or unmarried couples living separately could be a partnership and if any one of them were a town employee, that person would be entitled to parental leave for every child born to any member of the partnership. That leave, as the previous speaker mentioned, is limited in various ways, but the number of potential births triggering leave, for instance, is limited only to the creativity of the size of the partnership. And I hope at some point paid parental leave for town employees becomes much more generous, but we can't afford to do that if the partnerships become large and diffuse. So rather than waiting for abuse to happen, I think we should foreclose that possibility. In my mind, the simplest way to accomplish that is to at least implicitly limit the scope of the partnerships. My motion does that by restoring the basic requirements of living together and sharing basic living expenses. And it does not restore the requirement of not being married. I think that there are very good reasons to not restore that requirement. But restoring the requirement to living together and sharing basic living expenses will limit abuse, keep the scale reasonable, and make it easier to expand benefits to partnerships should we choose to do so at some point in the future. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. And it's not that we have the main motion and the motion to amend that have been proposed and spoken to will now kind of open up a speaking queue to everyone else or we'll start taking folks from the speaking queue that's been filling up already. And then when we're done with debate eventually then we'll vote on the Mr. Moore's amendment and then we'll vote on the main motion which will either be amended or not. So let's now take Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. This is Amos Meeks from Precinct 3. I want to start just sort of on a slightly personal note. I'm a scientist. I live in a world of facts and figures and theories and hypotheses. I try to bring this ethos to my work as a town meeting member and before that to my work as the co-chair of Sustainable Arlington. And I think this is part of why I've personally struggled with various conversations that I've had around this article over the past week. I've talked to numerous town meeting members spending many hours writing emails, talking on the phone, trying to understand and address their concerns with this article. Yet in every case I didn't feel like any progress was made and it took me until today to I think understand why. And this is that as far as I can tell a lot of the pushback in the people that I talk to seems to be driven by fear mongering. While I understand the motivation behind Mr. Moore's proposed amendment, he seems to be suggesting that we should deny domestic partnerships to a large group of people who may want or need them out of a fear that some potential town employee could somehow abuse this by-law to spend all of their hard-earned, sick and personal time at once for the year at a relatively unplanned time whenever someone has a birth, for instance, or that they may then go on to harm the town by taking further unpaid leave when not actually caring for a newborn or a loved one as is the intended purpose of these benefits. And I hope I don't have to explain why it's hard to imagine someone using these changes to abuse the five paid vacation days given for bereavement leave. I believe that at heart this is fear mongering. In the letter published by town meeting members, stamps and man, they advocate opposing this entire set of changes out of a fear that these changes may have the unintended consequence of turning employers against current policies extending benefits to people in domestic partnerships. Yet to me, this seems like pure speculation. And if that is truly their concern, I'm confused why they don't support the current changes that we are working on and then also support the many next steps and advocacy that it would take towards broadening them and ensuring employers support to impose the entire article on the grounds of an unsupported speculative situation seems like fear mongering to me. I've had other conversations this past week that I won't address publicly because they were not have not been brought up publicly, but the theme of them is the same. I find that someone opposes these changes out of a fear of some bad outcome and outcome that I certainly also do not want, but there is no evidence provided that such an outcome would ever occur as a result of these changes, nor are there any suggestions for how to modify the bylaw to try to mitigate these negative outcomes while still providing the benefits. This is simply fear mongering and opposition. So to all of these people and to anyone here tonight who feels similarly to them, I would like to say that I'm sorry. I know what it's like to live in fear. Based on real situations, I have had to live in fear that if I told my boss about the people I love most in the world, that I could be fired for it. When thinking about whether or not to have a child, I've had to consider that the fear based on the experience of people I know that my family situation could be used to justify taking that child away from me or to justify denying an adoption. I have had to live in fear of answering basic questions like how was your weekend and instead monitoring every word to avoid coming out inadvertently and dealing with the potential questions and judgment that come with that. I have had to live in fear of then coming out publicly to several hundred town meeting members having no idea what kind of things could be said or done to me as a result. So I'm sorry. I did not want to be this person in this position. I think I'm far from the best person to be trying to represent the interests of a broad swath of people in a large variety of family situations. I would honestly be much happier being able to spend my time and energy and expertise focusing on environmental issues. I had been fully expecting to live my entire life in the closet and I had come to terms with that. But when the opportunity presented itself after Somerville's ordinance and when I looked at my situation and found that I was in a position where I didn't need to worry about my job, I didn't have children I needed to protect and where I could take any mean or hateful things said at me. I was in a position to do good and help my friends, my family and my community. I didn't want to do it, it was scary, but who would I be if I hadn't? So again, I'm sorry, deeply sorry, for bringing these issues up and for causing fear and discomfort. While it would be too late to impact the vote tonight, I would like to extend to anyone who feels uncomfortable with these changes proposed here an open invitation to come have tea in my backyard and meet my family. My email is publicly available if you want to get in touch. I also hope that you'll have time to consider what you are really afraid of and to sit with that fear but not to let it get in the way of providing this small set of legal rights and recognition to those who desire it. With my remaining time, I would like to thank Susan Ryan-Bulmar and the rest of the Rainbow Commission for their support. I would like to thank the Town Clerk, Julie Brazil, for spending extensive time working with me to craft the administrative aspects of these changes and I would like to thank the Town Council and the Director of HR, Karen Malloy for being responsive to my questions. Thank you Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you Mr. Meeks. Apologies to the meeting that the timer got accidentally reset when we tried to clear the second requests from earlier but I believe Mr. Meeks was well within his seven minutes. Before we move on, and this isn't directed at any particular speakers. I'm just based on discussions that have happened kind of ahead of the meeting about this particular article this evening came up I believe in like the dress for her soul. Lots of folks are interested in speaking on this from various different perspectives some very deeply personal perspectives some practical perspectives some academic perspectives and whatever whatever angle you're kind of coming at this issue from I just I implore everybody to really be mindful and respectful of the really broad diversity of viewpoints on this issue and just imagine that folks who disagree with you imagine them actually sitting in your presence as opposed to just speaking into a computer which can be very impersonal because this is a very personal subject for a lot of folks whichever side of this issue you happen to sit on so please be mindful and thoughtful and civil when you speak on this issue and again that's not directed at anyone who's spoken already just something for it to keep in mind because I know that there's a great diversity of views on this so let's take Mr. Newton next. Thank you Mr. Moderator this is Sanjay Newton Precinct 10. I'd like to confirm my understanding with Ms. Ryan Vollmar whether there's any possible way that Article 11 could put marriage equality gains at risk or impede Arlington's efforts to advance equity justice and access efforts. Ms. Ryan Vollmar she should be able to speak still. Can you hear me? Yes go ahead. Okay great. Thanks for the question. You know what I was in touch today with Mary Bonato to ask how and or whether any of these changes would somehow affect marriage law and for members of town meeting who don't know who Mary Bonato is Ms. Bonato she's best known for being the lead council in the Goodridge case which made Massachusetts the first state in which same-sex couples could marry in 2004. She was the architect of the legal strategy that dismantled the the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013's Windsor case which was decided by the United States Supreme Court finding that the federal government had to recognize and honor the state marriages of same-sex couples. She also argued the Bergafell case before the United States Supreme Court in 2015 in that case found that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. Ms. Bonato is one of the foremost experts in the country on marriage law. So as I noted I was in touch with her today about this issue. We had an email exchange in which I have to you know preface this by saying she was careful to note that she was not all capital N-O-T not offering a legal opinion and she was in fact just quote spitballing but I think the quality of Ms. Bonato's spitballing is very high. She pointed out that thanks to the Windsor and the Bergafell rulings it's much harder for states to make changes to marriage laws. Any attempts to change marriage laws are likely met with preemptive litigation and that's litigation asserting that federal law supplants state law. So the idea that the town's domestic partnership by-law would somehow have unintended consequences for marriage and marriage equality it does not hold water at least as Ms. Bonato sees it. She did make the observation that as per usual there will be some people who would try to quote spin it as how we've undermined marriage norms which I took to mean that any changes to recognition of non-traditional relationships will be somehow interpreted as threatening the status quo which quite frankly I think is evidenced in the Moore amendment and the man stance letter. The other thing I want to note is that the select board unanimously supported the rainbow commission's decision to put article 11 on warrant and in its commentary on the article the board noted that it quote recognizes that the proposed amendments to the by-law if adopted by the 2022 annual town meeting will be subject to review by the Massachusetts Attorney General's municipal law unit. So people need to understand that if article 11 passes it will be reviewed and any portions of the by-law that are held invalid will simply be severed from the by-law while other provisions will remain in effect. I hope that answers your question. Yes, thank you Ms. Ryan Vollmar. Thank you for that clarification. I will be voting against the Moore amendment. I do not share his fears and I'm happy to support this article as has already been stated it is the absolute least we can do for Mr. Meeks his family and our other neighbors who need this recognition. Thank you Mr. Moderator. Thank you Mr. Newton. Let's take Mr. Tosti a name in precinct place. Mr. Tosti are you able to unmute? Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes. Go ahead. Okay. Fellow town meeting members last year we instituted this by-law but name is precinct I'm sorry. It was fairly limited seemed okay. Town meeting then expanded it to three or more which I thought was a bit strange. Most people struggle to keep a marriage or relationship of two going never mind more than that but it passed. This year we're seeing a whole new rewrite that throws out virtually all limitations and now includes public benefits. This by-law should be honest and change the title from domestic partnership to pretty much anybody. Now if you go to the dictionary and you look at domestic it reads of or pertaining to the home family or household affairs devoted to home life. There's nothing domestic about this proposal. Item two which means people live together and have a long-term commitment is gone. Item three which maintains that they share basic living expenses is gone. Item four that you can't be married to somebody else is gone. All that is left is you have to care for each other be 18 or competent and not be a brother or sister by blood. That is a pretty loose definition. It's almost useless. Now we're adding to this public benefit. Section six adds for town employees a brief leave with pay sick leave to care for partners and parental leave. This is not a huge cost but there will be a cost. If somebody is not there the town has to provide somebody else to do the work. Often over time on these especially in public safety but the pattern has now been established for public benefits. Next year if it can be done legally I guarantee that health insurance will be next. That will be a huge cost. Mr. Tosti let's not speculate about future changes because that's clearly out of scope. So let's try to keep it focused on this. Talking about public benefits Mr. Moderator. Right and health care is not addressed in this article. Correct. I think I should be able to speak my piece sir. Okay. This proposal guts the definition of who qualifies and reaches into establishing public benefits. I urge you to reject this and for reaching an unreasonable proposal and leave the bylaw as it is. Thank you Mr. Moderator. Great. Thank you Mr. Tosti. Let's take Miss Giddelson next. Thank you. This is Laura Giddelson town meeting member precinct 17. I would like to ask the proponent to talk maybe more specifically about what benefits would be conferred as a result of passing article 11 without the amendment. Ms. Ryan Vollmar can you answer Miss Giddelson's question. Yeah sure. Yeah just to talk about the public benefits piece for municipal employees as I noted in my remarks I won't repeat them but it's basically paid parental sick and bereavement leave. The vast majority of town employees do not incur additional labor costs when they take these sorts of leaves because there's no requirement that town positions are backfilled unless they're public safety jobs such as police or fire. You know so the fear of wild escalating costs you know it's simply not based in reality. And again as noted previously the additional number of days of leave that an employee can take for parental leave is determined by state law. Eligibility for sick leave is determined by federal law and will not be affected by this amendment article 11 excuse me. Ms. Giddelson did you have anything else? I did. I wanted to know given all of that and given the proponents characterizing the strength of domestic partnerships as akin to I think it was overcooked spaghetti if the only thing that can really be counted on is for hospital hospital visitation is this whole exercise worth it? Is it worth the unintended consequences that I agree with Mr. Meeks about our actually fear monitoring? I really appreciate that question because the benefits accorded to people who are registered as domestic partnerships in Arlington are minuscule, they're scant they're like the barest hint of a whisper as compared to the benefits of marriage. Speaking as somebody who had to deal with being denied hospital visitation because my relationship was not recognized I would say yes absolutely this fight is worth it. If you haven't experienced that personally it is devastating extremely painful and you're completely helpless there's nothing you can do about it so if we can at minimum provide that benefit to Amos and his family and other folks in Arlington who've registered for domestic partnerships it is 100% absolutely worth doing. Ms. Gettleston do you have anything else? Yes I will just say that I will be voting against the Moore amendment and for the main article for many of the same reasons referred to by Mr. Meeks Ms. Ryan Vollmar and Mr. Newton I'd also like to say that I think that Mr. Tosti was cherry picking the definition of domestic because if you look at Merriam-Webster one of the definitions is of or relating to the household or the family what we're talking about here is family. Ms. Gettleston let me interrupt to say we can speak to the merits of arguments that others have made but let's try not to focus on like the individuals who present. Okay I apologize I apologize my point is that the definition of domestic includes a definition of or relating to the household or the family and what we're talking about here is families we're talking about Amos's family we're talking about many other unknown families in Arlington and that's why I'm going to support it thank you great thank you Ms. Gettleston we have a point of order order from Mr. Jamison yes Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison precinct 12 just quickly I would remind the members that when addressing the moderator that you should be your name and precinct number two it is solely in the moderators purview as to who responds and three I can't remember but thank you very much Mr. moderator great thank you Mr. Jamison I was actually going to point out those two very things and now I don't need to because Mr. Jamison's already done it all quite but just reiterate all questions should be directed through me it's a little weird and annoying it's not the normal flow of conversations but that's kind of the point to kind of have things moderated and so thank you for that reminder let's see we have another point of order from Ms. Stamps okay thank you is it is the name and precinct Susan Stamps precinct three is it proper to point out that people are misrepresenting the current domestic partnership bylaw on the books in Arlington as we speak that it already gives domestic partners visitation rights at healthcare facilities and at I'll just stop you there Ms. Stamps yeah that is out of scope for a or it's out of order for a point of order that that should really come up in the content of remarks by those in the speaking queue to speak to everybody seems to not know that you're a Mr. Moderator so I thought it was important to point out but it's possible for everyone in the speaking queue to have incorrect facts about something that aren't being corrected and that's just kind of that's always the risk of democracy right that it's based on the information that people have and so obviously the best antidote to that is an informed electorate and there are going to be limitations to the level of information that people have but I appreciate the point thank you thank you Mr. Martin and so let's take Ms. Hankan next and as Mr. Jamison pointed out please offer your name in precinct before you begin hi Anna Hankan precinct six I really want to speak in support of this main motion as it stands without the amendment in particular requiring people to reside together indefinitely isn't required for marriages and I also don't have to share finances with my husband but I'm in my early 30s and a lot of people in my age group often can't afford financially to live with their longtime partner or partners whether they have to get a job across state lines for a year or two or they need to spend months or years caring for an alien parent while still being in a long-term committed relationship or even being on military or peace corps deployment there are many many important reasons why people might not just be living together or perhaps they're just terrible roommates but love each other a lot and are truly committed for a very long time to each other and to be in each other's lives and it doesn't eliminate that strong commitment or the validity of those partners partnerships and I don't think that we should be calling into question the validity of their relationships putting in jeopardy their ability to visit each other in the hospital take care of their communal children or have bereavement leave and I really just want to speak in support of the main motion a lot of the arguments I keep hearing against it remind me of things like the myth of the welfare queen committing fraud in a Cadillac on food stamps this is this is bereavement leave this is getting to take care of your newborn child this is getting to see your loved one in the hospital this is human need and these imaginary boogeymen of people committing fraud and defrauding the town are really obscuring just extending support to people to take care of the other people that they love which I think is one of the most beautiful things that humans do so that's me speaking my piece thank you Mr. Moderator thank you Ms. Henkin let's take Mr. Foskett next naming precinct please thank you Mr. Moderator Charles Foskett precinct 10 Mr. Moderator first of all I would like to object to some of the speakers who seem to want to demonize anybody who might not agree with them with Mr. Foskett is it possible to is it possible to reframe that as objecting to the merits of arguments that have been given as opposed to objecting to the individuals however you would like to phrase it sir but being accused of fear mongering as a patent remark I think is somewhat insulting okay I have a couple of questions well for Mr. Heim through you Mr. Moderator sure sure and that is for the hospital visitation rights that are endowed by these bylaws either the current one or the revised one do these apply outside of our only thin or outside of Massachusetts in other words what is the strength of this bylaw with respect to visitation rights and then I have a second question after that what's the answer sure Mr. Heim do you have an answer for Mr. Foskett's question about medical rights Dr. Lissheim Town Council thank you Mr. Moderator thank you Mr. Foskett for the question so let me just be clear that there's a couple of different things going on and the proposed amendments at once one is to change some of the criteria for who and how you register for a domestic partnership there is a reciprocity provision the legal boundaries of that reciprocity are not 100% clear to me to be frank there are other municipalities with domestic partnerships that are similar to Arlington's including Somerville so it's possible that the same domestic partnership rights would be extended to medical facilities in places with reciprocity I'm not 100% sure how another state would treat Massachusetts domestic partnerships I'm sorry the town of Arlington domestic partnership it's also further complicated by the fact that the state has its own definitions of domestic partnerships for different reasons so the answer is not 100% clear the Attorney General's Office unfortunately didn't provide as much clarity on that point as I would have liked but I believe that was their intent in terms of trying to recognize that there are other municipalities that have a similar domestic partnership codified in their ordinances Thank you Mr. Heim Mr. Moderator may I ask a second question Please help So this article removes the requirement that people in domestic partnerships not be married and my question is in general law part four chapter 272 section 15 deals with polygamy Now it says that people who are married but have also another marriage relationship violate this law in layman's terms if there are two married people in a domestic partnership and they're not married to each other are they violating chapter 272 section 15 on polygamy Mr. Heim does article 11 the main motion violate polygamy laws Like Heim Town Council not necessarily this is a I think everyone can appreciate this is a particularly complicated posture the state is not recognizing domestic partnerships as we've defined them in Arlington as being the same as marriage and they are not they're also saying that Arlington's by-law to date has not attempted to redefine marriage that is something that the Attorney General's office has been very clear that they will not allow Arlington to do which is to redefine a marriage a domestic partnership as defined under Arlington's by-laws can be compatible with the definition of marriage without rising to level of polygamy under the law and I say that not with any intent to disrespect the relationships that we're talking about here I think some of what has been complicated for the town to try to contemplate is affording the dignity in respect to the relationships as we're discussing them while also trying to avoid conflicts with other laws so the answer to that is it's it's not necessarily is it possible under certain circumstances yes but I think what you have to be found is that that domestic partnership was for all intents and purposes a marriage and that there were more than two people who were proceeding in a married relationship Mr. Fosca do you have anything else yes I want to say that first of all I think I am proud that the town has adopted this domestic partnership by law either in the past or are proposing the current one and I stand against the article in its entirety for some of the reasons that were brought up by other people but also because I think in essence it certainly violates chapter 272 and I don't believe that Mr. Heim has indicated that it does not he just simply said that it may not so for these reasons I ask people to vote against article 11 thank you okay thank you Mr. Fosca it's 935 and we have a lot of speakers this looks like there'll be a lot more debate on this article and the and the amendment so let's take a 10 minute break now and let's reconvene at 945 thank you let's come back okay can we bring the speaking cue back up okay so let's take Ms. Zou next name and precinct please hi this is Emily Zou precinct one can you hear me yes go ahead okay so there's two angles here there's what could go wrong and there's what could go right so I'll start with the first in response to concerns of abuse I believe Cambridge has ordinance on domestic partnerships that's been around for around a year now and they do not require that partners live together or share living expenses and so far nothing drastic has happened to my knowledge and I just want to say if anything drastic were to happen we do meet every year and we can address that and I do believe that the actual the likelihood and the impact of any possible abuse is very low and the tap of 12 weeks for parental and family leave applies regardless of the number of domestic partners you have or the number of children born or adopted and it's not per child so even if you have multiple partners who all have children in the same year you still can't exceed those 12 weeks so just as we would support someone in a traditional marriage who has many children or as we would support someone who has to take significant time off to care for a chronically ill family member I think we should also be able to support multiple domestic partners another point I wanted to address is that yes we do have hospital visitation for domestic partners as they are currently defined but this article would allow partners who don't live together to also have that benefit and as others have said there are many valid reasons why partners may not live together and yet still be in a genuine partnership so now I'll move on to the what could go right I think as opposed to the possible concerns which may or may not happen the the benefits of this article are tangible and would be very meaningful to the people that they apply to so I'll stop there because many of people have like already said the points that I wanted to say but I support this article 11 and I will be voting against the Moore amendment thank you okay thank you Ms. Sue say Ms. Mann next name and precinct please Nora Mann precinct 20 I think as most of you folks know I'm rising in opposition to article 11 and I shared my reasons in the statement that went out to town leading members I I think everybody's had an opportunity to review so I'm just going to simply highlight a couple of points and then I am going to respond very briefly to some of the comments that have been made by way of background I'm a lawyer I've been a lawyer for 35 plus years most of it in government service and I have served as a regulator for a big chunk of that I was also personally involved in a lot of the equal marriage decisions when I was working in the attorney general's office the choice to embark on polyamory is just that it's a choice it is not equivalent to a person having immutable sorry or unchangeable characteristic like race sexual orientation or disability where the government must sometimes act to protect that person's right in response to Ms. Ryan Ballmer no one is looking for power over Mr. Meeks relationship he and I had a very long and respectful conversation and I have no doubt that his relationship is important valuable and valued and my opposition is not about fear rather it's about the use of regulation in a way that follows the history of human and civil rights and I know that there was probably a time when folks would have looked at equal marriage as something that was out of the norm but there is a firm basis for expanding human and civil rights and there needs to be definitions that are susceptible of application I'm not convinced that polyamory or consensual non-monogamy meets needs rather the recognition by government as a protected class particularly with this expansive definition that's before us in article 11 the dramatic expansion of the term domestic partner to include this wide range of consensual non-monogamous relationships dilutes the efforts to seek equity and fairness on behalf of historically marginalized and at-risk populations the in addition this expansion may have the unintended consequence of turning currently supportive employers against extended extending benefits to folks who are in committed relationships but have declined to formalize that with marriage last year we approved a bylaw recognizing domestic partners with two or more people who share expenses we're in the same household and are not married to someone else I appreciate that Mr. Meeks has taken a lot of time to talk with me and I respect proponents commitment to and the work done on behalf of this issue but I believe they have gone too far this proposal isn't a little tweak it is a pretty radical change that would eliminate the requirement that to enter into domestic partnership the partners must not be married to somebody else in the time I have since I first read article 11 I've done a lot of research about polyamory and looked at the work of the chosen family law center as well as the polyamory legal advocacy coalition there is a great deal of support and advocacy for non-traditional chosen families and that is a good thing I learned about child rearing and shared responsibility agreements and other contracts by and among the people in the polyamorous relationships but seeking government regulation recognition and assurance of certain rights based on a vague and broad definition is neither necessary nor I believe is appropriate and as a consequence I urge a vote against article 11 this is not based on fear this is based on an understanding of an appropriate expansion of regulation and the ability to apply that regulation thank you all right thank you Ms. Mann let's take Mr. Trumbly next I don't know can you hear me I cannot hear anything that's going on the last two speakers have been unmuted I don't know if anybody can hear me even I can hear you and I can hear previous speakers I've talked to the question and answer and nobody seems to have any answers and what's like is that I can't tell whether anybody can even hear me I can hear you now name and please you can't hear me yes yes okay name and freezing I can't you'll have to type the question because I can't hear my question is Mr. Moderator I think I'm woefully ignorant on even some basic stuff on this so one of the questions I have is to uh to the people who are applying for this have to physically all of them show up in front of the town clerk does one of them have to come I really have no idea how this works in the context of Article 11 or like the changes in Article 11 or more generally what we already have in the bylaws we already have uh mention of uh partners' rights uh for domestic partnership as of last year's meeting so do you ask them in general or specifically in context of this thing is in Article 11 I believe someone's just shared that in the chat with Mr. Trumbull Mr. Trumbull can you hear me so since we have several speakers in the queue why don't we mute Mr. Trumbull and perhaps someone from IT can work with them to see if we can figure out his connection issue and you can pick other speakers at this time does someone have a timer going off oh actually that was me sorry about that so let's try to come back to Mr. Trumbull if uh if someone can work if IT can work out his connection issues please so um we can yeah so if Mr. Trumbull if you can hear me I get back in the queue and we'll try to resume that I mean we do have rules about people being repeat speakers but that doesn't really apply in this case because you have technical uh problems so let's take uh Mr. Levy next name and precinct please hi David Levy precinct 18 we can hear you go ahead Mr. Matterer I moved the question I'll matter before it okay we have a uh a motion to terminate debate uh on the article and all matters before it which which means the uh in this case the the more amendment so let's open up uh the request to terminate debate I'm sorry I'm sorry before we did do we have a second I'm sorry back we do we have a second the first one from Mr. Hamlin okay so we have a second to terminate debate so let's uh open up voting for termination of debate on the article and all matters before it and before anyone starts voting remember we're going to be voting in waves to prevent the database from falling over and so if you're in precincts one through seven once voting is uh open please vote on whether you want to terminate debate precincts one and seven only and we'll go for 20 seconds if you're in precincts eight and higher please do not vote yet we already have too many users connecting simultaneously we're getting that error message message so you might have had too many folks trying to vote at once so let's please try to vote in waves only uh one through seven now now if you're in precincts eight through fourteen uh feel free to go ahead and vote now and we have a point of order and uh we're going to have we're going to try something different tonight we're going to have uh Mr. Feeney take the point of order we won't be able to see it on the screen because we're going to have someone else from our presenter here the display presenter actually taking the point of order so that we can still see the voting going on and if you're in precincts fifteen and higher uh feel free to vote now are we able to get uh Ms uh take the point of order from Ms. McKinnon and I see Ms. McKinnon uh is now ready to talk and zoom so Ms. McKinnon yep can you name and precinct and uh state your point of order please this is Sarah McKinnon from precinct 20 can you hear me yes I can go ahead um I think I'm allowed to ask us a point of order please correct me if I'm wrong Mr. Majerator are we um just for clarity are we voting to end all conversation or debate on everything before us so both the more amendment and the um uh article itself that's right the the main motion defined by the like the the main the the article and the select board's recommended vote the it's termination of debate on the main motion associated with the article and uh and the and the more amendment uh all together so if we if we get a two-thirds vote to terminate debate we'll then proceed to uh vote on the more amendment and then we'll vote on the main motion associated with the article uh if the this vote to terminate debate fails then uh we will continue to debate and we'll go back to the speaking queue and folks can speak to either the more amendment or to the main motion of article 11 thank you very much I really appreciate the clarification right thank you I'm going to make it more clear going forward when we do this it's always a little confusing when we have a subsidiary motion like an amendment so let me see how we're doing on voting we have 235 votes cast we're still missing 17 there's let's see so three folks who've been active recently who I don't have votes for yet uh are uh Mr. Oster Mr. Marshall and Ms. Johnson Claire Johnson other folks have been inactive for some time okay it's now just uh okay so let's just give Mr. Oster 15 seconds and then we'll close voting and this is for termination of debate on the main motion and all the and everything before it which includes the the more amendment okay in five seconds and let's close voting on the motion to terminate debate the motion fails I got 63.6% of the vote and it needed 66 and two-thirds for termination of debate so it was just a handful of votes short of termination of debate so debate will continue um so let's uh just cycle through the screens and then we'll go back to debate and if you missed your precincts coming up on the screen you can always in the portal you could always on the left hand side there's a column of buttons you can click view votes and you can see any of the votes that that we've done tonight or previous nights okay so let's go back now to debating article 11 and uh and the main and the uh Mr. Moore's amendment okay so just trying to pull the article 11 back up and restore the uh the speaking queue let's say so okay so we have did we already have Mr. Levy I don't remember or was that a previous order let's let's take Mr. Levy next I might be taking the last article that he spoke name and precinct please Mr. Rotter Mr. Rotter Dave Levy precinct 18 you no I would yield my time my uh I motion to terminate debate so I yield my time oh you had the moment okay thank you let's take Ms. Tamps next well thank you Mr. Moderator can you hear me yes uh name and precinct Susan Stamps precinct 3 and as most people know I was co-author of that letter to town meeting with Nora Mann I I do come at this question as a attorney with 35 years doing family law and I am not a fearmonger and I do resent being called a fearmonger but I'll just proceed with what I wanted to say and also I was with Nora on that really great call we had with Amos Meeks last week where we went through every item that he was thinking about and that we were thinking about and we considered it a productive phone call when Ms. Beaumar who was the first speaker described the article 11 I believe that she failed to mention two major components that would change in the bylaw which were the two ways in which the definition of domestic partnership would be greatly expanded currently under our bylaw article 23 of the general bylaws title one a domestic partnership is described as three or more people who you know live together and and all that sort of thing but this article 11 would expand that to that a domestic partner could be already registered in another domestic partnership or a domestic partner could be married to someone else so you could conceivably have somebody who's in a domestic partnership who's already in three or four other domestic partnerships is already married to somebody else and the my research of domestic partnership laws across the country are all limited to two people and we're not arguing that tonight but the idea has been to afford people who do not want to get married for whatever their reason is the benefits of marriage but yet here we are expanding the definition of domestic partnerships in ways that married people can't do they can't be married to more than one person or in more than and cannot be they can't marry somebody who's already married and they can't be in more than one marriage I would like to ask town council if my understanding of article 11 is correct please which particular as I just expressed it that the expanding the definition of domestic partnership Mr. Heim is Ms. Stamps description of the expansion of the definition of domestic partnerships accurate in our main motion thank you mr. moderator Doug Hynentown council to my understanding correct the definition of domestic partnership for Arlington's bylaws purpose would be expanded in the manner she's described and if I may also ask mr. Heim if under our current domestic partnership bylaw article 23 of title one does that already extend to domestic partners the ability for visitation in medical facilities and correctional facilities Mr. Heim Doug Hynentown council a minister moderator so yes the current domestic for folks who currently qualify as domestic partners under the Arlington bylaw those are two of the things that the bylaw specifically affords is access to domestic partners in a medical facility and as well as in a jail or correctional facility all right is that are you satisfied thank you and I just you know I went to law school with Mary Bonotto and very supportive of gay marriage this isn't about this isn't about marriage it's it's about wanting to live together in a in a loving family which I completely support I don't care how many people are in it I don't know how people can be in multiple marriage like relationships and partnerships and stuff and actually be able to do that but it's not my place to judge that but I do worry that this is just an expansion of marriage like relationships which over time will will start raising the issues of other kinds of employment benefits and other sorts of benefits which could become extremely expensive for employers especially small employers and the legal advocacy coalition the polyamory legal advocacy coalition which has assisted in putting together this warrant article has describes on their website that they are looking for people in domestic partnerships these expanded domestic partnerships to end up with all all the rights of marriage essentially that's that's what I had to say thank you very much great thank you miss stamps let's take miss drae next name and precinct place good evening mr moderator elizabeth drae precinct 10 spent a lot of good discussion and it's generated some questions and I'll put them forth and you mr moderate mr moderator can decide who should answer but one of the things that was brought up was this idea of choice that this is not that this is a someone's choice and so I'm wondering what the proponents might respond to that argument miss ryan volmar you want to speak to choice especially and let's keep this within the scope of article 11 like choice in terms of entering into domestic partnerships that's relevant to this article um Susan ryan volmar peace precinct 19 I'm sorry could you repeat the question yeah the question is can you speak to prior assertions earlier in in in discussion tonight that entering into domestic partnerships is a choice and therefore not akin to other protected classes that are more I think the word was intrinsic maybe to an individual I'm forgetting the exact language but um can you miss dra's question is can you speak to that those assertions made earlier tonight in terms of choice entering and how that's different from other types of protected classes Susan ryan volmar precinct 19 I think the the assertion that the proponents of article 11 are seeking for people in polyamorous relationships to be treated as a protected class is red herring I don't I don't think anyone has made that argument I'm not sure if that answers the question or not I'm not sure either miss draids is that does that satisfy yeah I guess it's my understanding then from miss ryan volmar is that that is not that's not a concern that she shares but it sounds like it wasn't a consideration that when is the drafting of this article it sounds okay thank you I'm also sort of getting this feeling about you know that this is opening a pandora's box this is the wild wild west if we do this then down the road we're going to be doing something else and so I'm wondering what Cambridge and summerville have experienced since they have already passed something similar have they had fraud has there been pushback in their community against domestic partnerships I don't believe we have any expert witnesses from Cambridge or summerville tonight but I can ask Mr. Hyme if he happens to know since he just seems to know a lot of these sorts of things Mr. Hyme Mr. moderate I'm sorry to disappoint I do not so I don't know who to direct that to who is who is with us tonight may I make a suggestion Mr. moderator sure sure well I believe Mr. Mr. Meeks worked in conjunction with a group on this that may I'm just done that out there sure if can we bring up Mr. Meeks to address Mr. Ray's question about precedents set in an experience that the cities of Cambridge and summerville have on their expanded definitions of domestic partnerships yes this I'm here this is Amos Meeks precinct three I do not know directly I have been working with the polyamory legal advocacy coalition to to help draft this and they also help summerville and Cambridge with their bylaws I have you know brought up and passed along many of the concerns that others have brought up around fraud things like that to them and I expect that if anything like that had had occurred in summerville or Cambridge that they would have brought that up and they did not so I suspect that nothing has happened but ultimately I would think I would have to reach out to the city clerks there and I have not done that thank you Mr. Moderator yeah thank you Mr. Meeks Mr. anything else yes thank you Mr. Meeks since he's there I'm wondering if he could I want to thank him for his words earlier and for sharing his personal experience with all of us and trusting us with that I'm wondering why reciprocity matters what is why is that important to to someone like Mr. Meeks I hear that we have reciprocity with Cambridge and summerville and that's important and maybe he can help me understand why so you're asking like a question like on a personal level to someone not just like a legal level is that correct um I guess whichever way you would like Mr. Moderator I'm interested I guess legally let's keep this legal yeah okay so let's direct that to redirect to Mr. Heim what is the relevance of reciprocity like what is the kind of the meaning of that in the law the time time counsel so the idea behind reciprocity is that the rights and status recognized in Arlington would be recognized in another jurisdiction Arlington doesn't so that if there's if you were in a hospital if you're at Winchester hospital if you had reciprocity with Winchester on this particular issue one would would safely assume that your domestic partnership which is not our definition of domestic partnership is not the same as the state's varying definitions of domestic partnership for different purposes and different laws so you would with reciprocity hope that another jurisdiction would recognize your rights and that could be in neighboring Somerville or Cambridge or it could be in somewhere in you know Vermont or Florida or wherever the same thing was on so thank you thank you Mr. I appreciate that just the time I'm also just wanted to say that I believe it's true that when people are take their their their leave they must use their own personal or vacation time and if that's all used up then they have to use unpaid leave so that will not cost the town more money thank you I stand in support of the original motion and I will be voting against the Moore amendment thank you Mr. moderator thank you Mr. Ray let's take Nick Pretzer next name and precincts please hi this is David Pretzer from Precinct 17 as someone who has been in a domestic partnership it makes me really proud that Arlington is sort of you know leading the way on this issue and I think this article sort of continues to help Arlington lead the way I think it's really important I once for work spent needed to spend six months in another country I think it's important that someone who might have to spend time abroad for work or might you know be for military you know it might be in a military you know unit and be stationed somewhere else I think it's important that people in those sorts of situations don't have to worry that their domestic partnership might be called into question because they're temporary temporarily unable to live in the same place as a partner I think similarly there are many reasons why people in a domestic partnership might either want or need separate checking accounts there's definitely like legal situations in which separate finances might be advisable and required and so I don't think either of those things should be a barrier to being in a domestic partnership I think people expressed concerns about fraud or people entering into domestic partnerships in their false pretenses I think it's really unlikely that that would be an issue in practice but you know even if there was some risk of that being an issue I don't think we should restrict the rights of people in Arlington to enter into domestic partnerships because of concerns that you know a few people could try to do something fishy I think it's very unlikely that anyone's going to do something fishy with this law and I think regardless Arlington should stand at expanding and defending the rights of all the families that call Arlington home or that come to Arlington and I also think that given that many of us do go to hospitals in Summerville and Cambridge reciprocity is also super important so I encourage everyone to support the main motion and reject the more amendment thank you Mr. Moderator great thank you mix pretzer and I see Mr. Tremblay is back on the speaking list this will not be a second speaking time for him which would kind of trigger different rules will consider this a continuation of his first speaking time so I don't think we don't have the time recorded from his first part of his speaking slot but let's see if we can and for any questions Mr. Tremblay might have thank you Mr. Moderator and Tremblay Precinct 19 hey can you hear me now or no yes I can there's problem problems with my own speaker system got it okay I was just curious if if the people applying for domestic partnership all have to show up in front of Julie Brazil or it can just one of them one of them show up and apply for the partnership right so it does Ms. Brazil a town clerk or Mr. Heim town council want to take that let's start with Ms. Brazil since you were called out in the question dude do do folks applying for domestic partnership go to the town clerk's office to do that Julie Brazil town clerk yes at this point I definitely do require all of the members to appear in person and show ID which is very similar to the process for completing the marriage intentions Mr. Tremblay does that answer your question it does thank you very much thank you let's make Mr. Kepline next name and precinct please Mark Kepline precinct nine last time I learned that equity is like equal without the equal part and now we have domestic partnership without the domestic part so my objection is to the abuse of language and call it and redefining things to whatever you want back in the day there were communes and that was fine any number of people live together shared in domestic responsibilities you know and it's fine with me except they did live together and share domestic responsibilities here we've got a definition of a redefinition of domestic partnership without the sharing of domicile part so I think you should read a font call this a friends with benefits you know legal and employment benefits because essentially that's what the bar is I don't know you know and I think friends ought to be able to be Mr. Kepline each other in the hospital Mr. Kepline I'm for the prison let me just interrupt there for just a moment when you use a term like friends with benefits that has that has a prior meaning which is like not exactly appropriate for this discussion I see what you're saying literally with those words but there's something implied by that that I think it is not it's not the level of stability that I want for this discussion well okay call it friendship then instead of domestic partnership you know friends who also get some legal and employment benefits and I'm not even worried about the cost of the employment benefits it's the abuse of language and and redefining things to what you want Mr. Heim said the Massachusetts Massachusetts wouldn't let Arlington redefine the the word marriage and I think this is what you're trying to do here with domestic partnerships and I was told that Maryam Webster says domestic doesn't even require a domicile that it pertains to family but on the other hand Maryam Webster also defines domestic partnership as either member of an unmarried cohabiting couple especially when considered as to eligibility of spousal benefits so there's a little cherry picking on on Maryam Webster definitions so I think you should replace the terms domestic partner with friendship and or domestic partner with friend and partnership with friendship and let let people I mean I share house keys with friends fight you know if I get locked out you know that's great too there's a lot of benefits to having friends or even living in a commune and God bless them so my my my objection is to the abuse of language and redefining terms way out of scope thank you I'm against the article thank you let's take Ms. Brown next thank you Mr. moderator this is Melanie Brown precinct 19 I'm I've the the debate this evening has been very deep and interesting and moving on a number of levels we've talked about things from whether it's appropriate employee benefits we've talked about the rights of access but at the root of this what we're really talking about is how people define their families and that's the personal aspect that's sort of in my opinion being glossed over as we focus on these other issues about how much it's going to cost the town or not if you'll indulge me Mr. moderator I would like to share a short story of a personal nature if it's related to it is directly related to this yes go ahead um people have been talking this evening about the fact that if people are not cohabitating within the same domicile how can they be defined as being in a domestic relationship I would like to point to my grandmother in law who was married for over 50 years to the same man she loved and adored him desperately they spent every day together of their lives of their married lives but they didn't live in the same household in the early days of their marriage they struggled mightily to maintain their relationship and stay a married couple they separated on grandpa jack moved to a separate household and all of a sudden their marriage started to flourish and it allowed them to stay married for 50 years and because of that separation because they were married legally married they maintained the protective rights under law granted to them by marriage such that when my husband's grandmother was in the hospital dying 88 years of age grandpa jack was able to go to the hospital every single day and sit with her just as he had gone to her house every single day to sit with her and going home to his own house every night thereafter grandpa jack was able to be with the woman he loved even though he didn't live in the same household because the law recognized their marriage as legitimate this is a type of protection we're talking about under a domestic partnership the simple right for family to be there to support one another and to not have legal issues get in their way in the terms of reciprocity from what I understand as everything that I've heard tonight those residents in Arlington would be allowed under reciprocity Cambridge and Somerville Arlington has no hospital of its own so for half this town they're going to hospitals in Cambridge and then Somerville Mount Auburn Cambridge City Somerville Austin this protection would allow them to visit their families in these hospitals that they're going to be that their family's likely to end up under these circumstances if grandpa jack could see his wife every day as she lay dying how can we deny anybody else that same level of access I am for that reason voting against more amendment and voting in favor of Article 11 thank you Mr. Moderator great thank you Ms. Brown let's take Mr. Rosenthal next name and precinct place Mark Rosenthal precinct 14 Mr. Meeks introduced his comments by saying that he lives in a world of science I too live in that world so I tend to think things through on my own so when there's an issue where people are strongly polarized on one side or the other my position Sodom aligns in Sodom is in complete alignment with either side and for that reason the accusation of fear mongering doesn't sit well with me now when I first read Mr. Moore's amendment it seemed to make sense but unlike the other people Mr. Meeks reports he spoke to you know his Mr. Meeks statement was successful in convincing me to vote against the Moore amendment but I have a different concern let me start by saying that I believe strongly in equal treatment under the law but to me equal treatment under the law means not only equal rights but also equal responsibilities the institution of domestic partnership confers rights similar to those that married spouses have and as have been frequently mentioned here one very important example is hospital visitation rights as a spouse as I said I think that's a very important right and I strongly supported but this article states and I quote nothing contained in this chapter shall be construed to impose liability upon a domestic partner for the health and medical expenses of their domestic partner and to the best of my knowledge nothing in any other body of law imposes such liability either in contrast it's state law that married couples are legally liable for their partners medical expenses I have no problem at all with domestic partners and married couples being treated equally however I do have a problem with domestic partners being afforded financial protections that are denied to married couples so I would like to say that if the main motion does pass I do hope that the supporters will advocate just as diligently in the future to change the law to provide the very same financial protections to married couples thank you and thank you Mr. Rosenthal let's take Mr. Dunn next that name and precinct please thank you Mr. Moderator Dan Dunn precinct 21 can you hear me Mr. Moderator yes I can go ahead many of you will remember my passionate support of this change last year I don't have quite the same passion about these changes but I support them I support families and the love of the people in those families we're used to nuclear families the man the woman the boy and the girl we've learned that it's not that simple gender and love are complex things I know that some people aren't comfortable with polyamory but we're all comfortable with families I'm not worried about the fraud or abuse should that fraud come to be then we can come back to a town meeting and amend the law I'm opposed to Mr. Moore's amendment I support the main article thank you Mr. Moderator great thank you Mr. Dunn let's take Ms. Hyam next name and precinct please Leba Hyam precinct 15 I would like to move the to terminate debate and all matters before the article we have a motion by Ms. Hyam to terminate debate on the article and all matters before it which mean the more amendment as well and do we have a second we have a second from Mr. Hamlin okay so let's open up a termination of the quote a vote on terminating debate okay so oh that was quick that's quicker than I thought so only only precincts one two seven please sorry um let's catch that in time only precincts one through seven for now and give them 20 seconds if you're in precincts eight or higher please don't vote yet okay and so precincts eight through 14 please go ahead and vote if you're in precincts 15 and higher please do not vote right now and this is we're voting on whether to terminate debate on the main motion for article 11 and the more amendment as well and and so if this passes with a two-thirds vote then debate will be terminated and will proceed to voting on first the amendment and then the main motion if this vote fails and we will continue debate so vote yes if you want to end debate and get to voting on the article and and the amendment the main motion and the amendment vote no if you want to continue debate we still have a number of missing votes I don't know if that's because folks are having trouble like technical issues with voting or or folks just have been slow to vote okay now we're up to 214 votes 222 the pace is picked up some folks who have not voted yet but who have been active very recently are uh oh that just dropped significantly that's good so Mr. Marshall Mr. Ruderman Mr. Mills Mr. Brown Ms. Brown Ms. O'Brien so let's give folks just another 20 seconds to vote apologies for the kind of indeterminate time of voting because of the technical issues we've had and the waves of voting slows things down let's just give another 10 seconds Mr. Ruderman uh Mr. Brown okay let's close voting and let's see and we do have after we close voting we do have a point of order from Ms. Weber let's see so Mr. Feeney are you able to pull up that point of order while we keep the voting on the screen here so we don't have a the complexity of having to juggle both from the same from the same window Ms. Weber can you unmute and give your name and precinct and tell us your point of order I just want to know you never seem to announce precincts um 8 to 21 I mean not not 8 to 21 15 to 21 you always announce the other two and then the last section doesn't seem to have as much time to vote and that's why at the beginning we didn't have a lot of votes because you hadn't announced the last seven precincts that's all right thank you yeah I mean I apologize if I missed announcing that I think I did announce they I did it's true that 8 through I'm sorry 15 to 21 do get less time I can try trying to kind of mix that up so we have more kind of parity by mixing up one one article after another thanks for the feedback okay so let's close voting now and this is the motion to terminate debate and debate is terminated 204 and the positive 28 and the negative and we've exceeded the two-thirds threshold needed to terminate debate so let's cycle through the screens here it's 10 40 p.m. this we should have sufficient time to get through voting on the first the more amendment and then the the main motion so let's just cycle through the screens and if you miss your precinct on these screens because they do go by quickly you could always click the view votes button on the left hand side of your portal okay so let's now just have to re-sign into the portal in a second so let's now open up voting on the more amendment this is the majority vote and before we get into that actually we do have a point of order from Ms. Dre so I'm going to take that before we get into voting Mr. Feeney do you want to take that so we or Ms. Wayman do you want to do it while you have this up here apologies Mr. moderator Elizabeth Dre precinct 10 I apologize that was an error okay okay let's get back to voting on thank you let's vote on open up voting on the more amendment and so Mr. Moore's amendment you would vote yes on this if you want to retain the requirement that we currently have in the bylaws that domestic partners live together and share living expenses for the purposes of rights to benefits so precincts one through seven please vote if you're in precincts eight or higher please do not vote yet sorry I'll I'll switch up the other two waves so we have a little more equity there and now precincts let's go with 15 to 21 please vote and if you're in precincts eight to 14 please hold off for just a little bit and now if you're in precincts eight to 14 please vote and so if you are in favor of retaining the requirements in the town bylaws that domestic partners live together and share living expenses for the purposes of rights to benefits please you should vote yes if you'll if you don't want to change the main the main motion in that regard and you want the main motion to drop those requirements of the definition of domestic partners then you'll want to vote no on the more amendment so we have 291 votes cast we have just a few remaining outstanding so Ms. O'Brien Mr. Grunko Mr. Stern and Mr. Brown who've been active recently in the portal that have not voted yet I'll give you 15 seconds to finish voting okay let's let's close out voting and this is for the more amendment on article 11 and the motion fails the motion to amend fails we'll run through the screens here that means that next stop after we're done cycling through the precinct screens will take a vote on the main motion without any amendments it will be unamended and again if you've failed to to see your precinct in time as the screens cycle by you can always view votes in the portal there's a few votes button on the left side there so let's just finish out these precincts okay so let's now open the main motion for article 11 so this is so this will not be amended this is the main motion and hold off on voting till I call your precincts I'll change up the order this time again so this time we'll start with precincts 15 to 21 please vote first if you're in the highest precincts 15 to 21 please go ahead and vote if you're in the lower precincts please do not vote yet and a yes vote here means that you want to expand the definition of domestic partnership in the town bylaws for the purpose of extending partners rights to benefits to more types of partnerships you would vote no if you want to retain the status quo in the definition of domestic partnership in the town bylaws for partners rights to benefits okay so now let's go with precincts 8 to 14 please go ahead and vote there are some vote issues on the server again so 8 to 14 please vote I'm getting a connection issue with the delay so yeah just like you're seeing here so precincts 1 through 7 please do not vote yet so we can keep the load down on the server apologies for these technical disruptions precincts 1 through 7 please hold off on voting right now and also if and if anyone is refreshing your entire browser window or like your browser tab or window I highly discourage that please allow the time out like if there's a time out that's countdown like in in your browser please wait for that to finish if you hit if you force the page to refresh it increases load on the server and contributes to this problem so precincts 1 through 7 please still hold off while we're still having these connection issues yeah we only have 115 votes cast that's like roughly half so let's hold off on precincts 1 through 7 a little bit longer until things settle down here and so this is a vote on the main motion of article 11 vote yes if you want to expand the definition of domestic partnership in the town bylaws for the purpose of extending partners rights to benefits to more types of partnerships vote no if you want to retain the status quo in the definition of domestic partnership in the town bylaws for partners rights to benefits okay so now precincts 1 through 7 please go ahead and vote sorry for the delay on that and so let's see we're still missing votes from let's say about 40 folks who have been active relatively recently so let's hold vote again I apologize for all these delays and having to keep voting open for so long but I want to make sure the vast majority of people if not all folks who are still actively participating in the meeting are able to vote so all precincts should be voting right now again please do not hit the refresh on a button in your browser please wait for the timer to count down within within the page because it will reload on its own and so while we're waiting for those the last set of votes to come in there's still over 20 active participants who have not voted yet I'll just reiterate what the yes and no votes mean if you you want to vote yes if you want to expand the definition of domestic partnerships in the town bylaws for the purpose of extending partners rights to benefits to more types of partnerships and you would vote no if you want to retain the status quo in the definition of domestic partnerships in the town bylaws for partners rights to benefits and I'm just looking at the numbers here and I'm just making sure that everything is adding up so I'm just giving you a second as far as like the vote totals okay we're still yeah we're getting a lot of votes not through the portal but by other means so it's taking us a little bit longer to tell like that apologies again for those technical issues and the delays here while we're waiting for these last votes we have a point of order from Ms. Weaver Mr. Feeney can you bring up Ms. Weaver's point of order place and Ms. Weaver when you're able to unmute just tell us your name and precinct and your point of order hi Janice Weaver precinct 21 I just got in touch with Julie but my screen in the portal never refreshed it just stayed on the amendment it never went to the article and it's happened but I did get through to Julie finally okay okay well thanks for reporting that we'll we'll have someone look into that and figure out if that's you know why that's happening and whether that's a widespread problem and what we can do about that in the future thank you okay so I still have outstanding votes from Ms. Anderson Ms. O'Brien Mr. Brown and yeah and there's a few others but they've been idle for some time so for almost for around an hour or more so so let's just get again apologies that this is taking so long let's make sure that that we get an accurate vote here okay so let's just give another 20 seconds and then we'll close voting that's almost everybody at this point again Elizabeth O'Brien Michael Jacobi Brown Mark McCabe if you haven't voted yet please vote the next five seconds you know you could use the the Q&A you can call Ms. Brazil so let's call this let's close voting article 11 and the motion passes and this is the unamended motion it was not amended by the more amendment okay so let's go through all the screens here and thanks for everyone's patience and forbearance on the technical issues we'll be looking into that further to see if there's further mitigations that we can put in place there were mitigations but in place over the weekend seems like that those mitigations did not entirely hold tonight unfortunately and I apologize for that we'll we'll see what we can do going forward okay so we've been through all the screens it is now 1056 almost 1057 let's say Mr. Moderator yes Mr. Foskett please move my adjourn okay do we have a second Mr. Foskett is moving to adjourn do we have a second before we get to that before we get to that we do have a point of order that I'm seeing for Mr. Warden can we bring Mr. Warden up and see if we can quickly resolve that before we get back to that motion to adjourn and also while we're waiting for no here I am moderator name and precinct and your John Warden precinct eight Mr. Moderator you didn't announce the vote numbers for either the amendment or the final thing I think those of us who can't read the screens that quickly would like to hear those numbers okay I can do that for sure thank you Mr. Warden Ms. Brazile can you can you announce the vote totals and I apologize thank you Mr. Warden for pointing that out I'll try to remember to do that in the future yes Julie Brazile town clerk the amendment failed 59 votes yes 171 votes no nine abstentions the main motion passed 162 yes votes 68 no votes nine abstentions great thank you Ms. Brazile and thank you Mr. Warden and actually before we adjourn also do we have any let's enable raise hands and zoom does anyone have any motions or any notices of reconsideration you can see the raise hand thing here are the raise hands up so if you have any if you voted with it means on the three articles that we passed tonight that we voted on tonight they happen to pass if you voted on the prevailing side which is to say if you voted yes on any of those articles because they're all voted yes and you if you want to give notice that you might want that article to be reconsidered at a future meeting now is your chance before you adjourn tonight like for instance if you suspect there might be new information that might come out that might change your vote you can give notice give notice of reconsideration tonight and we will record that Ms. Brazile will record that as town clerk and that will give you the right to reconsider to move to reconsider that article at a future meeting in light of new information so if anyone if there are any anyone wants to raise their hands to give notice of reconsideration now is your last chance to do it in the next 10 seconds five seconds okay so seeing none we had a motion from Mr. Foskett to adjourn do we have a second are these can someone verify that these are new seconds and not old seconds I don't see any seconds now Ms. Wayman do you know the status of the seconds is are we resetting that okay so we have a second from Mr. Miller on the motion to adjourn and so we are adjourned for the evening right at 11 p.m. thank you everyone and we will be coming back on Wednesday May 4th at 8 p.m. thanks everyone and enjoy your next two days