{"id":2060,"date":"2019-04-22T23:53:21","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T03:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/?p=2060"},"modified":"2019-04-23T00:47:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T04:47:44","slug":"town-meeting-19-session-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2019\/04\/town-meeting-19-session-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Town Meeting &#8217;19 &#8211; Session 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>I take notes during Town Meeting. They are not official in any way. As I listen to people speak, I type notes. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure that, at times, I mishear or misunderstand the speaker, but my notes represent what I hear at the time. I try to publish the notes every night after the meeting. I do go back and make a few edits as errors are pointed out to me. \u00c2\u00a0Sometimes I relay a quote from a specific speaker. Sometimes\u00c2\u00a0I only summarize the discussion. At points I give a purely personal opinion; those are clearly labeled like this:\u00c2\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Personal note<\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At 8:00 Moderator John Leone started callling the meeting to order. The meeting started at 8:03.<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> It was really wet outside &#8211; bucketing rain. People slogged in anyway!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Menotomy Minutemen marched in and lead the meeting in singing the National Anthem. (See the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dunster\/videos\/10156012553216426\/\">video<\/a> on Facebook)<\/p>\n<p>Pastor Marc Bishop from St. Agnes gave the benediction.<\/p>\n<p>The Moderator gave his remarks. He noted this is Arlington&#8217;s 212th Town Meeting, and this is the 87th as representative town meeting (1937).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The moderator walked through the ground rules about submitting amendments (must be shared the sessions beforehand).<\/li>\n<li>He said that town meeting materials in 2020 will be changed to primarily electronic distribution, not mailed beforehand. Print will no longer be the primary method.<\/li>\n<li>He invited people to speak briefly and reminded everyone of the speaking time limits. He explained the electronic voting, aka the clicker. The test vote was: La Brea Tar Pits are found in Los Angeles? True 135, False 59, abstain 15.<\/li>\n<li>He announced that the budgets would be discussed on May 6th.<\/li>\n<li>He said the consent agenda would be taken up on Wednesday the 25th.<\/li>\n<li>He offered a moment of silence for town meeting members who had passed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The moderator administered the oath of office. <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">There was some confusion about how the oath would be read and said &#8211; but people muddled through it.<\/span> They were greeted with a round of applause afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>Chair of the Select Board Diane Mahon made the traditional motion about permitting town officials and employees to sit &#8220;on the floor&#8221; with town meeting members. Non-members are seated in the viewing gallery on the 2nd floor.<\/p>\n<p>Town Clerk certified that the meeting was properly convened and called by the Town Constable.<\/p>\n<p>We voted to return on Wednesday for the rest of the business.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Announcements<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bill Hayner announced the elementary school mock town meetings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Article 2 State of the Town.<\/strong> Diane Mahon gave the state of the town.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Article 3 Reports of Committees<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>See all reports on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arlingtonma.gov\/town-governance\/town-meeting\">town website<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Arlington Redevelopment Board (ARB) Chairman Andrew Bunnell gave the report of the Arlington Redevelopment Board.<\/li>\n<li>Diane Mahon gave the Select Board report.<\/li>\n<li>Al Tosti moved the reports of the Finance Committee.<\/li>\n<li>Peter Howard gave the report of the Master Plan Implementation Committee<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Article 3 was tabled.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Article 4 Measurer of Wood and Bark<\/strong>. John Worden was appointed the Measurer of Wood and Bark after 50 years in Town Meeting.<\/p>\n<p>ARB Chair Bunnel moved to table Articles 9, 10, 12, 14, and 15.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Articles 6, 7, 8, 11, and 16<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>ARB Chair Bunnel explained that 6, 7, and 8 are administrative. Article 16 is the meat of the proposed change. He explained that it only affects a narrow range of districts in Arlington, the ones along the business corridors. The goal is to improve Arlington&#8217;s economic, business, and housing stock diversity. The ARB wants it to increase affordable housing production. Gersh moved a substitute motion that only changes inclusionary zoning. He thinks the density changes are too much and too fast. Christian Klein moved an amendment to shrink the scope of the change. Barbara Thornton moved an amendment to add storm water management to the scope of Article 16. Marvin Lewiton moved an amendment that would protect more of the open space in town by removing the reference to balconies used as a part of the open space calculation. Steve Revilak was the original proponent of the article. He talked about exclusionary v. inclusionary zoning. He doesn&#8217;t think Gersh&#8217;s amendment solves the problem, but he thinks that Klein&#8217;s, Thornton&#8217;s, and Lewiton&#8217;s are good. JoAnne Preston invited Janice Broadman (Arlington resident) to speak. She doesn&#8217;t think there was enough outreach or research. <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">This is a classic tactic to defeat a proposal when you can&#8217;t marshal a logical argument &#8211; don&#8217;t attack the merits, attack the process. If her leading argument is that the process was broken, her argument is pretty weak.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>9:36 The moderator called a recess<\/p>\n<p>9:47 He called us back to order.<\/p>\n<p>Patricia Worden requested an extra 2 minutes and it was not given. She is opposed to the ARB proposal and supports Gersh&#8217;s amendment. She predicted a number of dire consequences for the town if the ARB article is adopted. Jordan Weinstein had several questions for Director of Planning Jenny Raitt about the analysis and study done on the proposals. He&#8217;s opposed to all of the changes. Anne Thompson thinks the town needs to take more time. Maureen Gormley invited a non-resident business owner Julia Mirak Cue. She supports the proposed changes. John Worden is opposed to the proposal.<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> &#8220;We have done our share of people packing&#8221; he said, as if Arlington were full.<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0 Kaspar Kasparian is opposed to the proposal. <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">His speech . . . . wandered. <\/span>Susan Stamps announced the Tree Committee&#8217;s opposition to the change and asks for further study. Peter Howard is in support of the change &#8211; he thinks the economic development is important. Kevin Koch doesn&#8217;t know the impact on the tax rate. Bill Berkowitz invited Don Seltzer (resident) to speak. He presented a series of hypothetical buildings and shadow studies. Joe Tully supports Gersh&#8217;s amendment and introduced Winelle Evans (resident). She supports Gersh&#8217;s amendment. Daniel Jalkut is in favor but has reservations. Bill Hayner asked what an affordable unit would cost. He&#8217;s concerned with the impact on the schools. He&#8217;s opposed to the change.<\/p>\n<p>We adjourned just after 11.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">I&#8217;m voting to support the change proposed by ARB. We need to encourage affordable housing and commercial building production in Arlington. The changes proposed are moderate &#8211; measured changes to a fraction of the town&#8217;s neighborhoods. I believe the fears of the opponents are overblown. Some of the opponents make reasonable arguments that I still disagree with. Other opponents are simply fear-mongering: for instance, the ridiculous claim that these zoning changes would make Arlington Center look like a building on the 5-lane divided highway that is Route 2.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Taking a step back: Arlington has to change. The current zoning laws are not serving us well. We&#8217;re creating more high-end housing and converting commercial space into residential. If those trends continue Arlington will lose any diversity that it has today, and will become even more dependent on residential property taxes. I very much understand that change is scary and includes some risk. I hope that Town Meeting isn&#8217;t paralyzed by the fear of those unknowns, and we can move the town towards a solution.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I take notes during Town Meeting. They are not official in any way. As I listen to people speak, I type notes. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure that, at times, I mishear or misunderstand the speaker, but my notes represent what I hear at the time. I try to publish the notes every night after the meeting. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-town-meeting-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2262,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060\/revisions\/2262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}