2019 Town Meeting - Night Two, Part 1

Welcome back to the second night of the 2019 Annual Town Meeting.  I was trying to take care of a few items during the meeting, and as a result, I missed the names of several speakers this evening.  I will just focus on the speakers who made an impression.

After the nightly singing of the National Anthem, we had time for announcements.  We then received more reports.  Tonight it was the Capital Planning Committee, the Permanent Town Building Committee, and Envision Arlington.  If you are interested in reading any of the reports, they are all posted on the Town's Town Meeting webpage.  We tabled Article 3 to close that portion of the meeting and moved on to the consent agenda

The consent agenda is a list of articles that either have a recommended vote of no action or are annual votes that are not controversial compiled by the Moderator.  Most votes can be approved by a simple majority.  Zoning and bonding require a 2/3 vote.  For this reason there were two consent agenda votes.  The first vote only required a simple majority.  It included the following articles:  10, 12, 13, 23, 25, 31, 42, 46, 49, 55, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, and 79.  It was passed 201-8.  The second vote included articles Article 59, 60, 61, 62, 72, 76, and 77.  It was approved 213-4.

We then resumed the debate on article 16.  The first speaker was the chair of the ARB.  They had met since Monday and had many discussions with meeting members and town officials.  Based on Monday's discussion and the subsequent meetings, the ARB changed their recommended votes on articles 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 16 to no action.  This canceled the three amendments, but left the substitute motion intact.  After a few speakers, Dan Jalkut proposed to terminate debate.  That passed on a vote of 164-55.  Jon Gersh's substitute motion was voted down 90-123, leaving the no action in place.  That was approved 208-10.  Articles 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11 had their recommended vote of no action approved by voice vote.

We then took articles 10, 12, 13, 14, and 15 off the table for discussion.  This was a slight goof since we had voted the recommended no action on 10, 12, and 13 earlier that night.  Article 14 called for adding the R7 district to the list of districts where projects can reduce their parking requirement if they adopt an approved transportation demand management (TDM) program.  This would effect only three properties in town.  There were a number of speakers who were concerned about the effect on low income residents if parking was reduced, who encouraged the town to find alternate solutions rather that requiring more parking everywhere, and finally proposed ending debate.  That passed on a voice vote, and the main motion was adopted 181-34.

OK, I'm too tired to finish this tonight, so I will post this much now and post the remainder tomorrow.