Contact Sports

I voted with the minority to pass Mr. Stephen Harrington’s substitute motion to Article 58 at last night's Town Meeting, the final session of Town Meeting this year.

The intent of this Article was:

To see if the Town will vote to appropriate $25,000 to defray the expense of purchasing, leasing, or bonding of capital equipment to reduce the likelihood of traumatic brain injuries in students participating in athletics at the Arlington Public High School for helmets, pads and baseline testing software; or take any action related thereto.

We are learning a lot more about concussions these days, and have come to understand just how common, and serious, these injuries are.

Mr. Harrington has championed this issue, and succeeded in getting the School Department to allocate $22k for the purpose of replacing old (and ineffective) football helmets, over the course of 3 years. This Article would have seriously accelerated that program.

The official argument provided by the Finance Committee against passing this Article was that the School Department has heard the concern, and moved to address the issue.

I suspect that personal conflicts also played a role in this Article being defeated. Mr. Harrington has been an outspoken critic of the School Committee for some time (you can get a taste of his politics by visiting his blog at www.truepersons.com).

In this particular case he brought attention to a very important issue, and the Schools have seen the merits of his concerns, and responded. It is easy for me to suspect that rejecting Mr. Harrington’s request for additional funds was a way of not letting him have the last word on the subject. Some may suspect that Mr. Harrington’s submission of this Article was an attempt on his part to be sure he got the last word in. They may be right. I have had a chance to talk with him about this issue, and I'm convinced that he is very sincere in his intent to address it.

I don’t share Mr. Harrington’s views much of the time. For me though this Article was about reducing the number of concussions suffered by High School athletes. The Article would have accomplished this, equipping student athletes with better equipment now, rather than 3 years from now.

To me that Seemed like a good thing to do.

The substitute motion was defeated by a vote of 121 to 53, and we voted No Action on Article 58.

Leaf Blowers

Yesterday I took some time and wrote down my thoughts about the leaf blower ban proposed in Town Meeting. Last Wednesday we debated the article, and we would be voting on it at Monday night's Town Meeting session.

I thought I might make this post yesterday, before Town Meeting, but I wanted to get what I learned about unaccounted water posted, and I thought this might make more sense after the vote took place anyway.

Of course yesterday I was fairly certain the leaf blower ban was not going to pass!

As I mention in this post, the proponents made some really good arguments. They had me changing my mind on this issue several times. I also suspect they got some help from some of the opponents, as I'll admit I was tempted to change my vote yet again last night, and support the ban, after hearing some of the arguments made against it.

We passed a ban on leaf blowers in Arlington, by a vote of 95 to 85. I voted against the ban, but as I think is clear if you read what I had to say before the vote below, I don't feel too bad about losing this one.

------------

Here's what I wrote yesterday morning, before the vote was taken last night:

One of the things that surprises me most about being an elected member of a legislative body, is how often I’m tempted to change my mind about the votes I make. I guess I thought this would be more an exception to the norm than it has been. Good arguments are presented that run counter to how I thought, and I find myself won over to the other side of something.

That has almost happened with the debate on banning leaf blowers in town. Almost, but not quite. I still feel it is going too far at this point to ban the use of leaf blowers.

I have though seen examples where leaf blowers have been used irresponsibly, and in a manner that - were it the norm - would have me in favor of a ban.

Also, the science I think is starting to develop, that may result in us concluding at a future date that there is no good reason to allow the use of these machines.

We aren’t quite there yet, though. The science behind the air pollution is still a mix between the engine emissions - that apply to other devices such as weed-eaters, edgers, lawn mowers, snow blowers, and etc., and the particulate matter kicked up specifically by leaf blowers.

For the latter, it depends on the harmful materials being present universally, or near enough so, in all areas in town. We haven’t been given evidence of that yet. Nor have we been given sufficient evidence that the use of a leaf blower must, necessarily, transmit pollutants beyond a persons own property.

We’ve been shown examples where they certainly have been, but we haven’t been shown that this cannot be solved by more responsible use of the machines without resorting to a full ban.

To use a crude analogy: cars can be used in a very harmful manner. But we have not resorted to banning them; rather we insist they be used responsibly. Ditto for guns, and probably a number of other things.

When I used to work to pass clean indoor air laws (smoking-bans), we made the point that there was "no safe limit" on secondhand smoke. The same claim cannot (yet) be made about the use of leaf blowers.

However, as advocates continue to build awareness about the potential harms of these machines, we may start to see more science. A day may come fairly soon when the case against leaf blowers is sufficient to justify a ban.

My advice to proponents of a ban in the meantime: work to educate town residents on this issue.

I found many of your arguments and examples fairly convincing. So I approached some of my neighbors, specifically some that I thought would be more predisposed to supporting a ban, and asked them what they thought.

The feedback I received was that a ban was going a bit too far. The people I spoke with were not aware of all the information proponents have provided during debate at Town Meeting. They are environmentally conscious individuals, who go out of their way already to live in a manner they feel is environmentally responsible.

Before we can get the town to accept a ban (whether we pass a bylaw or not), these are the sort of people who need to believe it is the right thing to do. A ban does not regulate itself. It depends on buy-in from the community both to be observed and to be enforced.

Again, some of the science presented by proponents is working toward justification of a specific ban on leaf blowers.

Definitely some of the shown examples of how some are using these machines is wrong, and should be stopped.

I recommend that ban proponents educate before they legislate.

I leave you with a list of arguments made by proponents. I suspect this issue may return again someday.

• The noise from gas-powered leaf blowers is not just an inconvenience, it is physically harmful. Excess noise causes increased stress levels, anxiety, high blood pressure and has been linked to health problems including: hypertension, depression, premature birth and headaches.
• Noise from gas-powered leaf blowers detracts from the peace and quiet of our residential neighborhoods and erodes property values.
• The operation of a gas-powered leaf blower adversely affects the quality of life and health of the surrounding neighbors. It is similar to second-hand smoke.
• Leaf blowers are unnecessary. They were invented in the 1970's. Leaves have been around much longer.
• Gas-powered leaf blowers create dust clouds that carry toxins including: animal feces, mold, spores, lead, carcinogens, carbon, asbestos and other particulates that remain in the air for days. These particulates are a serious health threat for young children, pregnant women and seniors. It can cause lung ailments, trigger asthma and cause cancer and a host of other maladies. The dust seeps into neighbors homes, contaminates local vegetable gardens, lands on swing sets, window sills and is inhaled and injested by neighbors, landscape crews and homeowners.
• In the more than 400 communities across the country where leaf blowers have been banned or restricted, landscaping companies have not gone out of business or significantly increased their prices. In Orange County, California a Grand Jury dismissed arguments that it will cost more to have workers use rakes and brooms, and concluded that the health hazards citizens are exposed to far outweigh any questionable economic benefits.
• Arlington is proud of its status as a Green Community. Condoning the use of gas powered leaf blowers which have been proved to be bad for the enviroment and a health hazard is contrary to what a Green Community stands for.
• Protect the quality of life and health in Arlington. Take back your yard, your neighborhood and your town. Vote to support Article #25.

An Education in Unaccounted Water

After hearing the remarkable statistic that Arlington "loses" 27% of its water, I set out to learn more about this, what it actually means, and how and if it costs us as a Town.

Eventually I turned to Michael Rademacher, Arlington’s Director of Public Works. I was extremely grateful that he made the time to sit down with me and explain this issue, in a way that even I could understand.

Everything below is based on the results of my education. For those that come to this issue with more knowledge than my English degree provided me on it, I apologize. I’ve attempted to write all of this down in a way that someone like myself could understand, so for many this will seem a bit remedial.

What is unaccounted water? Unaccounted water is any water that we received, but cannot determine what it was used for. Most of our water is measured by water meters. There are some exceptions: in the case of fire hydrants being used or maintained, for example, Arlington has to make an estimate of how much water was used. Otherwise, we measure how much water we used by totaling up the amounts from all of the water meters in town.

But before we get too far into that, we need to understand where our water comes from. We get our water from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, or MWRA (on the web at http://www.mwra.com/). The MWRA provides water to 51 communities in our area, including the city of Boston. For the sake of simplicity, this is how it was explained to me:

The MWRA keeps track of all the water that enters each community. At the end of a year, they know how much water they provided overall, and to each community individually. They approach each community, including Arlington, and tell us what the percentage of water we used was, and how much we then owe.

This is an important detail in understanding the economic impact of unaccounted water. For the sake of explanation, let’s assume that MWRA provided 10,000 gallons of water to all communities, and therefore need to collect $100 to cover their costs. When they get to Arlington, we’ll say for this example that we used 10 gallons, or 1%, of the water MWRA provided. Therefore we owe MWRA $1.

Back to the topic of our unaccounted water. We know that we received 10 gallons of water from MWRA. However, after totaling up the estimated water used by fire hydrants and other such things, plus all the water we measured through our water meters, we can only account for 7.3 gallons.

We still have to pay for the full 10 gallons, and we do so by setting the amount charged consumers at a rate that covers that cost.

Remember how MWRA charged Arlington based on the proportion of water it used compared to how much water MWRA provided all its customers?

Because the average amount of unaccounted water for all the communities served by MWRA is close to 15%, the amount paid by consumers in Arlington to cover unaccounted for water is necessarily higher than what is charged in communities where the percentage of unaccounted for water is lower.

So there is a certain incentive to lower the rate of unaccounted for water in Arlington. How do we do that?

First we need to understand where we think this water is actually going. Here are the likely sources:

Leaks. The lifespan of a water pipe is not unlimited. Pipes get old, and they leak more. Both water quality (we are blessed with very high water quality) and soil conditions play a major role in how long pipes last before they begin to leak a lot. The average lifespan of a water pipe is around 50 to 60 years.

Un-Metered uses we are not aware of. When we need to let water out of a fire-hydrant, we can estimate how much water was released. The Town does not believe there are many cases where water is being used but not metered, or estimated. For example, all municipal buildings are confirmed to have operating meters. However they continue to be on the look-out for this. Some examples of places you’d watch out for include practice fields that are being irrigated using some faucet long ago forgotton, or a municipal building that at some point had plumbing put in that managed to skip the meter. We don’t have reason to believe that there are any significant cases where this is happening, but we are an old community.

Old Water Meters. When water meters get to be older than 15 years, they start to measure the water that passes through them less and less efficiently. Many things factor into just how inefficient they are, the most significant of which is water quality. The bottom line though is that over time, older meters fail to measure between 5% and 10% of the water that passes through them.

Back to the question of how to fix these problems. We have been doing tests every other year to identify leaks in our pipes. Arlington is going to do this every year now, which should help to prioritize what gets repaired, by letting us spot leaks sooner. A good thing, and the costs of doing these tests has been significantly lower than the money saved by patching found leaks so far.

But is this enough? Remember how the typical lifespan of a pipe is between 50 and 60 years? We currently provide funding to our Department of Public Works an amount that allows them to replace roughly 1 mile of pipe per year. However we have around 130 miles of water pipe in town. If we’re going to replace our pipe at a rate that will keep up with deterioration, we need to double the amount we allocate for that. Of course the extra cost of doing this will get passed along to the consumer; but based on what I have learned I believe that the consumer will in the long-term save, as our system is better maintained.

This is really the same logic as you’d use when caring for your car. You can save a little money in the short term by not getting your oil changed, but the long term costs of doing so are higher.

Higher water bills hurt, but if we don’t pay more today to keep things working, we’re going to have to pay even more tomorrow.

Replacing our older water meters is a bit tougher to work through the pros and cons of. This is water that, after all, is being used even if it isn’t being accurately measured. It could be argued that all we accomplish by updating our meters is knowing where all our water is going, rather than actually saving any water that was previously lost.

It is also a hard pill to swallow, as at the individual level if you happen to have an old, inefficient water meter working in your home, then you are going to get hit with a bit of a surprise if a more reliable meter is installed and you suddenly see your water use jump by 5% to 10%.

I’d point out though that all meters need replaced eventually, and if yours is new, you are essentially subsidizing your neighbor’s water bills, paying for every drop used while others get 5% to 10% of the water they use for "free."

"Free" is in quotation marks on purpose. Remember that in the end we pay for all the water MWRA delivers to us, whether our meters accurately capture the use, the water leaks out of old pipes, or whatever.

To the extent that all water meters are as close to equally efficient as possible, the more equitable each of our water bills are. This seems to me to be the ideal. It doesn’t matter much if all the meters in town are failing to measure 2% of the water that passes through them, or 22%. What matters is that they are, as much as possible, failing to measure the same amount.

The only way to achieve this that I know of right now is to routinely replace meters when they hit a certain age.

The DPW can, working within its current budget, phase in the replacement of all water meters over the course of 4 to 5 years. If they tried to do this any faster, it’d be necessary to outsource the labor needed, and the cost would go up considerably.

With the understanding of the problem I currently have, I think that replacing our water meters is the right thing to do. If we also double our spending on repairing and replacing old pipes, getting everything on a schedule that will replace our whole system every 50 to 60 years (which is the typical lifetime of a pipe before it is likely to fail or leak substantially), we ought to see our unaccounted for water drop to a rate that is below average for our area.

This is worth doing, as it will lower the amount of water we receive from MWRA, and that will lower all of our water bills, eventually saving us all some money.

Town Meeting Attendance

There hasn't been anything from the sixth night of Town Meeting that I've been ready to write about yet; I'm still digesting some of what was discussed.

There has been one development though, on an issue dear to my heart. The Town has begun to post attendance records of Town Meeting members to the Town website.

You can view this here:

http://www.arlingtonma.gov/public_documents/ArlingtonMA_TownMeet/2012ATM/voting/index

Everyone is vulnerable to something coming up at some point, that makes it so they can't avoid missing a meeting now and then.

The attendance of some is so poor, they should in my opinion step down and allow another to take their place. I'm not suggesting that there isn't a good reason for the poor attendance: life happens, and it may be that Town Meeting is not an obligation someone is able to fill any longer.

In that situation, the right thing to do is to step down, and allow another to represent their precinct.

Posting attendance is an important step forward for the Town. Now, if we can get the votes of Town Meeting members recorded and made public, we'll be on our way to a functioning representative democracy.

Here's the section on my precinct, number 4; a "1" means they were present, a "0" means they weren't:

2012 Town Meeting, Precinct 4 Attendance
Name	Precinct	Session1	Session2	Session3	Session4	Session5	Total
Beal, Wesley L.	4	1	1	1	1	1	5
Brogan, Gregory D.	4	1	1	1	1	1	5
Costa, John J., Jr.	4	1	0	0	0	0	1
Costa, Michael R.	4	0	0	0	0	0	0
Costa, Patricia A.	4	1	0	0	0	0	1
Ferrara, Ryan J.	4	1	1	1	0	0	3
Flueckiger, Molly E.	4	1	1	1	0	1	4
Kaba, Nawwaf W.	4	1	1	1	1	1	5
Laite, George	4	0	0	1	0	1	2
Marshall, Joseph M.	4	1	0	1	0	0	2
Rowe, Clarissa	4	1	1	1	0	1	4
Swilling, Nathan W.	4	1	1	1	1	1	5

2012 Session #5, Monday May 7th

If you’ve read the news on what occurred at this session of Town Meeting, you know that we made a one time appropriation of money for energy conservation efforts, but voted down a proposal to create a dedicated fund for this purpose.

Why in the world would we do such a thing?

There are a few problems with the proposal for a Energy Conservation Fund that was put before us.

Some take issue with the Town creating too many special, distinct funds in general. The rational behind being against too many of these is sound: the more special accounts we create, the less money there is available in the general fund.

Dedicated funding can be useful. I know that I will spend money each week at the grocery store. Conceivably I could open up an account at a grocery store, and deposit some amount of money from my paycheck that could only be spent at the grocery store. This might help me budget better.

I do this for medical expenses now, through a flexible spending account that allows me to move aside money used to cover medical expenses pre-tax.

But if I do this for everything (groceries, medical expenses, housing, utilities, etc., etc.), or I allocate too much money for a particular expense, I lose flexibility, should something come up and I need to re-prioritize my spending.

I don’t believe we should never create special funds, and I think a special fund for energy conservation efforts is a good idea.

I voted no, in opposition to the Energy Conservation Fund, because it needed more restrictions in place on how much money we would allow to enter into it.

The fund would have been funded through energy rebates we receive when we implement new energy saving measures. Examples were provided where NStar offered a rebate of around $25k for some measure taken, as well as other examples wherein the rebates were of a similar amount.

Some dedicated funds we create have caps on them. The effect of this is that money is deposited into an account, until that account reaches a defined balance, at which point any additional money collected goes into the general fund.

I think this would be a much better way to approach the Energy Conservation Fund. If they bring this back to us next year, with language to the effect that the fund would only be allowed to grow to a maximum balance of X, then I anticipate that I’ll support it. We want these monies being put to work for energy conservation, not accumulating in an account somewhere. In the same way I don’t allow my healthcare flexible spending account to grow to an unlimited size, I don’t want this fund to grow beyond a useful amount either.

2012 Session #4, Wednesday May 2nd

During this session we dealt with Articles 42 and 43 (among many others), financing repairs of our sewer and water facilities.

The discussion of these two articles revealed something I did not know, that I very much want to know more about:

27% of the water that comes into Arlington from MWRA simply "vanishes."

It disappears, never making it to a meter, never being accounted for.

I need to know more about this. If you're familiar with the issue and can enlighten us all, please post a comment, or just contact me directly.

----
Update on Vanishing Water:

I’ve learned a bit more about this topic, and rather than just leave this ominous question hanging out there, I’ll share what I've learned:

A normal loss of water is considered to be around 15%. The losses we see are likely due to old pipes in need of repair, and to older meters that do not accurately measure all the water used.

The Town of Arlington pays a wholesale rate to the MWRA as the water comes into our system, then measures the water “captured” by meters, and bills residents an amount that allows the Town to cover the costs paid to MWRA, and other costs associated with operating our system.

So the bad news is that this sort of loss results in residents paying for more water than they actually use, (except in those cases where the meter isn’t actually recording all the water used).

In practice, for every 3 gallons of water measured, we are charged for 4 gallons of water used.

It is hoped that gradually replacing the older water meters will bring our 27% loss rate down a bit.

Ultimately, we’re going to have to spend a fair amount of money to fix this problem.

There is most definitely a point at which it costs more to obtain improvements than those improvements will result in savings.

How much? and at what point it becomes economical to really fix the issue, I still don’t know an answer to.

When I hear about this sort of thing, I worry, as we are not accustomed any longer to footing the bill for this sort of infrastructure. Eventually, one day, we're going to have to.

2012 Session #3, Monday April 30th, Article 8, The Amendments

Two separate amendments were offered on Article 8. Both were intended as "Poison Pills," meant to make the original article unattractive and therefore not worth the proponents efforts to pass it. The first read:

in part b, 6, by striking out the words "at the time of the Special Permit application" and inserting in place thereof the words "on January 1, 2012" in part c, 3, by adding at the end thereof the words "and that at least one of the owners is 65 years of age or older, or disabled." in part c, 4, by inserting, after "he or she" in the sixth line, the words "is 65 years of age or older, or disabled and" and adding, at the end of said paragraph the words "otherwise the permit shall lapse, and the accessory unit shall be merged with and become a part of the principal unit, the kitchen being removed." in part c, by adding a new sub-paragraph 5 as follows: 5. An accessory apartment may also be permitted to provide an accommodation for an elderly person related by blood or marriage to one or more of the owners, but such permit shall lapse and the accessory unit shall be merged with and become a part of the principal unit, the kitchen being removed, when the elderly person dies or vacates the unit.

This amendment would have restricted the occupation of any accessory apartments to people 65 or older, or disabled, and to a blood relative or spouse of one of the owners. It was not made clear, but questioned whether this would have been legal under non-discrimination laws. I voted against this amendment. The second amendment I found more interesting. Still meant to discourage the passage of the original article, it read:

The other unit must be rented at no more than an affordable price as defined in Article 11, Section 11.08.

Outside of Town Meeting I did a fair amount of searching, and asked a lot of people questions about what an "affordable price" would be. The referenced Town Bylaw reads:

Rental Units priced such that the rent (including utilities) shall not exceed 30% of the income of a household at 60% of median income;

After collecting different answers from different sources, I determined that the current affordable price would be $965 for a studio or $1,103 for a one bedroom on the low end, and $1,467 per month on the high end. Since these accessory apartments are defined with a maximum size of 700 square feet, I believe the affordable price defined by the amendment is more than sufficient. The standard size of a first-floor apartment in my neighborhood of East Arlington is roughly 1,100 square feet. The average rent in our area as best I can determine is roughly $1,400 per month. Going just by the cost per square foot, a rent of $891 would be appropriate for a 700 square foot apartment. I voted in favor of this amendment. The idea that this was meant to discourage passage of this Article highlights the need, in my opinion, for a much more robust understanding on the part of Town Leaders of the need for more affordable housing in Arlington.

2012 Session #3, Monday April 30th, Article 8, Accessory Apartments

This article would have allowed homeowners to construct an accessory apartment at their residence, so long as it was part of the main structure, was no larger than 700 square feet, the residence was owner-occupied, and a few other restrictions.

It was defeated, near as I could tell, because opponents thought that people might build accessory apartments.

Oddly, the potential for a change in the character of the individual neighborhoods that might witness this new development took a back seat to the issue of how many more people might occupy a 700 square foot apartment.

Here is some data on the population of Arlington over the last 40 years:

42,844 (2010 U.S. census)
42,389 (2000 U.S. census)
44,630 (1990 U.S. census)
46,465 (1985 state census)
48,219 (1980 U.S. census)
52,720 (1970 U.S. census)

I would suggest that these numbers show us, unless we assert that Arlington has been a bad place to live in the past, that density is not an issue with regards to Article 8.

There are many reasons to be cautious about allowing new types of development. I can’t help but notice that the same spirit of opposition existed with regards to Article 7 which would have permitted “mixed use” development in town.

I strongly believe in exercising caution when it comes to allowing new development. When we make changes such as this, the impact is often far reaching, and extremely difficult to undo.

However we can’t oppose any new development. And we can’t oppose any new growth. I hope we in Arlington realize that without growth, we will continue to face higher taxes, as opportunities for new revenue fails to keep pace with increasing costs.

I may come back and write again about Article 8; there were a couple amendments offered, one restricting the amount of rent that could be charged, that are worth discussing further.

2012 Session #2, Wednesday April 25th, Article 9 – Zoning Bylaw Amendment/Memorial Park

When I chose to run for Town Meeting, I had an agenda. As much as anytime in the past, our personal lives are hectic. Time is a precious commodity, and we are encouraged to delegate civic responsibility to people and institutions, so that we can cope with all the other demands on our time.

My agenda in Arlington is to preserve our system of government, the Town system, as long as it is feasible. Moving to adopt a City form of government would be much easier. It is a far more efficient way to get things done. I don’t believe we have to do this. We are not yet too large a place to manage ourselves. In fact our population has shrunk considerably over the past 40 years. We maintained a Town system in the past, so why not now?

Article 9 would have removed the authority of Town Meeting to approve a new land use. Information on how much land would have fallen under article 9 was conflicting; maybe only a few places, maybe more. Also importantly, if this Article had passed, Town Meeting would not have the opportunity to review and approve of the site plan for the one property currently under consideration, Cooke’s Hollow.

From what I’ve seen of the rough ideas for the space at Cooke’s Hollow so far, it looks like a good thing. The proposed ideas are both beautiful and respectful of the character of the location. The plans would need to be developed much more fully before I could honestly review and vote in the positive for implementation, but so far I like what I see. Finding additional memorial space in Arlington is also a legitimate problem, worthy of much more attention. Despite the prophesies of Arlington being transformed into a necropolis by opponents, I suspect Article 9 would have had a small impact on Arlington overall.

None of that for me was to the point.

While proponents claim that the area impacted by Article 9 was very limited, it is still a case of whittling away at the role and authority of Town Meeting.

Given that in 3 hours of meeting time Town Meeting only managed to take action on this one Article, I can  understand why some may wish to avoid putting issues before Town Meeting, but I still do not approve.

Frankly, proponents of Articles need to start realizing just how much work they need to do. It’s not enough to have a good idea, introduce it to a small handful of people, convince them of its merits, and expect to achieve your goal. If we were a City, you could. Here, you quite intentionally must win the support of the whole Town. It’s not easy or at all efficient to get a majority of a 252 member legislative body to support you.

By sticking with a Town system of government, we lay claim to the notion that far more members of the Town must approve of action than would be the case in a City system of government.

That’s what we’re talking about when we say we want to maintain Town government in Arlington.

It is A LOT of work. That’s not a problem to be solved; that’s the whole point.