Dan Dunn’s Podium

Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.
Our meeting for 2/10 was canceled by the snow-storm-that-missed-us.  Today was mostly about the Town Meeting warrant articles, with a few extras.
Our first hearing was the Vision 2020 (Jane Howard et al) and the DPW (Teresa DeBenedictis) asking for $15,000 for treatment for water [...]

Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.
Monday was the Arlington Budget and Revenue Task Force meeting; tonight was the first Finance Committee of the year. I have a notes from both here.
At Monday’s meeting, it started with better-than-usual news that the Governor’s proposed budget had more money for Arlington [...]

For the last several years I’ve been pushing to change the way budgeting is done in Arlington. I’d like to explain my proposal, argue why it is a better process than the one we have today, and make some points about why now is a very good time to make the change.  (This is [...]

Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.
Tonight was the annual organizational meeting of the Finance Committee.  It’s often an interesting meeting because you get to hear updates on everything that has happened since Town Meeting – a digest of the last 4 or 5 months.
Town Manager Brian Sullivan [...]

Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature. 
We’ve had five FinCom meetings this year so far.  I missed two (out sick).  I only put up notes on some FinCom meetings, partly because of my time constraints, party because some of the stuff is just too dry to get excited writing about.  Tonight [...]

We met at 7:30 before Town Meeting, as usual. We had business tonight. First up was the Deputy Town Manager Nancy Galkowski, who provided updated recommendations for collective bargaining. The town had reached agreements with all but the police unions. Approved unanimously.
Dick Fanning took over to chair the meeting. The [...]

We met at 7:30 before Town Meeting, as usual.  We had business tonight.  We discussed Article 44.  The article itself is OK, but there is a modification to the insurance budget.  The change causes money for health expenses for retirees to be first appropriated into the OPEB trust fund, and then spent from OPEB to [...]

Finance Committee meets at 7:30 before every Town Meeting in case there is any last minute business to be done. I didn’t do notes for our meeting before TM #3 because we didn’t have any business – just chatter. The meeting #4 was canceled because there was no business. Today we had [...]

Finance Committee meets at 7:30 before every Town Meeting in case there is any last minute business to be done.
Today we first approved the minutes of the previous meeting.
We then revised our vote on Article 75.  The original vote was no longer needed given the Contributory Retirement Board’s surprise announcement that they would move Arlington’s [...]

Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature. These are notes from 3/5.
The minutes from the last meeting were approved.
First up was the Capital Budget, discussed on Monday. The budget was recommended at $8,538,000. There was almost no discussion; we’d talked for an hour and a half earlier in [...]