AMPUp Advisory Committee - Apr 24th, 2025

Meeting held via remote participation. Materials were available from https://www.arlingtonma.gov/Home/Components/Calendar/Event/36605/18.

Review Meeting Minutes

(Claire Ricker, Planning Director) Ms. Ricker says she has meeting minutes but didn't get them out to review in time. We'll review them at the next meeting.

Reflections on Kickoff Event

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says that Mr. Roubenoff and several other committee members have been putting together a document with feedback on the kickoff event.

(Tristan Roubenoff, AMPUp Chair) Mr. Roubenoff says there were 140 attendees overall, and some chatter on social media after the event. Overall people liked it. He'll send Stantec a list of suggestions for future slide decks. Mr. Roubenoff's table had a lot of diverse comments, and the two ends of the table had different interests.

Mr. Roubenoff explains the purpose of hybrid meetings to Stantec. They're an optional second meeting per month. Stantec needs time to present materials at our monthly meetings, and the hybrids are for committee members to talk among themselves.

(Paul Selker, AMPUP) Mr. Selker felt it was a positive experience. There was a variety of opinions and constructive engagement. In retrospect, he would have liked to have role-played the exercise in advance.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says it was a larger crowd than we anticipated, and there was a good vibe to it.

(Arthur Prokosch, AMPUp) Mr. Prokosch thought the type and depth of questions seemed about right for getting a moderate level of detail on paper.

(Rebecca Gruber, AMPUp) Ms. Gruber thought there were a lot of new names on the sign-in sheets.

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff notes that one committee member brought a large group of friends to the event, which was incredible.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says that Executive Director of the Housing Corporation of Arlington was there, along with several of their tenants. There was also age diversity among attendees. The town's information officer monitors social media and has noted some feedback. We'd like to keep the survey open for another two weeks. At her last conversation with Stantec, there were 60--70 responses to the survey. Ms. Ricker wonders what the town could do to better promote it.

(Alison LeFlore, Stantec) Ms. LeFlore was impressed with the turnout at the event, and she thinks it will be possible to get more survey responses. Ms. LeFlore has worked with cities larger than Arlington, and getting 80 responses there can be a stretch.

(Rebecca Gruber) Ms. Gruber asks how much traffic the project website has been getting.

(Phil Schaeffing, Stantec) Mr. Schaeffing says there have been 113 survey responses as of today. There have been 700 unique visitors to the website, so more people are becoming aware of the process. There have been a number of repeat visitors, and 62 people downloaded the presentation.

The kickoff event had a map where attendees could put a dot where they lived. Attendees were geographically distributed throughout the town. There were 19 small group discussions at tables and 105 headlines submitted. The major headline themes were sustainability, housing that's affordable, investment in multi-modal transportation, economic development, and building an equitable and inclusive community.

Mr. Schaeffing shows a map where the per-table blue and yellow dots have been combined. The blue dots indicate areas of interest and places that people like. These are clustered in several areas like Arlington Reservoir and the Minuteman Bikeway. The yellow dots indicate areas of concern, and are more spread out. The areas of concern include Arlington Center, Broadway, the Alewife Brook, and the Fox library.

Common shared priorities included affordable and multi-family housing, prioritizing mixed use development, improving public transit, enhancing the town's natural and open spaces, strengthening the economy, and creating a strong community.

Mr. Schaeffing says that feedback from in-person events and on-line surveys will feed into the draft vision statement, as well as the draft goals and priorities.

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff asks if Stantec can share a sample of the scans on the project website.

(Phil Schaeffing) Mr. Schaeffing says yes. Scans of the documents were shared with town staff earlier today.

(Steve Revilak, AMPUp) Mr. Revilak suggests putting all of the public input on the project website. He thinks there's value in letting the community see what their peers had to say.

Outreach Materials: Website and Survey

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker is interested in having some material printed -- either a postcard or a business card. They'd have the website address and maybe some other information.

(Rebecca Gruber) Ms. Gruber asks about the intended purpose of the cards and what information they'd contain. She asks if there are cost limitations involved.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says she isn't planning on doing a mailing. Other forms of outreach should be sufficient. She asks committee members how they'd feel about business cards with a QR code and leaning on the website for information.

Staff recently received the meeting in a box materials from Stantec, and will be reviewing it shortly.

(Angelique Bradford, AMPUp) Ms. Bradford likes the idea of having a physical thing to hand out. She'd prefer a smaller size.

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff prefers the larger size. He'd like the postcard to say something about why the process is important.

(Paul Selker) Mr. Selker says that a list of the statutory categories could be a way to capture people's attention. Everyone cares about at least one of the items on that list.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says she'll work on a quarter-page postcard. The bulk of the comprehensive plan funds are going directly to Stantec, but she has some department funds for printing and incidentals.

Ecofest Tabling Event

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker has tabling materials in her office. She'll print a half-page handout for distribution.

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff has a volunteer list. He's planning to be there at 10:00 and stay for the entire event.

New Business

(Tristan Boyd) Mr. Boyd says that interest groups will ramp up in May, because a number of people will be busy with town meeting. We'll use the hybrid meeting to discuss how the groups will interact. He says there's been interest in cross-cutting committees like outreach and DEI.

(Angelique Bradford) Ms. Bradford asks about how we'll ask questions to groups that we visit.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says that Stantec has put some of this together with the meeting in a box materials.

(Phil Schaeffing) Mr. Schaeffing says the questions are broad conversation starters that could be used with any committee. For example, are there issues that frequently come up? Are there points of tension?

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff asks if Stantec will want specific feedback from certain groups when working on the individual chapters.

(Phil Schaeffing) Mr. Schaeffing says they'll be especially interested in feedback when working on strategies. He'll have more to say when we get to that phase.

(Paul Selker) Mr. Selker asks if we have a fixed list of groups to talk to.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker thinks the committee should reach out to town groups. We can start with groups where we know there's interest.

(Paul Selker) Mr. Selker asks if our objective will be to collect written feedback for Stantec.

(Phil Schaeffing) Mr. Schaeffing says yes. They'll provide feedback forms.

(Rebecca Gruber) Ms. Gruber asks if committee members should ask groups if we can give meeting in a box presentations.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker thinks that's something we could promote on the town website.

(Rebecca Gruber) Ms. Gruber would like to give groups a way to say "we'd like to be heard too".

(Arthur Prokosch) Mr. Prokosch asks if there are topics that have a shortage of interest.

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff thinks we have a broad base of people for each of the subject areas. He thinks we should add topic groups for sustainability and DEI/Equity.

(Angelique Bradford) Ms. Bradford asks if we'll have to follow the meeting in a box material exactly.

(Phil Schaeffing) Mr. Schaeffing says the material is meant as a guide to help us. It will depend on how much time is available for meeting with the group. Whatever information and feedback is collected will be helpful. Stantec is willing to be flexible with what they get.

(Eugene Benson, AMPUp) Mr. Benson has a different slant on diversity, sustainability, equity, and regionalism. He thinks those topics don't need separate groups. Instead each interest group should have some focus on these areas. Make it a lens that we examine the topics through, and imbue these criteria into the discussion and feedback we give to Stantec.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker things the meeting in a box materials could be adapted to that.

(Rebecca Gruber) Ms. Gruber would like the meeting in a box materials to have definitions of these terms.

(Ann LeRoyer, AMPUp) Ms. LeRoyer asks if people in the topic groups should just start meeting with each other.

(Tristan Roubenoff) Mr. Roubenoff thinks that's the goal, but we'll probably want to wait until after town meeting. In the interim, we should think about how we'll be able to do this. We might need a reporting structure.

Mr. Roubenoff likes Mr. Benson's idea of treating sustainability, diversity, etc as cross-cutting concerns. We should discuss how we define these terms ourselves.

Mr. Roubenoff says that Mr. Prokosch has volunteered to be co-chair of the committee. He asks if we can vote on that.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson thinks that kind of decision should be listed on an agenda. Procedurally, he'd feel better about that.

(Arthur Prokosch) In the interim, Mr. Prokosch offers to help Mr. Roubenoff where he can.

(Ann LeRoyer) Ms. LeRoyer asks how well we've been covering precinct meetings.

(Rebecca Gruber) Ms. Gruber says that 18 precincts have had meetings, and we've been able to cover them all.

Public Comment

There was no public comment.

Adjourn

Meeting adjourned at 7:14 PM.