Annie LaCourt, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, gave the State of the Town of Arlington 2007 on April 23rd in Town Hall. This is the text of her address to the town.

Thank you, Jane, for that gracious introduction. I want to thank the Vision 2020 fiscal resources group for sponsoring the state of the town each year and my colleagues who have elected me Chair this year. It is an honor and a privilege to serve with Kevin Greeley, Jack Hurd and Clarissa Rowe and to have Diane Mahon as my Vice Chair.

I would also like to take a moment to thank my family for their support. I could not serve the town in the way that I do if I did not have the wholehearted support of my husband Mark Burstein. And my daughters, Jennie and Ellie LaCourt, have been very patient and self reliant while watching their mother walk out the door to go to meetings almost every night of the week.

Last Monday evening our town suffered a tragic loss. In a horrible accident Paul Leone, an Arlington High School senior, the son of our new Moderator, lost his life. My heart aches for the Leone’s, and for Paul’s many friends and classmates. So tonight, before I begin my speech, I ask that you join me in a moment of silence recognizing the loss and the pain we share as a community and sending our love and support to Paul’s grieving family.

This evening I first want to tell you about the lens that I see Arlington through – my own upbringing in a very similar community. Then I want to discuss what I see as the three major challenges that we face as a community at this juncture. – the pressure of development on our quality of life, the effort to ensure financial stability for the town, and finally, the strain that has been placed on the fabric of our community these past weeks.

I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee called Greendale Wisconsin. Greendale was first developed as a federal housing project in 1938. It started its life as a solution to a problem – a shortage of decent affordable housing. Some things are always with us aren’t they? One of the obvious differences between my home town and Arlington is history. Greendale began its life sometime after our community passed its 300th birthday. I am still in awe of the fact that I am on the board of selectmen in a town that traces its history back before the revolutionary war! The similarities between Greendale and Arlington are more significant, however, than the differences.

In both communities, people place a premium on neighborliness. You lend a hand or a tool when it’s needed. When there is sickness in a household or a death in a family, you take food to the house or watch the kids for a few hours The neighbors could count on us because we knew we needed to be able to count on them. In Greendale and in Arlington, our homes and our children are the most precious assets we possess. We are fierce in their defense and we are equally fierce about doing the right thing even if it might cost us something. In Greendale, as in Arlington, we did not always agree about what constituted the right thing, so sometimes we were fierce in our disagreements.

So despite the fact that I was born and raised more than a thousand miles from here, I feel like I grew up in Arlington. I suspect that most of those who moved here as adults and chose to make this their children’s home town did so for the same reason that motivated me. We come from places just like Arlington. And that is our common ground. Whether we grew up here or not we all choose to make Arlington our home because of the values that we share and the special qualities of this community. We cherish and are committed to preserving the character of our community and we are willing to work hard to ensure that it’s future will be vibrant and secure. We show that by being the most civically engaged community on record as near as I can tell. I was talking to someone from Lexington the other day and she was very proud that they had a committee over there working on a particular problem. I didn’t have that heart to tell her that I could name 10 organizations, committees or groups here in Arlington that were grappling with that same issue.

The physical character of our town, its homes and businesses, are a key component of our sense of community. The planning department recently held a session to discuss a long term vision for the town and conducted a survey asking residents and town leaders to weigh in on the direction they would like to see development take in the future. To quote the interim report on these efforts “Residents value Arlington’s small-town, suburban feel, its open spaces and tree-lined streets, but also prize its semi-urban walkability, affordability, diversity and commercial uses.” I feel that this statement captures Arlington’s special feel in a nutshell. In part because of our density, we are a community of neighborhoods including neighborhood parks and play grounds that increase our sense of connectedness. And we enjoy assets like the bike path, accessible public transportation and multiple business districts, each with a unique feel, that enrich our daily lives .

At this same public session, residents also identified some of the issues that threaten the quality of life they currently enjoy. Among these are traffic congestion and lack of parking, the weakening of our business sector, overdevelopment, the impact of financial constraints on open space and infrastructure maintenance and the need for more affordable housing. In order to meet these challenges the board of selectmen, the redevelopment board and the town meeting are going to have to work together. We need to identify changes to our zoning by-laws that will shape future development in a direction that retains the character of the town, encourages a variety of businesses to locate and stay in Arlington and makes living here affordable for residents with a range of incomes. We want our children to be able to afford to live here if they choose to and we want current residents to be able to stay when they retire. We need to ensure that the federally funded Mass Ave. corridor redevelopment project is shaped by these values so that the result is a safe, pedestrian friendly avenue with vibrant business districts from the Cambridge line thru the center. We also need to find a way to bring more of the town’s resources to bear on maintaining and enhancing our parks and open spaces. These are the places where we meet, get to know one another and develop a sense of community. They should be well maintained and inviting. In the very near term, the board of selectmen must find workable solutions for the parking congestion in our neighborhoods that frustrates residents and the parking shortage in commercial districts that make it hard for businesses to thrive. I know that my colleagues stand ready to work on all of these issues in the coming year and beyond.

Another concern that is ever on the minds of the town’s leadership is our future financial stability. The five year plan we committed to as part of the recent override campaign is working. The board of selectmen, school committee and finance committee are keeping budgets within the limits set. Everyone, including all of the town’s employees, are working to reduce healthcare costs. Our reserves are holding up as expected and we don’t forecast a budget shortfall before the end of the five years. This has not been accomplished entirely without pain. Living within the budget constraints has sometimes meant difficult cuts particularly in our school system. The flaw in the current plan is that it included no commitment about the level of services we need to preserve, something we must correct as we formulate future plans. Nonetheless, the residents of the town should be proud of the high level of commitment and discipline shown by all those involved in building the budget each year and of the dedicated town employees who provide the services we rely on. Thank you to all of them.

Looking forward five years has become an institutional part of the budget process and so can see the shortfall that will occur in year six. The town’s leadership is already wrestling with this projected operating shortfall as well as our capital needs. We are meeting together periodically to define the problem, consider solutions and determine how to engage the public in the planning process. I believe that there are three major components involved in finding our way forward. The first is looking at how we manage daily operations. We need to look at every way in which we might be more effective and efficient including regionalizing services and adopting performance based management techniques. It is often said that you cannot manage what you cannot measure. We need to decide what we want to accomplish, determine the best way to measure success and use the data that we gather everyday to tell us what is working and what needs to change. We also need to improve communications between the town’s government and its residents. We need a better system for capturing the issues that residents call the town about and for tracking their resolution. Improving in this area will build greater confidence in town government. Our town’s workforce is highly motivated to do their best for us. We need to support their efforts by making it easier for residents to find the information they need and get in contact with the hard working employees who can solve problems for them. Finally, we need to engage the whole community in determining our budget priorities. I firmly believe that budgets reflect values – whether you are conscious about making them do so or not. The town’s government and its residents must work together as partners to ensure our budget truly shows what we value. This year I plan to find multiple ways to engage all segments of our community in a dialogue about what our budget priorities should be. I am confident that the result of all of these efforts will be a clear picture of the future and the will to find the means to fund that vision.

We come now to what is most on my mind tonight. Not the state of the town’s infrastructure or finances, but the state of our community’s heart. I do not remember a time in all the years that I have lived here when we took a battering like we have in the last few weeks. The tensions over the future direction of the middle school were divisive in a way that took us all by surprise. We care passionately about our children and when we have disagreements about what is best for their education we should debate them fully and with vigor. But when we disagree, we need to do it like brothers and sisters. When all is said and done, we are all still living in the same house and we need to be able to look each other in the eye when we pass in the halls. The best results come from a vigorous debate, but if the tone of the discussion sinks to a certain level the bitter after taste will remain long after the original issue is satisfactorily settled. The values we hold in common far outweigh our differences. We all have to work harder to handle disagreements over issues, even passionate ones, with trust and respect for one another.

Hard on the heels of this divisive controversy, we have lost a child. I don’t think I have had a conversation with anyone in town this week who was not affected by this loss. Because of the events at Virginia Tech, other communities across the country are experiencing the same pain we are right now. I don’t know about you but what I need to do is take a breath. Life is fragile and events in the world can seem terribly random. I don’t think we can construct a world without risks for our children. Expecting that we can leads to despair. But I feel that we have to try again and again and again to do better because not to do so also leads to despair. I hope that you agree with me that our best response to our loss is to come together as a community and work harder at preventing our young people from taking unnecessary risks.

The fabric of our community has been strained by division and rent by loss. It is time now to knit up the raveled sleeve of care, repair the tears and reweave the worn spots. We need to recommit ourselves to respecting and understanding our neighbors. We need to value every child as if they were our own. We need to wrap ourselves around the hurt and grieving like a mother’s arms. Most importantly, we need to remember that as long as we can count on our neighbors and they can count on us, we can handle the challenges in front of us. I came to understand that growing up in a town just like Arlington.