Christiana credits former moderator for efforts

Greg Christiana, a Precinct 15 Town Meeting member who was elected meeting moderator on April 2, posted the following letter to the meeting member email list in response to former moderator's letter. The subject line was "Moving forward together for Arlington's future.

Greg Christiana

Dear Town Meeting members,

I'm writing to you about the cover letter that I included in the hard copy of reports to Town Meeting that several of you opted to receive this year. This letter was also sent via the Town Meeting Member Email List on Friday, April 15, with the subject "[TMM] Town Moderator Cover Letter to Report Packet, Town Meeting Time, EMC Report." I wanted to take the opportunity to share the provenance of the material included in that letter and give credit where it is due.

My predecessor, Mr. Leone, sent a very similar cover letter last year. While the material produced in the capacity of a civic office is not the intellectual property of any one person, it's important to acknowledge and credit the hard work of others from which later works are derived.

Thanks for 'countless hours'

It's in that spirit that I want to thank Mr. Leone for the countless hours of work that he put into preparing and refining this material over his several years of distinguished service as town moderator. Mr. Leone's years of contributions as moderator have created a treasure trove of documents and precedents that I've found invaluable in these early weeks of my tenure as moderator. I'm confident that his contributions will continue to live on through derivative works and policies by myself and future Moderators for years to come.

With this year's Town Meeting beginning on Monday, and countless meetings, emails and phone conversations over the past two and a half weeks that I've been on the job, I can confidently say that it would be impossible to be ready in such a short time without the help of an amazing team of individuals in so many different capacities:

the town clerk, town manager, town counsel, public information officer, volunteers working out the technology and logistics of Virtual Town Meeting, IT staff, the Select Board's administrative office, ACMi, committee chairs, and not least of which, my predecessor's years of thoughtful stewardship of Town Meeting that serve as an invaluable blueprint for the job.

While I'm determined to add to the large body of work that Mr. Leone has contributed, the extreme time constraints between the election and the start of Town Meeting necessitate that my contributions at this stage are largely derivative of my predecessor's work. I'm fortunate to have such a skilled and knowledgeable predecessor. And it's with a deep sense of humility and gratitude that I recognize Mr. Leone's inestimable contributions that have so profoundly shaped the role of Town Moderator in Arlington.

Town Meeting information at town website
 

This statement was published Thursday, April 21, 2022.