moved to go we're going to begin weeds are great things let me make one let me make one comment let's try to we're going to have to go late tonight let's see if we can do it in two hours but that's going to require people to be more concise and they have been we can make the point you're making in a more focused concise way and i urge people please to do that otherwise we're going to be here much longer than we wanted mr campbell moved that under the minuteman regional school nine hundred ten thousand one hundred eighty five be raised and appropriated mr gamut you have a  the belmont school rep to two of the minuteman school i'm committing that the probation this year is one hundred fourteen thousand dollars higher than it was last year for reasons driving it first of all the next year is minuteman budget is actually lower than lower than this year or so so if that was the only thing that that i charge what i charge would have dropped by eleven thousand dollars but but the other  the three other things going on is first nonmember revenue is that the consequence to us is to add thirty six thousand dollars there are fewer total students in into the school for next year that adds about thirty thousand dollars and for the more belmont is sending i mean sent two more schools to more students last fall than it did the previous fall and that and that factors into raising our charge by sixty thousand dollars and so in so if you net those four things out it is an increase in in one hundred fourteen thousand dollars note that if we had not had not voted down the the debt within belmont and then and if i we had not voted to leave the minuteman minim district last fall that we would be paying about fifty thousand dollars or more to help to help in the construction of of the new building project just the new building very quickly it is on time on a budget that the groundbreaking is going to happen next week they are looking at having it in service in the fall of two thousand and nineteen which is actually one year faster than we had thought last last a year and with that news that we that minute man has been taken off the credit patient watch out list the enrollment this is this is really where the whole story about whether whether this whether the whether this district succeeds that the long term goal is to get the school filled short term things are holding firm six towns are leaving this summer one of those towns is not sending in any immediate students next fall but the other five towns are going going to send going to send them approximately the same level there and then and then finally just the timeline for boston keep in i mean for timeline for belmont keep in mind that we that the three year clock starts this summer we have so we have two more years as application years as members rising seventh graders and eighth graders will be able to apply as a member and then next fall it sounds like super didn't fit fail and has about one hundred different task force that it's got to create next fall and this is this is one of them to take a look at the option just want to thank the previous reps scally my job is to help minuteman them succeed and that's focusing on the enrollment my job is also to make sure that belmont doesn't get charged for the building building cost while we still a member and i'm there to sort of keep the doors open for belmont just in terms of future things and and i'm here to serve as a as a resource to the belmont school and departments team thank you mr graham and thank you of the warren committee moved g e that under public services thirteen million four hundred sixteen thousand seven hundred fifty nine dollars be raised inappropriate and a discussion h o my apologies moved h that under human services three million two hundred seventeen thousand and one dollars be raised on appropriated discussion all those in favor please say i was opposed no dr d nana mislay mr epstein moved by that under debt and interest on debt four million five hundred fourteen thousand seven hundred sixty three dollars be raised authorization to transfer balances moved the three million eight hundred twenty two thousand for seventy one be transferred from the following available funds to me the portion of the fiscal year two thousand and eighteen operating budget department to offset the tax rate c two million three hundred twenty two thousand eight fifty from an reserve fund balances free cash d ninety thousand from parking meter receipts one hundred seventy thousand one fifty from water revenue for indirect cost f one hundred thirty six thousand three twenty five from sore revenue for indirect cost g hundred twenty five thousand from kaplan domage fun derived from the sale of electricity to private customers municipal departments including the costs of street lighting and from jobbing during the twelve months beginning january first two thousand and seventeen be allocated in appropriated for the operating expenses of the municipal light department including out of state travel all said appropriation of payments to be extended under the direction of the municipal life board and that the town account is here by we have one more citizen petition but this ends the discussion of the budgets tonight i just want to recognize extraordinary good work of the board of selectmen the warrant committee the capital budget committee and the school committee in working together to produce general fund stabilisation moves that the town vote to transfer one million dollars from undeserved fund balance free cash to general stabilization fund let's get a vote here the board of selectmen i don't dash board  couched in the negative so the the motion of the warren committee was for unfavorable action and a vote for unfavorable action received eight votes as opposed to three who were opposed to unfavorable media member preaching three good evening if you'd like to interpret that as an indorsement that's ok i've had i've been i'm told i have five minutes tonight so i'm going to try to be brief and i'll year when you meet you proved to transfer of one point one million dollars from free cash into the stabilization fund as you may recall that money was added to the one point six seven million that had been appropriated in two thousand and fifteen sixteen revenues from the override this year but money again has a large certified free cash balance of over seven million dollars that gives us an opportunity to once again bank some of this money for future use  you know approving this transfer will honor a commitment that was made in two thousand and fifteen to the voters that the override funds would be conserved as carefully as possible so as to push the impact of the override as far into the future as possible like this next slide and in much of this i hope as many of you as possible have read the letter that i sent because it covers a lot of this material so i'll try to go through quickly this slide simply takes a look at  fifty last year and this year in terms of the context in which i'm proposing this a closer look at the numbers that have led to the article show this very similar to the numbers that we had last year free cash this year again resulted from revenues that were higher than had been forecast it and from budgetary turn backs of money that had not been spent and let me just take one second to clarify because it's come up as a question before when i when you look at the calmness as f y sixteen that is twenty fifteen month money that was certified balances very similar last year was seven point six million this year at seven point one the appropriations with one exception are also pretty similar we program appropriated one point seven mil to intreat cash to support the budget this year was two point three last year we put about three hundred sixteen thousand toward the stabilization fund this year that went up to three hundred fifty four thousand the one change is that last year we did appropriate one point four five million in free cash as you recall modules that were installed this year that has not become before and no further modules have come before town meeting yet i'll get to that in a minute just to address it last year you approved overwhelmingly one point one million to go into the fund this year i'm asking for one million in both instances the free cash balance left after all appropriations will be within three to five range three to five percent balance range that the guideline calls for last year was a little over three percent this year it'll be about three and a quarter percent of the f y seventeen budget next life please this slide basically shows you the forecast that was recently prepared  office that covers revenues expenditures for the next five years with seventeen plus right through twenty two the blue bars reppert well white blue the gray bars represent revenues and the magenta bars i  guess represent costs it's important to note that the revenue bars the revenue totals that you see here include the use of reserves they're not pure revenues that come in during the fiscal year they include the application of your serve me free cash and your stabilization fund money in terms of key points i think the major takeaway from this graph is that the the expenditure increases will continue to outpace the revenue growth during these years budgets are predicted to increase at approximately three point eight percent per year based on a compound annual growth rate the comparable growth rate for revenues is only two point six as a result we see as we had to see a balanced budget in two thousand and seventeen the current year and a balanced budget being proposed this year as roy epstein noted on monday we have to balance our budget reserves were used to create that however when you get to next year does a slight decrease there's a slight deficit of about seven hundred thousand dollars it's going up to about four point one million dollars in f y twenty and other people have pointed to that increases all the way up to seven point three in f y twenty two if we look at the bottom line and i mean literally the bottom line to have as much money in reserve as we possibly can and putting the money in the fund will make it more difficult to access it require two thirds vote not a simple majority that's that's actually the purpose of this article at the same time that limitation is not absolute if someone can make the case that that money is needed for another purpose and i can't be funded in any other way i'm sure that they'll receive funding approval by this body lastly just to let you know if you approve this measure today will have about four million dollars in the stabilization fund i think the sort of high balance for just the opportunity to do that i think the forecast that you just saw makes a critically important to do that just as important once again will be honoring a promise made to voters next year and he said you know we're not really sure we're going to do it but there's no real plan in the books right now in terms of how we'll deal with that this is a plan it's not a perfect plan it's not even there it's not even a sufficient plan it's unlikely to completely even if we continue to put this money aside that will have a mug enough to completely close that fiscal twenty budget however i think it is a necessary step in pursuing that plan last year you approve this article by what was a pretty overwhelming margin i hope you will do the same good evening adam dash board of selectmen town meeting member large i was one of the two votes unfavorable on article twenty six i just wanted to explain why the difference for those of you who are new to town meeting we have money in reserve we have free cash which takes fifty percent of you to release we have stabilization funds which take two thirds of you to release so what this is seeking to do is take this money and take it from the free cash to the stabilization fund mr sarno had a similar article last year which i supported and i thought that i made the analogy of taking the cookie jar and putting it on the higher shelf at that time to make the money harder to get to and at the time and under those circumstances i thought that was the right move i don't think we're in those times now i think we having this fall town meeting coming up we're going to be dealing with the need for modulars at an elementary school we don't know which school we don't know how much that will be and we don't know at this point what our free cash will be certified as because that's not till the summer what i would suggest is that we vote this down and revisit this when we come back in the fall and we have that information because i want to keep our flexibility i've sort of looked at this that i wouldn't take my money and put it in a two year certificate of deposit if i know i'm going to buy a car  six months and we know we're going to be getting modulars so i don't really see why we would squirrel away money and make it harder to get to when we know we're going to need it i know when we brought this up at the board of selectmen the mr sarno said well i don't want you to buy the car with cash i want you to finance it which may be what we end up doing with the modulars in the fall we may decide to bond us and not use the stabilization money or the free cash and then there's all this argument we're having now will just be moot but i want to have the flexibility based upon what we're doing at the time to maybe do that if that's what we choose to do so i would say that in the other point i want to raise is that because it's not in the slide is that we initially with the policeman every budget we're looking to take one million dollars out the stabilization fund towards this budget and we didn't instead the budget changed and all of that money came out of free cash so what we did is while we didn't put a million dollars into the stabilization fund as this article calls for we also didn't take a million dollars out so in a way the balance is we kind of did put a million dollars in there in the negative by just simply not taking it out in the first place so i would say i would keep our flexibility see where we are in the fall and vote no on article twenty for capital expenditures this is been a consistent view of mind since i was elected to town meeting in two thousand and fifteen i tear bob's efforts on last year and i also cheer his efforts this year i think that in fact the his activism on this has resulted in as adam said in a change in plans from taking nine hundred ninety seven thousand dollars out of the stabilisation plan and leaving that money in the stabilisation plan what i'm concerned about are the stabilization fund what i'm concerned about now as bob points out we're talking about two thousand and sixteen free cash not two thousand and seventeen which we don't know about but we do know about two thousand and sixteen and if we put this million dollars in the stabilization fund it's harder to get to town meeting still has a decision to make and i think it's a better use of the funds rather than having it in majority issue where it couldn't fact in the being used in part for capital expenditure purchases well and i support this in spirit i absolutely do i think it's imperative by this fall that we have four million plus if we can in the general staff and to get us through as you saw fiscal twenty i just don't support the timing  the special education fund that we just established so for me it's a time i support the spirit because i do it's imperative laysan gentleman that we fund the general stabilization fund at least the level of four million based on the deficit we're faced with in twenty forward cabin town trade europe and i support the stabilization fund but timing is what we're talking about is a delay of four months there are some of the issues we have in the table i mean for that well we have a million three in what we call a parking lot money sale it cushing village that can only be used for capital projects it does not fault free cash that's a million three we had the good fortunes of being able to have the client that have similar rate of site deed in over the town that's great but the clock is dial moving we must remediate that just lingering out there that's another decision they've got to be made probably we might be bonding with and some of it in full disclosure we have roughly four main three in reserves set aside for that just about two weeks ago i was planning on four hundred thousand dollars of free cash from our reserve fund that the work committee watches we ended up transferring three hundred twenty two thousand dollars of that reserve fund to the d p w to cover the snow removal so we're going to have seventy eight thousand i heard dave rogers and we'll brownsburg are talking about the budget now i'm kind of a conservative guy show me the money let me see it right now what i've heard from our state rep in a senate that promises the budget has not been finalized community imperative now if you go back and look at some of our moving rate moody rating agency press releases this was what they say about the town of belmont stable financial operation and stable fiscal management the potential credit challenges are decreasing fine balances and increasing the debt burden our debt capacity is two hundred fifty million dollars currently we have about eighty million dollars of that capacity i don't have to go into the cost of the schools a library a d p w facility or  a police station we're going to be straining ourselves what i have suggested is let's wait for months let's get a sense of what some of the items we're going to have to address and it might be in it it might be bonnie it might be a combination of free cash but i don't want to add any more of a debt burden that we already have and waiting the four months i think is is very prudent from my perspective i try to be very conservative very careful i want to make decisions based on the best information i have available the best information i will have available from a free cash perspective is october first when it gets certified by the department of revenue thank you vote to me it seems very simple as bob's slide showed after we took the vote last year we had a three percent free cash reserve when we take the vote this year is still every assuming we pass this will have three and a quarter percent regardless of whether we vote yes or no on this article tonight to spend money beyond what we're proving in the budget which is what all this conversation about trailers and whatever is requires us to come back or requires the town to come back to town meeting for approval part of the seven million dollars that we have in free cash now is the result of that override and i think it's reasonable for us a true on that promise that we made to the voters that we would use the override dollars as carefully as possible and simply hold ourself to a standard of  fifty percent a sixty seven percent approval for that spending when it comes before us in the fall rather than a fifty percent approval or fifty one percent approval heck we just gaveled through  hundred ten million dollar budget unanimously tonight and a capital budget unanimously as i recall on monday i have complete confidence that this body will approve whatever that necessary spending is come the fall by a two thirds vote and i don't think it's asking us a lot and i think it signals an important message to the voters if we hold ourselves to a slightly higher standard of approval for any out of budget spending that we may want to vote on in the fall thank you for a movie jeff jeff levine precinct seven and a member of the war committee i was one of the members to vote in favor of this and in the interest of time most of my points have been made but i really think it's a signal to the voters and to the financial institutions that we are committed to trying to meet our obligations on a cash basis as far as possible with this current override and i think it is in the best interest to continue that signal by approving this appropriation thanks mr gammell jim jam old town meeting member precinct two i will vote yes my hope is that a yes vote will motivate the board of selectmen as they prepare a comprehensive plan not a piecemeal plain raising the bar to a two thirds vote will encourage a plan with broad scope and broad support mr mercier i move to table was article the motion to table it takes a second i was and i don't know if there is a second and it's not it's not debatable essential emotion to table will be to is another form of voting no many times why can't why can't this be put on the table and it will be picked up again in the fall so the effect of that essentially to indefinitely postpone it because we end the tonight we end the annual meeting of town meeting so that is in essence debatable the motions on the tape is now to indefinitely postponed so that's open for discussion that's no second i give you permission to withdraw your motion thank you michael and michael mcnamara town meeting member precinct seven i remember when i was a little kid i would go to one of the local sort of churches and all modern there was  stack waste some of your reserves here because they'll be seven years of horrible famine or horrible instability a basic should save what you have in order to pay down the lean years and i sort of think of that thing out with this i think that we should try to save that money and try to make it harder to get access to with the idea being that long term we're going to come against a horrible truck and we should really preserve it that way we can preserve other things we care about the education budget and four as i listen to the warren committee closely discuss this over two nights in the port of selectmen over three as i am charged to do there was there were different perspectives on the modular units and how they should be funded there were different perspectives on potential capital needs that might arise and how those should be funded but one place that there was absolutely no bearing of opinions was that we are facing a fiscal short fall in a few years it is a major cliff it is there and it is looming so because of that i think it is actually is prudent and honors the promises of the override to put this money aside it is there if we need it but i think given what's coming down the road that this actually does make sense thank you mr sullivan that's all been precincts move the question question has moved to terminate debate it's our second all those in favor please say i was opposed no the motion is adopted we now will vote on mr now turn to the retirement board articles which will conclude down meeting mr williams moved that the town vote to approve the decision of the belmont contributed tory retirement board pursuant to mass general chapter thirty two section one of three j and then we'll discuss them in the order of twenty nineteen twenty one and twenty two so the vote of the board of selectmen on article twenty believing members of the town meeting my name is tom gibson and i've been a member of the belmont retirement board since one nine hundred ninety eight it's been several decades since we've been here before the meeting seeking approval of various local options so we may be a little bit rusty in the presentation so please forgive me if it's a little bumpy last time we're here we have the overhead projectors we were sliding papers in and out so after deferring the local option requests for several years this year the board believes it is appropriate to seek the town meetings approval of three local options which impact retirees of the belmont retirement system in the families and one which would increase the state been paid to board members which i will address separately so some facts about the retirement board that you should know about and i'll have to just step over here for one second so this is a defined benefit plan that is a cooperated in chapter is our other member unit of our retirement system in developing funding schedules and making other decisions regarding the valuation of the of the system there are five members that are  on the board which will be on the next slide that number has since been extended following the financial debacle of two thousand and eight to twenty forty we have funding schedule right now that we've just recently extended with the assistance and helping of the deliberation with the board of selectmen to twenty twenty nine that is when the unfunded liability for the town of belmont retirement system is currently planned to be paid off and part of the changes to the pension a lot recently enacted by the legislature was a fundamental change benefit structure for members entering the retirement system after it was second two thousand and twelve in basic terms those members have to work longer for less money the increase the normally age the reduce the early retirement benefit that someone could get by retiring prior to their normal age of retirement and now it was all projected to save commonwealth wide between five and six billion dollars so we hope that some of that will be seeing seen in the next valuation that we do from the more retirement system and will help offset some of the costs of the local options which we are ex official member we have two members elected by the member retired and active members of the system as walter wellman a retired firefighter and ross vonna who is a newly elected member replacing a r four of them appoint me and i can't be an employee of the town or official of the town and that is the statutory qualifications so let's go to the next slide if we can please there's a lot of complicated math associated with pensions but some of the basics are quite simple pension funds get their money from three sources employer contributions employee econ tribute and investment returns while the employer contributions are sometimes restructured as we did last year employee contributions cannot be delayed or restructured and massachusetts has some of the highest employee contribution rates in the country currently nine percent of their earnings plus an additional two percent of salary over thirty thousand dollars so as you can see from a slightly higher me the majority of our assets come from our investment returns and you can see the employee contributions and the employer contribution that makes up the corpus of the funds public pension funds income for massachusetts from one nine hundred ninety three to two thousand and  gross was eight point nine percent and eight point three percent net we have ninety four million dollars market value of our assets as of march thirty first and over the past ten years which includes the meltdown of two thousand  don't retirement system is up performed the pension reserve investment management board by two hundred basis points seven point one percent to five point one percent are some great even thank you thank you are assume great investment returns seven point five percent it's been recently reduced and with the new valuation we haven't officially operated expense budget of two hundred sixty thousand dollars with two thousand and seventeen and our investment costs are about sixty basis points our initial payroll for retiree benefits is ten million dollars or about eight hundred fifty thousand dollars monthly so those are little of the facts that you should be   the towns approval off and the cola base currently is twelve thousand dollars it's three percent of the first twelve thousand dollars of benefits or thirty dollars a month we are seeking to increase that based  fifty dollars now the rationale behind this him here's some more facts that will hopefully guide the members here tonight in their decision making the most public workers the not participate in social security and most workers rely on their belmont retirement benefit for income and whatever so security benefits the retiree may qualify for either through their own earnings from a private sector or from a spouse's earnings are subject to mandatory offset and reduction the median annual benefit received by our three hundred thirty nine retirees in beneficiaries is twenty five thousand six hundred dollars the average annual benefit is approximately thirty thousand dollars twenty percent of those retirees and beneficiaries received less than twelve thousand dollars a year twenty five percent receive less than the proposed cola increase base of fourteen thousand and forty percent receive less than twenty thousand dollars per year in retirement benefits indeed thirty percent of belmont's retirees receive an annual benefit which is blow the two thousand and seventeen federal poverty guidelines for a family of two which is sixteen thousand two hundred forty dollars more over whether enrolled in medicare or not our retirees are facing increased costs for health insurance co pays deductibles and prescriptions some here tonight i know are well aware of this either from personal experience or from an aging parent or relative as they indicated they don't want we don't want retiree health insurance contribution rates are projected to increase by nine percent for fiscal year two thousand and eighteen while all of our families are impacted by the rising costs of health care it is our older retirees who are especially crushed by the cost of medical services and prescription a modest increase proposed would help to mitigate that b once public work is a consistently lot of it is being among the best in the commonwealth i heard some of that tonight sitting through the presentations earlier and they are credited with substantially contributing to belmont's reputation as a desirable community which will live and raise a family i am proud to reside in belmont for forty years and my family is grateful they haven't received excellent public services provided by a police fire school light water public and from dull months governmental administration professionals we have supported every override and debt exclusion over that time because it was the right thing to do for the good of the community as a whole in our community includes our public perspective paying off our pension obligation is a key issue for in two years as liaison from the board of selectmen to the retirement board i've learned a lot first thing is that the retirement board is a dedicated group of individuals who take their work as fiduciary for town employees and retirees seriously secondly in this regard secondly the retirement board asset management performance which tom  is consistently above average with your over your performance in the upper deciles of management performance nation only they pay a lot of attention to getting the best return feasible net of fees and the town is well served in this regard they also have personal relationships with retirees and employees and they have our retirement programs are managed are important to the current  prospective employees in this regard our town is well served also finally they have the final responsibility and authority for determining the funding schedule in the town should be appreciative of their willingness to extend the payment schedule as we were able to do in two thousand and sixteen which reduced the cash call on on the operating budget from the years twenty twenty to twenty twenty seven by some fifteen million dollars with regard to the proposal that we're talking about now which is the most important one and has the largest impact on  the retirement liability i do i think we have to come up a step to understand how how it's affecting what we do and the other things we talked about tonight in two thousand and five we approve the warrant committee pension work the warrant committee pensions subcommittee which investigated the pension liability and the main takeaway from that was that the payment program main takeaway from that almost two years later has been that we've hired an expert in the field to give us advice in the fall as to how to manage that liability finally we've also restructured the funding schedule in two thousand and sixteen with the cooperation of the board because they have the final authority to say yes or no on restructuring and it reduced the growth of the payment schedule from seven percent to four point five percent which has given us relief in the years twenty twenty through twenty twenty seven as we desperately need as you saw on presentation so they are not coming to us tonight with their hat in hand this is a group of professional asset managers they consistently perform in the top quartile while last year's performance was eight point nine percent versus a seven point five percent projection in their wisdom they have looked at the retirement programs for the retirees in the situations that  described and they're asking us as employers to think about the people who work for the town and to think about the people who are retired and to make these adjustments many of which that one point seven million dollars to our unfunded liability and that really concerned me this was a close call for me ladies and gentlemen because of the amount here and i greatly respect all over employees and certainly our retirees i mean in terms of the dollars that they earn and you heard about the pensions it is very low but we really have a challenge in future years to fund this unfunded liability and i hope they were able to meet the deadline we've now established a twenty twenty nine we certainly have a statutory obligation to fund my twenty forty and  another million seven for me was really a difficult choice so the if i voted against this thank you mr da adam dash board of selectmen a town meeting member at large i also wanted to explain my vote against this as well as a twenty one and twenty two which are coming up later of a much smaller scale i'm not happy about having to do so  but i just simply can't get there after going through all of this we have a large unfunded pension liabilities you all know we have to pay it by two thousand and twenty nine as you well know and that's a big climb for us pressure as we get closer to twenty twenty nine the amount of money that we have to put out of our budget into it is going to be larger why we would i don't really see i cannot get to the point where we dig that hole deeper voluntarily and we just simply don't have the money it's a matter of just priorities and it's a tough one i agree with them is to pull oh it's a tough call and i think about you know but for the change in the law to allow us to do this and twenty and the other two articles would this be something on our top ten list of funding priorities i would say no i would say it's not even on the list at all to be honest with you when you've heard for the last several days all of the things that we need to fund we have a lot of needs we have a finite pool of money this and as mr bush said this is two hundred thirty five thousand dollars a year and one point seven million dollars added on to our unfunded pension liability to put it in perspective the other night you heard that our entire whole capital budget for non roads is one point three million dollars this two hundred thirty five thousand dollars per year on here is almost as much as the capital procreation of two hundred seventy for all of public safety that we voted the other night two hundred thirty five thousand dollars is like an ambulance almost i mean it's  small money that we're talking about and i understand i feel bad because i do feel like we are we should be responsible employers to our employees and i do respect their retirement board their job is to look out for the retirees because they don't get to stand up here and  these arguments and that i respect them bringing it up i'm glad they brought these articles up so we can actually discuss it and vote on them i also and it's also why i support article nineteen about raising their stipends they do do a good job and they were very helpful about extending our funding schedule to two thousand and twenty nine to free up the budget but i just i just can't see this is a high spending priority at this time and i think if we're serious about saving override funds as we were at the last article if we're serious about funding the pension point we have a meeting all of our legal obligations without passing this i have never sat through a town meeting in which is because i'm so poignant is just not enough money to do all the things we want to do and adams actually right it's always a balancing act i'm moving its balance and we're talking about taking money from one group of people taxpayers and giving it to another group who are employees  know their pension plan is going to be restructured and they're not going to get the benefit the full benefits of what they thought they were going to get there's no guarantee for our existing people with a seventy five million dollars liability facing us that we won't have to go through a similar thing advantage of some of these in these proposals were there other local options under the two thousand and eleven act that you did not adopt or you're not proposing adopting mr gibson did you hear the question distracted did not hear the question starters repeat the question crystal precinct one it looked like these are some options that were local options under the two thousand and eleven act i'm wondering if you could describe if three separate legislative acts but the cole increase was the missile relief act of two thousand and ten that was that was passed there are a number of local options that are wrong the table the board chose not to bring some of them  meeting one would increase the minimum retirement allowance to for any retiree who had twenty five years of credible service up to fifteen thousand dollars so that was a across the board increase  for anyone based on your credible service and not based on what their earnings were while they were working the board chose not to bring that forward another one would be the local option that would allow union representatives pertaining to the i know there's one here about the increase in the compensation or the for lack of a better word but were there any other local options pertaining to the governance and operations of jacqui's precinct one i think we all understand that we have a big unfunded liability here that needs to be addressed i agree with the analysis that the board selectman mo committee at may however i come out in a different place i think there are certainly ways for us to address that pension fund liability i don't think we can afford to have somebody start to work at age twenty five work to fifty five for thirty years and then get thirty years of retirement benefits before they pass away here however using those kind of median averaged pension fund benefits our average or median pension fund holder is getting about twenty eight thousand dollars a year the entire if we increase the cola here and they maximum is given that represents a one and a half percent cost of living increase for somebody who is living on twenty eight thousand dollars i do think that we have a responsibility to the people who worked for our town who retired with that pension as their source of income in their retirement and although i recognize that the present value of the increase of the pension cola here might increase our aggregate liability by two percent i would argue that there are other alternative ways for us to fill that two percent gap rather than asking somebody who's living on twenty eight thousand dollars not to get a one and a half percent cost of living increase alison precinct five mr gibson would you just repeat again i think i heard you tell us the percentage of retirees living under the poverty line what was that just and so the two thousand and seventeen federal poverty guidelines for a family of two is sixteen thousand two hundred and forty dollars and for a family of one it's twelve thousand and sixty dollars those are the federal poverty guidelines out of our three hundred thirty nine retirees the beneficiaries twenty percent are receiving less than twenty twelve thousand dollars and twenty five percent receive less than fourteen thousand dollars but that means that even if the three percent fourteen thousand is approved they won't see the full full increase on the every time the allowances so in we have so thirty percent of our retirees receiving end you'll benefit which is below the two thousand seventeen federal poverty guideline for family   are we voting on a constant three percent per year for the next five years the three percent every year the granting of a kohler his discretionary with the retirement board we're just setting the maximum benefit that can be granted and what is it been granted in say the last five years it's been three percent of twelve thousand dollars every single year every single year so when i'm looking online at the code it's twenty eleven twenty twelve one point seven twenty thirteen one point five twenty fourteen one point seven twenty fifteen zero and twenty sixteen point three so adopt that cost of living increase but then can go up to three percent of the first twelve thousand dollars in addition to whatever so security is going into several years so security has been in excess of three percent in most recently it's been less than three percent ok retirement money is funded by the commonwealth so we're talking about all employees excluding teachers who belong to the teachers retirement system and if they do the teachers cola max it fourteen thousand or is it a different amount and if it is a different amount could you explain why this was set at a higher now so the teachers and state employee retirees were granted a costly increase to thirteen thousand dollars by statute which became effective in two thousand and twelve they've been receiving that benefit for the last five years we looked at that and we looked at what other been granted by other municipal retirement systems in it's instructive right now that out of the three hundred fifty one cities and towns in massachusetts the retirees in three hundred thirteen of those cities and towns ha let me just recap a little bit the reasoning of the warrant committee on this issue and there are couple of different topics one is this is a local option this is not a requirement but it's an option there are plenty of towns in the immediate vicinity of belmont who are on the list of copper balls that were discussed in the in the education report as comparable pounds that did not adopt this local option and they're at the level that  they're remaining there this proposal if adopted would require an additional two hundred thirty five thousand dollars for fiscal nineteen you saw the graphs before that we're going to have we already have a budget shortfall fiscal nineteen this will increase it by two hundred thirty five thousand dollars for sure and there's been no discussion of how that's going to be covered it will have to be at the expense of something else and i would submit as adam dash suggested that the it's going to come at the expense of things that are higher priority and i say that not to denigrate the retirees but  the retirement board which is independent of town government is advocating and their job is to advocate for the retirees that warrant to be to itself is advocating for the town as a whole and approached it in th light in the discussion and just one other observation is that while it may be that the actual pensions paid  to various retirees are below poverty levels or near poverty levels we actually have no information on the actual household incomes of these retirees we know that many town employees retire and take other jobs and have other sources of income so we actually don't know what their household income is a statement about what their town pension is really doesn't tell us anything about whether the living in poverty or not so i hope you wouldn't base a decision on that kind of suggestion that the facts that we do know are that plenty of other well run towns are staying at twelve thousand dollars and this is going to require a significant additional outlay to respective of whether the punch whether the pension was fully funded or not this is an additional two hundred thirty five thousand dollars which i would submit we actually don't have for fiscal nineteen and all the sir the figures that he has given us are so compelling it seems to me that there's no real doubt as to the need for providing this small increase in the increase but not talking about a huge amount of money we're talking about sixty dollars per year increase and at the same time it's been indicated that the premiums for health insurance and co pays and so forth is going up so we have a real financial difficulty for our town employees the the fact is that other towns comparable to belmont dedham it's gone to fourteen thousand malden fourteen thousand needham to fourteen thousand built into fifteen selections the majority of the selections indication is that and the warrant committee is that there is a big pending liability but i think that on the employees side that they have made and the legislature has made very important changes number one the are stricter eligibility requirements now for pensions and secondly new employees as i understand it the percent that they contribute to go towards the pensions is going to respond and probably fill the cost of this pending liability so on the employee side these important changes have been done so my sense is let's summer barger context that town has two major categories of obligations to the pension and then there's what's referred to as other post employment benefits which covers health care the in rough numbers i believe the size of the pension obligation is on the order of one hundred fifty million dollars the size of the obligation is assessed every two years by an actuary it's influenced by health care inflation it's a complicated calculation it can bounce around it's bend is high it's one hundred ninety five million i don't know what the latest value is each year we make a trifling contribution to opeth at the recommendation of the treasurer because the rating agencies look favorably on that but it is mr gibson explained the reason  obligations to retirees is on the order of three hundred fifty million dollars there's one hundred fifty that we're talking about now and that we pay attention to because governed by state law there's and the failure of the town or the town meeting to appropriate money to pay that means that the retirement board would order the assessor's office to put it on the next tax bill for all the taxpayers in the town twenty twenty nine excuse me thank you is move from twenty twenty seven twenty twenty nine and these these numbers will be incorporated and added to the funding schedule ok so the six point one seven percent for the next two years is going to go up and then the fo those numbers are those numbers a locked in those numbers a locked in they're not going to go up at least for the next two years it's after we do the one hundred eighteen valuation and we think the snapshot in time of our assets and liabilities and then we review the funding schedule that at that particular time method in the valuation so we can actually have access to some of those monies to help defer any additional cost that we may have ok so voting for this doesn't preclude you guys for when you look at twenty eight to revaluate things i'm sorry y apologize so i'm having trouble understanding the estimated cost of two hundred thirty five thousand dollars if the additional cost is sixty dollars not every  the maximum so some retirees a substantial amount would not receive the full amount of the of the percentage cola so four hundred  s says that increasing the base to fourteen thousand would result in four hundred twenty dollars per year so in year while it would be four hundred twenty in the year two it would be eight hundred forty in year three it would be whatever that's correct which also means that when we go down to the bottom line the additional cost of fiscal year two thousand and night keen will be two hundred thirty five thousand one hundred  fifty but the additional cost to fiscal year twenty twenty would be something more than two hundred thirty five one hundred fifty and would it be fair to say that it would it would double are going to get this increase but also people in active currently active employees when they retire going to get this increase so we calculate that increase going forward someone look at that forty years from now and we take that value then we take the present value of it now the present value of all those increases as of now is the one point seven million but my question i think is relative if i may mr moderator yes because i think she was answer a out of belmont's budget is two hundred thirty five thousand one hundred fifty dollars in fiscal year two thousand in fiscal year two thousand and twenty the additional amount of money that town meeting is going to have to take out of our budget will be something more than two hundred thirty five thousand it will be approximately two hundred thirty five thousand times more and a half per cent not time still what we did if we took the cost a total cost of the increase is one point seven million in polls are open vote yes if you oppose the motion vote no we show the result sixty nine in favor one twenty six oppose the motion is defeated article nineteen mr  williams jim williams selectman town meeting chairman of the board of selectmen inter meeting member a large article nineteen authorization to increase retirement board stipend to see if the town will vote to accept the provisions of section twenty six message uses general laws chapter thirty two is amended by section thirty four of chapter one seventy six of the acts of two thousand and eleven so as to provide an increase to the stipend available to members of the belmont contributory retirement board to not more than four thousand five hundred per year or in any way or in any way act their o complete mandatory education and training they must file annual statements of financial interests with power rack and they must acknowledge compliance with conflicts of interest the public employee time laws penalties for noncompliance a substantial so in recognition of the increased responsibilities accountability is a retired board members the legislation vital local option which increases that can to be paid an amount not less than three thousand dollars and one five hundred dollars per year now some to least favorite local option that we have more much more passion about the others but we felt nevertheless that this was appropriate to bring to tell me thank you thank you was there discussion tommy member a large i did and then my colleagues also supported this article nineteen as we talked about the other night the amounts of money that the charm of board and other officials in this town get is quite low compared to the monthly amount of time that's put in they've done a very good job despite maybe differences on these other articles that i may have with them i applaud them for bringing them forward they're doing their job advocating for the retirees as they should they had a good rate of return and i think that this is short money and i think it's a good show committee and so does the other sixty six committees in this town which are not being paid anyway and so does our selectmen that a war fully underpaid for what they do this these people m once a month for about three hours they have a staff i think they said they had a budget of two hundred sixty thousand dollars and that was a survey taken of twenty towns that we compare ourselves with and time doesn't mean to go through them all with employees and they want a fifty percent raise respectfully it's not that they're not doing the job they do inconsistent with the volunteer service everybody else around here is putting in and i guess that the people down thank you sue bass precinct three and i'm here to read a statement from jim sloman who's a professional investor who for the past six years has been the board of  belmont retirement board and i'll hand you this statement so you don't have to type it all jim said i have served as the selectmen supported representative to the belmont retirement board since twenty eleven having served on a pro bono basis not in fact collecting these three thousand dollars and its february meeting the retirement board voted to raise their stipend from three thousand to forty five hundred per  i voted against the motion my primary reason opposing this is the fact that the belmont retirement pension is only approximately fifty three percent funded which suggests to me that the retirees every dollar available working for them all the fun spent administering reimbursing for conferences and paying stipends take away from funds that potentially can earn returns to lessen the watertown beverly waltham arlington concord to name a few have no stipend only one of the five communities that pay forty five hundred per annum has a similar deficit the others being in better financial condition to paraphrase select means dashes remarks at the may eighteenth retirement board in the may twenty second selections meetings this is not an issue whose heel i need to die on but the optics are bad jim said i agree and while it's a small amount belmont retirees are better served with those monies working for them jim unfortunately could not be here tonight he's traveling but he did want me to read the state for him thank you yes ma'am mr gibbs is the moderator i would just like to refresh the tommy members recollection and refer to the board minutes from february twenty fourth two thousand and seventeen in which the vote to increase the cola base was in fact passed unanimously including the vote of mr sloan so it's a little bit disheartening to hear how concerned he is about containing costs for the retirees and continuing education requirements that we do generally out of our own pockets and the investment returns just to reemphasize every dollar that's paid to the retirement board is a dollar less that's available for the retirees and when so many of our peer communities actually have a zero stipend i think that says that plenty of retirement boards operate very well with zero stipend and we just in the more committees saw a no compelling argument to raise to raise the stipend to forty five hundred in the absence of a compelling argument in the current financial climate we just could not support research the author is gregory sullivan sir for ten years as inspector general of massachusetts he's highly credible the second report is one issued by the massachusetts pension reserves investment management board or for briefly  each of them this relates to the two shared responsibilities of the belmont retirement board so the massachusetts state employment retirement system spends approximately sixty dollars per member per year on administrative costs the average local expenditures one hundred eighty dollars per member per year which is three times higher belmont exceeds that our highest year was two hundred forty nine dollars we exceeded two hundred dollars per member in six of six years examined by play near pioneer looked at over one hundred local and regional pension plans and it is not a compliment to be included in their figures that's bigger thirteen were listed as being excessively expensive in terms of our management costs belmont also runs a play something you're seventeen which lists the local retirement systems with the highest investment expense ratios in contrast the massachusetts pension reserves investment management prim charges record low investment fees it gets as lower costs as lower risk has outstanding returns and we do have the option to join this so how is produce sherry's to justify remaining a small separate retirement board as opposed to joining the state run fun thank you but i would point out to the response that to that report that was sent by the public employee time ministration commission which which pointed out by its own admission that report that's based on limited and incomplete data mr sullivan and to miss that attack as an off pointing out the flaws in that report and saying that perspective was thoroughly skewed in its presentation and was not representative of the facts including the deadlock at precinct seven first question is about how many hours would you say that you put into your position or in the board including tonight ok sure   but on a day to day basis there are many of operational reviews that we do we have provided our documents our investment reports have to be reviewed so there is time you know it's not a full time job by any means but it is an important job and it's one that we do well and i and i do think it's an important job and i'm sure that you're working really hard and i'm sure you're doing a great job and i would like to maybe echo what i think i just heard quote is the optics really aren't great for us to vote down a cost of living increase for retirees who are in some percentage i don't remember all the percentages that i was hearing but some are at a the proverb the line thank you very much and then to then allow for increased to a board who has elected to spend that time having spent hundreds and hundreds of hours and volunteer positions i would say that that is your that is a great gift that you give and i would vote this down mr mr thayer  please display the final vote plenty two in favor one sixty four posed the motion is defeated we have to do to article twenty one and then twenty two these are smaller items article twenty one mis one is authorization to increase the minimum allowed payable to survivors of members of the belmont retirement system moved at the town vote to accept the provisions of section twelve t d of the massachusetts general laws chapter thirty two as amended by sections twenty nine and thirty of chapter one seventy six of the acts of two thousand and eleven an act providing for pension reform and benefit modernization so as not so as to provide an increase to the monthly minimum allowance payable to survivors of members of the belmont retirement system who die belmont retirement board so this is a benefit increase that would impact for spouses in our surviving spouses that are in our retirement system and it it's a bent minimum benefit  thousand dollars a year or five hundred dollars a month the estimated this will cost to the fiscal two thousand and procreation would be thirteen thousand eight hundred and five dols is there discussion tommy member at large as i was the one no vote on the board of selectmen just wanted to explain this one is a small money compared to the cola however in my mind it's the same principle about digging the hole deeper because this is again this is thirteen thousand one hundred  five dollars per year which on our capital budget was what we we only allocated twelve thousand for fire squad one replacement and twelve thousand five hundred for the police net clock system in their number of things we spend this money on  one thing that we talk about how we spent fifty years giving people pensions and not putting money aside for these articles of the twenty one and twenty two to a lesser extent but they still are us putting money towards a pension that we don't have any way to cover so i think we need to keep that in mind i mean that's that was my mind on the call of oh these two are the same thing albeit the numbers are smaller my opposition to these two is really on the principle that i previously articulated for article twenty mr plo increase on the viability of eighty five thousand as estimated by siegel which is less than one tenth of one percent of the liability so again minimal amounts and this is to the situation currently there are four people that would be affected by this is the death of of  the spouse or benefits of a member who has died now and as a result of their work this is just a death that occurred while they're employed there be other insurance there are other benefits that kick in if it was an accidental death due to the employment this is  minimum so we're setting a floor here and the benefits are actually calculated pending on time in your service of the benefits could be a lot higher based on the rules that are in place so again i feel that there's a unique situation here is there potential for other people to be able to collect this in the future yes but i'd look at that as a relatively low risk i said are there other benefits that people can get here in the if they do have children under the age of i believe it's twenty twenty two there's additional monies that they're already going to get but that's if there's children under age so again i would vote f to reach a burger precinct to i also stand in favor of this article as many of you know people do die young while they are employed as my husband did this is a very small amount of money and a small number of people but if we can support somebody who may have lost their breadwinner in their household i think we should support them any further discussion saying let's do this with electronically as well go to a vote of selectmen town meeting member large article twenty two authorization to adjust spousal benefits for surviving spouses of retirees see if the town will vote to accept provisions of mass general law chapter thirty two section one hundred one third paragraph so as to provide an increase in the annual allowance payable to certain the surviving spouses benefit twelve thousand dollars right now we have three survivors currently collecting this benefit and there's a potential pool of twenty living disability retirees who retired for disability of a very substantial fraction of them did not take up this option and the ones that did exercise the option twelve thousand is not written in stone that was in one thousand dollar option that a number of towns took actually on very small number of towns in the immediate peer group went to twelve with and the effect on the annual cost is proportional remember this is twenty one thousand dollars per year in the first year and it will increase and in terms of what's a comparison well of course if you compare twenty one thousand dollars to one hundred ten million it looks like a tiny amount but i stood up a couple of years ago to say it was a shame belmont did not have a tree planting budget that year when the treat planting budget was ten thousand dollars you can actually put that money to all sorts of alternative uses and in the judgment of the warren committee at least in the majority of the work committee this was not the highest values further discussion in liability from this would be one hundred eighty three thousand and that just so i understand that is based on three although the pool is nineteen and if half of those  people who are eligible have their spouse live then the that number could really be if i do the math right it's three or four times as large as the number in your actual ea