december so there were three sets just make sure we clean those up and then we can go to the overview of the q two financial for the schools and then have a discussion of the annual town meeting articles in the special town meeting articles that apply to the war in committee and decide whether we want how much in depth we want to discussions evening i think emory mahoney will be here to talk about the special time leading article about the additional funds for the police station project and then we will return to the town clock on the c b c project and have a discussion there and then go through our normal reports and see how we are making progress on the committee report and so i would just like to especially knowledge john marshall is here to thank you just in ten minutes rate or so thank you very much for joining is here as well who thought he was going to stay in the game last week as a thank you for being here and also susan burgess cox is joining us from the school committee the chair of the school committee just to go over the queue to financials with us so st off if we could we can just get these minutes out of the way we've all had a chance to look at them and we had one set from december the th one from the th and one from the th so i don't know if anyone has any if you want to say a few words it's just a brief we are right now looking at a positive balance of seventy one thousand dollars this is a result of savings and salaries  positive balances and fringe benefits special education and that we're breaking even in things such as school based and district wide instructional support special education services and special education transportation so we did have some questions i don't know if you want me to or over those are short as i said the st point is to positive overall yes yes that bottom line is very good as you add to the end of the year so i'm sure if you want to go through a couple and a couple questions about what has to wonder susan i think jack did as well those of us who are more familiar with the education all right i'll go through the easy ones that were given today that there was an increase in special education staff study a projection for a positive balance in q two and this the line refers to outside contractors  and that provide services to students so the positive balance is due to a change in services the contractual services for the substitute teachers there's projected costs are to be over the budget for the year some of that has to do with the quarter that we're in here as well as it being what what the budget was based on was an average and then this year there's going to be a of what's included there and then there was a question about the china or valving accounts the balance and that had to do just with the timing of the revenues and expenses which i talked about as well so i think to the revolving accounts in general that there are questions about that and it's just has to do with then that's going to be the revolving accounts the balance a little more stable than they are right now and i think the only other question i have to look at this memo was to see that he was anticipating had a appoint floor below director is that happening this year or is that so what was added to share it was time for a staff person to serve in a role that's not a director but the sort of assisting the director and what's going to be put forward for  fight twenty is a full time person so it's really a point six that it's ok to point out that's going to be there and it's going to be a whole individual versus this person who's now them well thank you as i said the bottom line is that there is a positive balance projected there was projected at this point to time to end the year which is great and the same things as i don't know be in touch with you or tony to see when the q three numbers might be ready and if over the segment k articles at the annual town meeting and seems as though there are two articles that are right now it says the work in many parts to vote is to vote on one of those has to do with choose not to go my recommendation we got to go with what is not waste of our limited political capital where i don't think we have anything withdrawn it was a timing issue as to why it came in as a citizens petition as we were meeting in time to deal with it and so they put it in to make sure that it got on and then we have since found our own article so now there are articles going forward of the citizens will pull the certainly not part of the budget argument and discussion as to whether or not one supports that article or not so i just don't think it's an issue that the financial impacts are that the new minimum we have to pass it because otherwise we're out of compliance but i suspect that that's going to be non controversial rubberstamp i don't think we need to weigh in on it but since that to me if the financial impact of that article is more obvious and direct if although it's yeah so if people want to weigh in i think that i'm going to guess my question my question would be what others that if you have questions that jeffrey thank you for being here and if you want to join us here so you can heal any questions give us more information in such a way that the developers you know if i were a developer i would pay before i would pay the five percent rather than constructing units that could potentially cost me more and i'm i'm just is this part of the inclusion of dialogue that's being presented a town meeting is actually to clarify how to calculate the payment in lieu of providing housing the current provisions it's not clear if you base your payment on the total element or only those units or are the market rate and this is a big difference if you figure pushing village for example is one hundred and whole development and even then you're not going to necessarily get the payment that's going to provide the same number of housing units that you would otherwise within their photo within  in mclean which is the continuing care community and when we ran the numbers we came up with five billion five million dollars five million dollars is not going to buy you a lot of housing in belmont under the closure in by law you would they would have had to pry they were proposing a hot one hundred and twenty units so it fifteen percent against other eighteen units you're not going to buy eighteen units worth of housing dollars bedroom units for five million dollars so this was i said is the provision here is really to clarify how to calculate but also the important thing to remember is that this states that the planning board may that yes make a payment instead of providing us the housing the town doesn't want the paint the town wants the housing the town needs the house i just to follow because i had the same reaction my big question most i understand that development has a fixed and a variable cost as you add more units but it seemed odd to me that the requirement to build units ranged from ten to fifteen percent but the ability to make a payment was set at five percent or  more that's i think i had the same reaction that most developers given that option will try to push the five percent rather than have to build fifteen percent of the units and just curious as to why the math decided not to take that number on if you will it was more about the clarification about how to calculate this payment it's going to be very unusual for the planning board to say yes give us a payment and give us the cash instead they see some i don't know of any unusual circumstance that would they would step up and say yes we could hypothetically eliminate it just yes it's  something so the last point is exactly what is going to go this is a common thing in other communities and there are also places that payments and move providing open space because if your buildings by the highway that's not the best place for a park right you want to be able to pull your open space money and put it someplace more appropriate it's the same thing as jeff are saying you know what happens sometimes in some cities you end up with a sort of get it was a shame if you will where all the affordable units go in one neighborhood in the night and then everyone else the other neighbor doesn't get me and this gives the plane the board flexibility if they notice that happening they go wait a minute you know you're going to we're going to take the money and build it over here rather than have the all the units keep kapinos there are areas in town they're going to get more development their areas in town going forward that are already developed and are going to not right and they were built before there was an inclusion requirement so there's no affordable housing there and so as we build in certain areas you're going to see more of the inclusion or unit sort of cluster and this gives the i the ability to kind of smooth it out if the plane the board so chooses which i think the bar should be high historically the bar has been also not the percentage that jack was raising the percentage of units the percentage of the cost of the building whether both percentages are very different calculations right i mean so fifteen percent versus of cushing square cushing village units the difference between the market value in the affordable value versus fifty five percent of the entire cost of the construction of all of cushing village and a big number five to five percent i mean that's a big expensive project so i'm not sure in fact that actually it's cheaper to buy out on some of change make some of these amendments through a minute motion or if they have or whether not to be actual men meant but that will guarantee will be clarifying that by town meeting you don't compare apples to apples when you compare five percent to fifty where the unit is dedicated it is affordable stuff like you giving it but nothing further to the town you are getting a restricted rent i mean you still getting some return on that unit so maybe fifteen percent and five  the cost is the value of the construction and if you're looking at five percent of the cost of the construction versus fifteen percent of the units in order for those to be mathematically equal your fixed cost would have to be twice what your per unit variable costs are the bad stuff but that's not you a dedicated you're not giving for nothing you didn't get a return on that is a no no it's just the difference between one section you have to take with the five percent actually cost you and find out whether that's the equivalent of that the amount by which future rental of the present value you're going to be receiving less or sale price of it's like a condo well ok so that's a ten percent higher rate this is all part of the housing production plan that we adopt in the planning board adopted in the housing trust adopted to bolster the ability of us to create more affordable housing or actually applying to the state now we have the house and reduction plan to leverage as our ability to get money from the state to put towards affordable housing which are in the process of doing i mean this is sort of raising raising albeit i think to see the increase of the percentages in large ers i said on monday night but nevertheless it's a trend in the right direction to increase the percentages that are required to for affordable if you're doing you're going to make plenty of money at one thousand and twelve dollars or fifteen percent mean cambridge and somerville boston are twenty percent this is still you know we're not them so that's why it's a letter i get permits to find out what the impact on applications would be in this case we did this when we did for the past four years and of those applications that were for large additions or new traditionally not have had as much tear down activity as talk areas in town this is being to this was proposed by the planning board it was not on the plane board's agenda until a roomful of residents showed up and said would you please t richmond you know the clifton on the way out so for a start road those slot sizes are very comparable to the single residency district as a matter of fact the planning board began this conversation about what to do about the same road system with the idea of let me highlight some information st the very tight schedule that we are presenting to you is being driven totally by the need to do the work in the d p w during the good weather so the d p w piece of this project has to be finished before it starts to snow next fall early winter and so our drop dead completion date in our contract is december one we are anticipating that that work will be done sooner than that we really hope it is and so that is driving the whole project and why we are in this very tight time frame of the bidding and trying to figure out the numbers and coming to a special town meeting and the reason it's a special town meeting is that the money gets freed up in seven days i believe as lawyers here know better than i do if we did it under a normal annual town meeting we would have to wait until july one for that money to be freed up and we would not be able to sign a contract with a contractor to do the project so that's why this is being handled a little bit differently it feels rushed it certainly feels rushed to us we're meeting practically two hundred and forty seven every time i open my computer i've got ten more e mails from an architect or in o p m or something with the issues that we're trying to resolve very quickly the reason that we're bringing this war for you is that we have had a change in scope to the project and i cannot emphasize enough that this is about a change this is not about arbitrarily coming back and simply asking for more money we heard everyone loud and clear last year and when we did some public hearings we were hearing from people oh sure you're going to ask for this money now and then you're going to come back and you're going to want more and we really debated long and hard whether we would come back and ask for more but the change that we decided was good and appropriate and positive is going to require more money originally we were going to keep the police in the station while we did the work there and that included both renovation and addition and keeping them in the building was going of sesa take moving them several times within the building as we needed to work in the various spaces and we finally sat down and said this is nuts it's going to cost a lot to do that and it's going to cost time so dollars for all the moving and time in the contract so we said forget it just move them out get them out of here so we have a plan for relocating them the entire building will be emptied in fact right now if that as we speak people are going through that building with three different colors of stickers if this is going to be moved to this is going to be stored this is going to the trash so the entire building will be emptied the dispatch function will be in a trailer in front of the existing building because we can run the cables in the cords out the basement window and keep everything hooked up and undisturbed everybody else is going in trailers down to centrally the water department site is really is the d p w it's the end of water in the beginning of the b w at the end of woodland streets once we made the decision to do that then it was like well gee now we've emptied the interior of the existing building we'd be crazy to not go in there and fix it up do the flooring do some painting there's going to be new sprinkler systems installed there 's going to be a lot of new work that would have been done in there anyway that's going to damage the walls why not we go in go in and just fix everything so those were sort of the two decision points one keep the police out to once you remove them go in and fix the rest because otherwise you're going to open this building with the lovely new additions with a lot of really nice work being done with the interior of the existing as you see it today so that's why we're asking for more money change in scope and the relocation that i wrote notes to myself or sitting in the back there i will emphasize yet again this is not being done with the debt exclusion so this is not impacting anybody's tax bills this is still being done within the levy it will increase the bonding a little bit and floyd has identified is ability to pay those bonds every year the material that i sent out unfortunately was rushed because of the clerk's deadlines i would the numbers that i've given you are estimates and i cannot underline estimate enough we will not have solid numbers until we open those bits friday april th then we'll know exactly where we stand with this project the file sub bids are coming in on wednesday april th that may or may not give us some clue as to where we're headed with this but it's the major bid for the contractors that are coming in on the twenty six that will tell us the whole story and yes that's very very tight between then and april st i'm sorry this is what it is otherwise we would have to wait another full year to do the d p w piece of this project and we just didn't feel we wanted to do that that's my general he would plan to do whatever this balance is next year presumably next march when he does the nd one hundred million for the high school he will include whatever this amount is with it to date i am unclear on the candle fund i would love to have some more money from the candle fund too because i've got to pay an architect to design this and he's already designed it which is how it went on to be it that's still a discussion point me amongst those who asked less you're in town meeting oh you're doing the outside but you're going to leave in one thousand thirties vintage building inside exactly the same and oh yeah yeah that's what we're going to do with i will confess i got lost in the numbers here at one point i comparison so what's the apples to apples because that's what i'm getting lost in the numbers and that's what i don't have for you because we don't have the bits yet but based on your estimates so the highest estimate that we were given by the architect for the police station including the expanded call it scope of work is seven million eight hundred thousand and it was seven four before so it's a net increase of four hundred thousand no previous previously not all just a change in the scope it's cost run up that if we didn't do this we might still have higher costs that we would have to find a way to finance as well probably yes there's more expensive stuff as i said every time i open my emails i've got somebody else in town saying hey you know what i really think you need to do x and it's the downside of trying to renovate existing buildings last year my question was rooted in the fact that i thought it was hard to believe they were going to renovate the outside leave in one thousand nine hundred and thirty s vintage building in place and get fifty more years of life much the marginal cost from the change of the scope is versus the other noise if sociate it with the project you're right you're absolutely right and trying to put these numbers together probably was not a good exercise but as i said under the gun to get something out to tammy members let me also emphasize that the exteriors of the existing building is being done with c p a funds and so that's a separate funding source there  this many times with other people and i'm just curious about this before future projects too because i think everyone understood that this was what this was what it was and across the town last year the way they do the estimates is they give you a low medium and  last year i think we were very clear that the high estimate for the police was seven point five and the high estimate for the d p w was one dollar so the high estimate last year at this time last year for the project was eight  dollars we went with a lower estimate in retrospect that was a mistake but we were trying scuse me trying to work with floyd and what he felt he could cover took on so the difference between the highest summit last year of a point nine and a high estimate this year of ten three is not as huge as w and i realize this is a lot of numbers and i realize that it's very confusing unless you're kind of in the middle of it day in and day out and i appreciate all of your comments because this helps me then  how i'm going to present this to town meeting and how and what to do those slides that are due on the th to make them as clear as i possibly can so that the you know because i need to sell this to people to say hey where we're trying to do this but aren't that far over really where we were last year we just are trying to fit this in without a debt exclusion i think just a follow up but i think your point about future building projects for like this comes out whether it's the library or the next chapter that i mean my advice for next time is don't don't try to renovate existing buildings that are this old it's just but it was the only way it was going happen was i don't think honestly last year i thought that was a really inexpensive four to do what we were going to try to do for both of these buildings and i was assured that i didn't with just the three low medium and high with that they had several different companies organizations looking at it and and giving us estimates which were you know how we got the numbers even at the highest here ten dollars it's cheaper than fifteen right so i understand and agree we are not comparing a sounds like it's both but it's also that i think is why it has to be the the both has to be disentangled and i think it's fair to go before people and say look at last year we were optimistic we thought we could value engineering to meet the lowest bid we you know whether we had to do a lot of that or not now we're realizing that that's you know i think people accept that particularly say floyd parker believes that we can finance marginal extra and still manage our towns you know debt load i think that's the companion piece that helps and i think you know i can also clarify if you move away from the police department just look at the the highest estimates last year for d p w one million four hundred thousand the highest now is one five so we're we're very close on the d p w it's this massive change of scope on the police and the relocation little pushback like gee you know how much between your plans for the seven hundred thousand dollars that's right actually it's going to be important to have someone from the start district commission i'm talking about the value that's placed on what happens with the correct did it it didn't make any sense that it was going to to expensive takes too long and in some respects be unsafe in that night i was dirt and dust blown around the people trying to work in there and it we were optimistic we could make it work and then we said financing things to look and see what we can squeeze under under the industry to determine what the cost of this was going to be sort of based on what we could finance as opposed to looking at what we needed for fifty years and how we could you know it think that there's a lesson learned there in terms of maybe looking a little bit different and and spreading it over a couple of years or doing something in a different manner ok but it doesn't work that way and we have a public meeting with them where we sent out notice cards to a very wide circle around the d p a d p w and the water department it was an open meeting where we had the overhead view of where the trailers are going to go and what the entrance and exit routes are going to be used by the police and we just let the neighbors talk and ask questions and i felt it was a very productive meeting i concern and it's one year give or take that they will actually be there and there will be an arrangement among the employees who are there of how many are going to see street prince street when street and exit through the village so they're dispersing the traffic as best they can we actually went all filtering on monday to look at but trailers there are going to be used and they're beautiful i think people are going to very pleased when they see them it's going to be much nicer to look at and the piles of dirt and the weeds and the stuff that's on there now their plant with the plant or the trailers that we do we sell them back so someone else releases them night to vote on what bill they're going to accept that's when we'll have a number you know have some kind of idea maybe on friday but actually there will have to be some checking done so realistically i won't have a relatively small money article three is appropriate for transportation grant that is my understanding is that is the new a lift tax money that the state in which i started so this is the st year the municipalities are getting that money and it's not big money unfortunately but it is money and so a fairly we have been told this is the st time we've done this because this will be an ongoing article every year that we have to actually timing us to appropriate the money that we get so by my guess is that the we've gotten that well i think the idea was to what the recommendation is to appropriate for engineering work for the sycamore lexington intersection redesign i'm telling you last that's just that was because we wanted to keep the transportation oriented and that seemed to be a pressing matter that we are trying to get to other really talking about it on the nd in our meeting about getting additional money from the state to put a traffic light there but that's so that's that's what this particular year is money going let's get out of the way religious institutions for other projects and i just feel pretty strongly that we ought to have some process in place for the person that's not at home if you look at things that we did so that was the st thing is to understand that if we're not a statement of the inherent importance for worthiness of the project it's simply that the feel that the requirements are there for a viable application s to heart and some of us so we do want to hear what the other two really say before we vote that article you also you have the legal opinion know about as much as we do at this point about it i like the idea of the religious institution piece in the c p a rules i wrote maybe requiring some kind there's any ability of the plaintiffs to recover their attorneys fees because they saw the roll the dice option in there as well if anybody bring suit we can just fess up and just at that point decide not to go forward but who's ever looking into this in the st instance that plaintiff firm have to do some work and maybe draft a complaint and i wouldn't want to be on the hook for their fees if they're entitled to fees under the ten dollars taxpayer statute want to stand up for that we stand up for we do it in the consequences of the cross because i'm not terribly concerned about this one because it is also going to bring back up who wants the clock which we're trying to avoid the arguments the church is saying it's your clock you put it you paid for  hard time thinking they're going to sue to try to get that right you just need to if you know if we put sixty six thousand dollars into it it will definitely be that that in a week makes it our clock because we were for private property and that's just an issue that i've always had really glad we're going to have a policy and reform to have him has always had an issue with using taxpayer monies for the private funding of private organizations when we wouldn't use that money this is why we keep coming back to this i'm going to talk about general i don't know who gave the c p c in charge but to me this c p c has to be in the entity that w in strategically about whether projects are worthy to put that responsibility on a two hundred and eighty eight dollars member group that meets twice a year that has members who if the celtics game is going into overtime are prone to call the question before there's been a my discussion is just a crazy push you have to the responsibility to the wrong body and so i think that's extraneous to tonight's question but i surely hope that somebody thinks about recommendations and i find it's already by the time you get to a town meeting everybody just goes through and pretty much goes for you know everything in there and i think i think that we have a lot of demands and even if we didn't have more demand than we had money in past years we should have been stockpiling some of that money for some of the bigger demands we know are going to come down like that police station you know  committee will weigh in on them the selection will weigh in on them in town meeting by state law makes the decision whether they show up for a celtics game or not i mean that's that's just the way it is it that's it's their decision to make and we can if you get a you know a th committee project before for instance when the bandstand came in the st time for pace and park several years ago it was felt that the plants were not up to snuff and that instead the c p c gave gave the applicant money to go get an architect and design a properly and then come back which is what happened that's happened with the town feel playground as well where they came in to do the playground and stead the c b c gave them design funds to go out and expand the scope to include the course and then come back so it's not p c is not wanting to take responsibility for something but at the same time you're implying that they're drawing a fence at the end of a broader capital process that might seem just some pool you know working on the rink and we were just kind of shocking when you go back and look out of that we have i never thought we would get through half of that stuff so then the library is looking for sort of what we do pretty well but it is time to really readjust and start moving looking forward i mean for you know but there's not going to be a road here it's going to need addressing at some point and you know these things you have to keep moving forward something always is going to need to get work done i guess m off all the boxes they talk to you know that to not take responsibility in some way for for not having a tenant vision of what they want to be you know  we don't have all the information from the state law office of recreational it's a recreational asset and we we think people want for certain things but we're not you know so so who is then taking that responsibility if that you know other than myself but i'm sensitive the legal arguments and i'm just asking whether we think these guidelines provide like is that a reason in my mind to pass those if you pass those later on that would be from to be a reason personally to vote to delay the project until is you know by our town council on opinion seemingly an invitation to a lawsuit that carries more financial risk than the value of the project i'm inclined to vote  spend some time on the preparations folks have been doing for the poor to be deported you know there's some questions about the numbers on the table so i like open it up for reaction and let me say st off that again now that i'm into a week now into my new role and more i haven't just troubled with it but it seems to me that we have to live within the budget that we have to live within categories that are bedded in the spreadsheet if that's different than how we've done it the the the  glenn it just wasn't easy to match up those program descriptions don't exist easily or were able to be found so and there are alternatives subcategories with in that the department that you can use instead of  roy had mentioned when i went over to go over the transition was he wasn't sure that having the f t's reported in each chapter was that important is it really didn't change that much except for the same is very different  prior year the percent change in the price year and then it did show the like twenty dollars f t so you can see for each department what there were and i think that if there were changes within police or fire you could certainly call that out where appropriate and for many of them it's just status so there's like and how the numbers thirty one dollars not eight but you could make an argument so yes my st reaction would be to say if you have special cases where they are where there should be the plan is there again if you can please send in your three most important points for each department which sections of that i can do that into the executive summary and i guess the other question i would have for you is if there are other themes that you think the warren commi bring forth and the executive summary is something that we can talk about that may not be specific to each department i mean one thing that has been i haven't worked out yet is since we know that we have depleted the stabilization fund and you know we're running up against the need for an but what happens is that when you're doing the budget let's say in one year and they haven't finalized the contract and then they finalize the context of the next year you're looking what you know what you're given is the comparison of the final number which is significantly higher than what you had last year ok but it includes all of the new contracts and so it looks again like it's only a small percentage but if you took those and looked it over over five years because some of the contracts had been going had not been settled for several years and so there these huge adjustments in it and so you know so you're you're representing that it's just a one percent increase when there have been significant increases and in the salary so you're discovering this now in the sort of mid cycle of the contracts is that right or the f y not going to make it happen in the movie filming for the defending jacob movie is being expanded to part of rutledge road it was part of what they came back monday night the production companies paramount pictures made that donation to wellington in the senior center because it felt the market was right to do that and there would be pretty big savings by refinancing those debts right now so we gave them the authority to go out and find the perfect moment to strike so that's going to happen night was we took a list of fear commanded names for the new school and we narrowed them down to three so the survey went out to the faculty and students at the high school to get their opinions so they're all very similar belmont high middle school bell one high middle school with the hyphen and the dominant high and middle school so that would be the main name and then when you go to each school it would be