hello and welcome to the belmont you're in all your source for hyper local news and community updates about belmont i might crowley your host this week the board of selectmen is creating a screening committee to aid in the selection of the next police chief if you might be interested in serving the board of selectmen will want to know what you believe the top three challenges confronting the new chief will be you can apply for the committee on the town website or you can contact jessica porter human resources director for more information also you should know that beginning on monday may th and continuing for the next three weeks construction will be taking place on a number of belmont streets including brighton street chaining road cross street flanders road hastings road horner home homer road livermore road marsh st sandra road and when street some delays and detours are expected between the hours of seven and four pm so please plan accordingly welcome to this week in the belmont tony and welcome back franklin tucker editor of the belmont county and how are you franklin just my how are you i'm fine so last last week on the show i think you were talking about roll call votes and this continues to be somewhat controversial rolling into a nd week of town meeting if you can talk a little bit about that roll call is something that has not controversial in terms that hasn't snuck up on town meeting it's something it has been always part of town meeting always to always ask for a vote of each individual member it doesn't have to be a controversial item and but most of that but before we had electronic voting it was quite difficult to do because you would have human recorders going up and down aisles in this room hundreds two hundred people and before you know we had a town meeting of forty thousand five hundred who knows but now that with all of the electronic voting it's much easier to do a roll call and what so in this we saw earlier and throughout the town meeting we've seen people ask for a lot more roll call and and there's a concern and it was brought up by the town moderator in which many people were saying look i'm concerned that the roll call is now being weaponized that your votes will then be used against you in the next election  that you're being shamed by this you know if you vote if you have a minority opinion let's say it's two hundred and twenty you don't want to be seen as one of these people who are voting against something that's very popular but i think also people are seeing this as a situation where town i think there is there are some people who believe that that would be energy concerns you know are you green enough you so so so mike widmer gave what what some people sort of felt like was a sermon about  and if you ever talk to him about that you can he feel that and he says that you know he's he was getting as a moderator he was getting a lot of town meeting members complaining saying we're really concerned so what he basically said is look democracy has to be you have to protect not only the people who are who get the majority but you have to really protect the people who are in the minority and you can't allow them to feel threatened or anything like that and i think that's what he was saying and he also requested that people were going to be talking about this this is this might be coming up in the future quite soon let's not start seeing of for a lot of citizen petitions for people for roll call and again a stroke so it's interesting that you say that because i  actually spoke to one of the town meeting members who was asking for a number of roll call votes and and what what what you said was you know the people who are asking for these roll call votes  trying to set the stage for a more transparent town meeting and that you know we can expect to see you know one or more citizens petitions on this in the not too distant future so  seemed to be cautioning against that well i think you but he was cautioning against was the rush towards either having more transparency or as some people would say more transparency but other people feel a commission so but he's basically say this let's slow down we don't have to do this overnight and he's not appointing a commission a committee at this stage and i don't think we  we don't really know how this will play out expect except that it seems that there will be one or more efforts to launch a citizens petition in the not too distant future and i don't and again some people if that happens then you'll see a flood  both on both sides and so we could be spending a special town meeting sometime in the summer maybe a special town meeting in the fall the expected one in the fall spending a lot of nights going over each one of these  welcome to this week in the citizen herald and welcome back joanna jubal s senior multimedia journalist with the citizen herald also it wicked local belmont how are you wonderful michel thank you so it's let's talk about let's talk about town meeting and some of the c p a act funded projects that weren't funded after all perfect there were eight projects that were seeking funding only six got approved one of them the pace in park bandstand those seeking ninety thousand dollars of community preservation funds was postponed indefinitely and that was a little bit of a surprise because because this was once pitched as a non controversial kind of item right that you know we thought that that the the local community including the about hers were ok and so we thought but linda oates town meaning member brought it to the attention of everybody a town meeting that she said about hers were not notified in particular about what the design was going to look like she was rather surprised when she said she learned it's going to look more like a farm stand and not a good zebo she was under the of the recreation commission said well if a borders were notified then i'm not going to support this and then nobody supported this tommy olson was not there to defend her case and i say i interviewed her after town meeting and she said that thirty nine dollars letters were submitted with the c p a application they were letters of support and she was just shocked by the outcome she went to the community preservation meeting this this past wednesday night and argued her case again but they said you know you weren't there for now withdrawn they're going to use extra time in case they want to be prepared in case there's litigation if they get the grant for sixty six thousand dollars that they're seeking what if there's litigation what if someone says this isn't a town clock you know you shouldn't be funding this with community preservation funds so they want to be prepared for that because the town clock is actually situated in the clocktower of a church right that's right ok so so there were there were several projects that were funded six yes i'll go through the li quickly the historic facade of the belmont police station was approved for about seven hundred thousand the roofs of the town hall complex a slate loose that was approved four hundred and ten zero this one's big phase one b the design of phase one b for the community path connecting brighton street to the clark street bridge for a one million dollars was approved and that design money was needed to get in line actually for a construction grant that's right yeah we're in line for that no talk about the actual route at this town meeting they focus just on getting the funding for the design that will come later town feel playground restoration the design for that sixty thousand dollars clay pit pond vegetation preservation and so we we've actually found a lot of his citizen her old stories interesting stories and did you know that belmont was a huge japanese tourist attraction when this news got out of her engagement that she was a bell high school graduate and gauge to the crown prince of japan you think we will only time will tell interestingly enough the selectmen at the time we're concerned about all the additional traffic being brought into town from the tourists and we definitely don't want more traffic ok thank you so much  there's a new defender later in town and specifically a town field installed by the recreation department and the fire department for more defender letters are planned for belmont parks fire chief david and chris costello from the recreation department speak to us about the installation of the defender leaders the recreation department and the process of installing five for heart related commercial so if there is a cardiac emergency at one of the locations where a different player has been installed the st thing to do is to use your phone call nine hundred and eleven tell them w emergency is and that will get the st responders going next they get to instruct you or give you the code to access the cabinet once you access the cabinet the door opens aircraft if you stay on the phone line with the nine hundred and eleven dispatcher they will also give you over the phone instructions on how to use this to prevail a to go this project is to provide everybody that uses the parks with access to lifesaving equipment you need them to heart related emergencies out of the proximately three hundred and fifty thousand out of the hospital cardiac arrests a year ten percent get saved through the with the completion of this project not only will every town building have been a device but not every town owns part one is well there are two critical components that are allowing this project to be completed the st is our climate boxes that he beat anybody on the fields all year round the nd most crucial aspect of this project is donation this project is being funded primarily by donations if we want to continue this project and install the debut later that the remaining four fields are going to need more funding as of right now we need about sixteen thousand more dollars to complete the installation we have majority of the equipment ordered and it's go the four thousand dollars to install it used to be later at each of the remaining parks and if you're interested in contributing to the completion of this project whether your town organization or a private citizen were extremely thankful for any donations you can visit the recreation department website for more information when brook elementary school is working with safe routes to school to improve walking and biking safety around the school principal janet carey tells us about the outcome of this work in plans for improving the safety of children getting to and from the school our story was produced by belmont journal volunteer chat master it's we have p t a representatives to say for it's just school i think most schools do and those representative brought to my attention some of their concerns about the traffic and safety around the school and asked if they could work with safer it's to design a survey where safe ruffalo and p t a folks and myself would go out and actually stand on different in different areas of the school watch the traffic take data or on the number of cars the number of protests during ins and any safety concerns that we might say so there was some participation from town officials as well so that survey was really the catalyst for making some of the changes we made in terms of our student safety after we gathered the data are i was concerned very concerning to take there were some long term fixes that the town is implementing speed bumps that kind of thing but we saw our really quick easy fix on our end there was some parking that staff typically used parents typically use for drop off and just asked staff not to park there and parents not to park there put out some cones with homemade signs saying student drop off only during that particular time of the morning and it has made a world of difference to the town is implementing some different things for example on cross street they've already put up a sign that blinks and let strivers know what speed they're going there's a raised cross walk over there and they're working so if you look at this map here you can see that actually there are three main areas that they are that people are concerned about and one was the intersection of pleasanton munroe another was the intersection of brighton and cross and then the rd was along just sort of the last batter splattering of the dots along sherman the nd part is getting a report back from massachusetts about all of the exciting things happening this week hi everyone i'm jane and this is your community calendar for next week author marianne o'hara will speak on her novel cascade at the library on monday at eleven a and thirty s massachusetts the fictional town of cascade is about to be swallowed up by a new reservoir this author talk as part of the friends of the belmont public libraries books and bites program grub street a novel incubator present the craft on draft reading series with three local authors on tuesday may th at the law books here how these authors waded through their murky middle to finish their novels you can submit a page from the middle of your own story for the chance to have it read and discussed by the authors and have an interview published on the dead darlings blog connect with nature and help earth wise aware gather data on the insects visiting plants at habitat day that will provide info about the diversity of urban wildlife including important pollinators or words on wednesday at six hundred and thirty in the be just library english capstone presentations will be on display from five hundred and thirty to six hundred and thirty prize winners will read from their papers and discuss the evolution of their ideas underclassman are encouraged to attend presentations to learn more about the senior thesis and capstone process chattery middle school theatre workshop presents their spring musical no business like show business on thursday friday and saturday this musical review features numbers from filler on the roof  beast and others get your tickets at champions in belmont center or it be just dash p s e dot org belmont will works and co motion are pleased to offer a weekend devoted to the bicycle built for two new tandem riders can learn how to get started on these bikes and experienced riders can join the group on a tandem ride on saturday at nine eastern steely of co motion cycles will be coming from the brands factory in oregon to assist tandem experts with advice and sizing agent promises to be an evening of energetic heartfelt and unique movement in a variety of musical genres save your seat for the performance at agent dot brown paper tickets dot com help habitat remove invasive plants including  buckhorn bittersweet and others that make it difficult for native plants to thrive on sunday at eight hundred and thirty dollars all ages are welcome to lend a hand students are able to count hours towards community service register at mass audubon dot org and that's all for next week but before we wrap up the pay's community calendar we have a special message from the big just band director achieve gold medals at district and state and major in festivals which enables bands to be part of the gold medal showcase and two years ago was at the hot shell last year they were doing construction the shell so they hosted it at berkeley performance center which was pretty neat and this year will be back at the hot shell that performance is on sunday may th and there will be jazz bands and jazz choirs performing from noon to about four o'clock bell on high schools and now it's time for sports last weekend across night featured the visiting western wildcats versus the belmont marauders the varsity girls were overwhelmed by the wildcats eighteen the town the the game was a little more competitive coming down to a last nd charge on weston's net by belmont that didn't succeed in the wildcats won that game seven to six we have some video that's all for now if you would like to get involved with the belmont journal either as a volunteer or if you buy a house some news updates for us please contact our producer frederick regal oh at fred at belmont