if i can have everyone's attention please i'd like to call that tuesday april twenty first two thousand and fifteen meeting of the board of selectmen my name is sammy baghdadi i'm chair of the board to my right is start the meeting first by asking are there any questions from town residents ok i thank you then let me go into the proclamation for the hundredth anniversary and in its hundredth anniversary we are proud to be joined here by many armenian friends and we're also honored to have the vicar general of the armenian catholic at party in the us monsignor at and which whom i will introduce a little bit later on in a few in a few moments let me start by reading the proclamation where as the month of april commemorate commemorates the tragic history of the armenian hundred fifteen to one nine hundred twenty three by ottoman turkey and where as this is the hundredth anniversary of the first genocide of the twentieth century and where as the armenian genocide is continuing in its last stage in the form of denial of the event by the perpetrator state and where as over one and one half million armenians were killed up rooted from their native homeland and several millenia survivors forcibly converted to islam and their properties personal and real confiscated during this horrible event and where as the genocide represents an atrocity against humanity humanity which we must be continually guarded against and reminded of and where surviving armenians have relocated around the world to began new and productive lives and where as significant proud and productive population of army of people with armenian heritage makes their home in belmont massachusetts where as armenians have contributed significantly to the betterment of the fabric of belmont now therefore beatrice saw that the board of selectmen of the town of belmont recall the armenian genocide to remind society of this tragic event in the course of human events signed by the board of select commission and culture council and also a member of the boston armenian genocide commemoration committee tonight i have the honor and the opportunity to speak on behalf of my fellow armenians and to acknowledge with deep gratitude the receipt of this proclamation one hundred years passed since the genocide of armenians took place in autumn in turkey one hundred years went by in denial and distortion of those events one hundred years of lasting in explicable trauma was passed from generation to generation one hundred years a lapsed in attempts to get the world understand and recognize uncovered the dept meaning and consequences of those events one hundred years of seeking closure and healing of century old wounds from injustice and continue to haunt that continue to haunt the nation divided and spread all over the world because of those events this year on april twenty four twenty fifteen yet again armenians all over the world will commemorate the innocent victims of the armenian genocide we will all together stand up and raise our voices in a well tuned unison we will continue to proclaim loud and clear that the organize annihilation of one and a half million innocent people our ancestors is not the fruit of one nation's imagination or a leisurely invented brutal fairy tale volumes of personal encounters and historical documentaries are published by armenian turkish european middle east and american authors the detailed recollection of horrific events are still alive in the memories of the descendants of those who perished and ironically the hard facts and undeniable truth about one thousand nine hundred fifteen are best supported by the compromising efforts of turkish government officials to destroy the evidence to silence the voices of truth and to deny the undeniable in the words of an author orator and philosopher edmund burke the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do not thing armenians who live and work in today's society are more than ever united in one aspiration to have all nations including the perpetrator nation recognize the evil that was done in order to prevent it from happening again with any other nation or ethnic group in the world we join our voices with those who have been massacred exterminated or discriminant and discriminated in any other way it is not merely a symbolic coincidence that on the hundredth anniversary of the events pope francis labeled the are the acts committed in one thousand fifteen by the autumn and empire as the first genocide of the twentieth century even if some diplomats and alice were quick to remark that this merely reflects his personal position the grim reality of the genocide for a nation does not cease to exist and therefore though dispersed throughout the world today's armenians will march together on april twenty fourth to remember to commemorate and to continue spreading the truth in memory of our ancestors despite the hateful attempts of autumn in turkey to annihilate a nation that built their society today one hundred years later armenians are still alive and thriving they work and create they write and build they invent and dream and they never give up it has been one hundred years and still whil e reaping the benefits of those atrocities the inheritor of the ottoman empire that plundered raped and this integrated a vibrant civilized society does not accept culpability their ancestors committed turkey is spreading billions of spending billions of dollars intimidating and cursing the international community including the united states to stop recognition of the historical truth of the armenian genocide in addition turkey is doing everything possible to distract attention of the international community from commemorating the armenian genocide that began on april twenty four hundred fifteen as if denial of the atrocities was not enough turkey decided to used april twenty fourth twenty fifteen the armenian genocide commemoration day to celebrate the turkish ottoman victory over allied troops at gallipoli and shamelessly invited armenia's president said sarkozy on to those celebrations there are over twenty one countries forty three u s states including massachusetts the international association of genocide scholars the european parliament the council of europe world council of churches and many others who recognize the massacre of one and a half million armenians as genocide recently pope francis celebrated a mass commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the armenian genocide he described the deaths of the armenians as the first genocide of the twentieth century this was immediately followed by turkey ambassador to the vatican and threatening to take for their actions the nile is the last stage of genocide and armenians have been living in a state of genocide without closure for one hundred occur the perpetrator must accept full responsibility and follow up with restitution as the pope said concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging him we strongly believe that the truth and justice will prevail today there's a new movement created by turkish human rights organizations they are demanding from their government an apology compensation and restitution for the armenian genocide to armenians from around two million armenian population hundred fifteen today there is only around sixty thousand remaining in turkey and virtually all traces of a two thousand five hundred year old armenian society is non existent what happened to this ancient nation that lived there for centuries how did they miraculously disappear within a matter of merely a few bloody years the survival of the armenians against all odds is a proclamation in itself and it is best embodied in the words of a great american armenian writer saroyan being the son of an immigrant he famously wrote i should like to see any power of the world destroy this race this small tribe of unimportant people whose wars have all been fought and lost whose structures have crumbled literature is on read music is unheard and prayers are no more answered go ahead this straw armenia see if you can do it send them into the desert without bread or water to burn their homes and churches then see if they will not laugh sing and pray again for when two of them meet anywhere in the world see if they will not create a new armenia we are grateful to the town of belmont for allowing this proclamation to be made and presented today for the seventh year in a row we appreciate your time and attention and we thank all the good people who are here to support this proclamation thank you very much thank you for your wonderful words and thank you for your work and helping the world not forget what happened hundred years ago you know i would like to say that belmont is a community that's very proud of its cultural diversity and certainly armenians are a very important fabric within belmont and while this proclamation may be a small message to the international community it is certainly a loud message within belmont colleagues any any comments of this chairman well said completely agree with you when it's important that we continue to recognize this this genocide as other countries has a pope has i believe germany community recognize in continue to shine a light on this terrible event one hundred years ago will continue to do that monsignor ataman can you give us a few words was well out of here today ok thank you and that was wonderful small ceremony what i'd like to say is we have a very busy agenda tonight so so i will push things along specifically will be  reviewing fiscal year sixteen water and so we're rates that we have a joint meeting with with the warrant committee school committee capital budget committee on minuteman regional nations high school construction project  has prepared a power point presentation however in terms of summary of the recommendation is for the board to approve a two point five percent increase in the water rates for fiscal sixteen and a two point six percent increase in the sewer rates for fiscal sixteen africa by an increase of two point six percent jay has a power point that he will break briefly go through and if you have a questions afterwards we'll be happy to answer them so jay good thank you very much analysis was from the votes of their customers fair fairness and equity affordability adequate funding of system operations and maintenance adequate funding of infrastructure rehabilitation adequate funding for debt and contractual obligation maintenance of fund balances to ensure the long term financial operational stability of the utility and compliance with environmental regulations state and federal laws so here's a snapshot for  last year fiscal year fifteen that's the actual and he proposes therefore ice two thousand and sixteen which is what you have tonight and in the four remaining years and those are the assumed projections based on the model that rough tell us and public works as worked on as you can see the operating expenses and blew the end up areas us miss for red and then the debt service and capital in the green  purple and the one transfer to capital this year for the because of the ability for us can you hear me can you hear me i'm sorry just as in the chair where they can ask questions as the transfer to that's not true dat that's just through pays you go as part of the operate basically the part of reagan the story has several components one of which is basically pays you go capital and so that is the component that were allocated for fiscal sixteen which is a little bit higher than previous fiscal years basically to allow us to mirror our water main replacement work with our payment management program so that basically we can dovetail jerry thanks you and the snapshot it's to illustrate the retained earnings that we have we managed and like i mentioned before the fun balances to ensure the long term financial operational stability of the obviously our operating expenses in the blue and then the lion's share of our expenses are again every assessment and debt and capital maintenance plus the pay within our retained earnings account that would so that way line is ninety days so we're continuing to maintain a fund balance if you will that's in excess of our ninety day you know policy correct and that is to you know the able to absorb the fluctuations in the market and rates and depending on projects for future or emergencies things like that ninety's in most of the ninety's we had about a billion dollars in can a billion gallons of consumption and since then the trend is been going down and as you see in two thousand and fourteen or some one hundred sixty seven million gallons of water  on devices the the ability to distribute water cost r s maintain level if at all increase and that is our obligation to use the residents of belmont and and the area to maintain the system and invest into the infrastructure of the system and that's why the costs to remain level with a slight increase as water consumption goes down so that's why the r everywhere increase and again i think we went over this last year basically water and sewer is a is a service that we provide however as we have less gallons used it still doesn't mean that your costs go down because you have fixed costs for your capital and your operations so basically it's a fine balance of basically having decreasing water usage which then translate in decreasing sewer usage but then you still have to fund your operations and capital so it's a tender bal trying to achieve thank you i'll quickly go over these slides i originally thought i had more time but i want to go over the the how i'm very goes through their assessments and the debt that's associated with the m w r a the water is based on the calendar year prior and sewer is based on the three year average of flow  better services in several projects and right here is some of the projects they had their six billion dollars in debt acquired to date and their island is one and you can see the others and there kind of kind of peaks in twenty twenty four right i mean so we're going to continue to see a substance from a museum based on their need to service the debt that they're committed to incurring for capital improvements within the entire system think it's continue to go up every year based on that to the communities of all the communities in the state peaking in twenty two i think that's twenty three and then slowly decreasing so  through through prior years and was projected and they're looking in between a three point six to four point three for this year for belmont the capital infrastructure investment plan back in one thousand nine hundred five with this incorporate about forty two percent of the system which was about thirty eight miles an important factor to know is that in that forty two percent of the system it affects sixty five percent of the residents of belmont today twenty four miles ha the time we end our thirty year plan we're going to be face will be three years ahead of it actually it will go to twenty one he said you know thank you and obviously would be attacking the priority areas that we know there are problems within the with pump stations and the wind project and the new pump station with surge ours mitigation improvements so what's raf tell us and the public works is recommending for water is all water fees to be increased by two point five percent and sewer recommend is an increase of two point six percent and that would be a combined impact for the average customer of two point six percent now let me ask a question remind me last year's impact i think was over four percent four point six which is ok so so our increased vote for this year or recommended is combine to put two point six percent which is coralie basis around three three eighty nine seventy seven right at the typical residential customers and show their increase will now be three ninety nine point eight a going forward basis correct that's two point six percent so i had the should be absolutely no question of conservation measures that we take release report i mean it's it's good to see that consumption conservation has and i mean significantly is just a downturn in usage the past several years and a lot of that is attributed to the like jane pointed out earlier about all the you know you washing machines dishwasher technology has improved technology has improved to the point that you know it's in a ten to ten of a big effect on our usage and again the weather has a big factor on consumption if it's rainy we don't sell as much water if it's hot humid types of water systems we're considered consecutive because we purchase all our water treated other systems have to treat their own water they have to store their own water and the distribution system so this is what is a very happy with this award this is actually the second award we've won we won one back in two thousand and eight one of the highest ranked one of the problems in the state a lot of i have to give a lot of credit to my staff without my his meeting the federal and state regulations they're ever changing so we have to make sure we stay on top of those and we comply with those are a capital c ib program we're so far ahead of other communities at some point in time the next four or five years thank you very much on and continuing on our busy agenda ok next is joint meeting with the warrant committee school committee capital budget committee on minuteman regional vocational high school construction project what i suggest is why don't the various committees sit in the two front rows and you know to the extent that you have a quorum and you want to call a meeting to order then please do so ok warren committee chair mike lee vincent just called the warrant committee to order ok school committee does not have a forum and capital budget committee does not have a quorum ok but but please feel free to participate in this discussion ok i would like to introduce jack weiss who is our representative on the minuteman school committee to make a twenty minute presentation to capital budget committees call to order the one project that is on the immediate horizon that has not gotten much attention is a renovation project at belmont i've been at mit a man site so i'm here to talk about that give you a little bit of overview but the real purpose tonight is to get your thoughts your feelings answering your questions about the project of this week i am joined as having just pointed out by several folks who have been actively involved in the the building project on your far right in the front row is kevin mahoney he is the assistant superintendent for finance at minuteman ford spalding who is the former chair of the school committee and now the chair the building committee marianne williams who is the owner's project manager working with scant ska and in the second row behind that is david for sale who you guys all will recognize he is a former minuteman graduate and he is on the building committee as well there are about fifty slides here covers a lot of terrain i'm going to try to run through it for to quickly i'm not going to cover everything that's on the slide so you can read and listen to the same time be done in twenty minutes all right what i want to cover tonight is a few things give a very broad overview of minutemen and who they are discussed the physical condition of the current building which is what i need to do something talk a little bit about what has been done over the last five years for the most part time minuteman has not been discussed in belmont in a public forum or building project since a feasibility study came for town in two thousand and ten looked at what are the options that are being considered right now talk a little bit about the cost but most importantly at the end as i said get your questions and your feedback ok so who is minute man very simply it's a regional vocational technical school i think most people know what that means in essence it means that in addition to the normal high school academic curriculum students major in one of nineteen career or technical areas as well  there's a myth about folk ational education schools that people go there or choose that if they don't want to go on to college in fact about a third of the minuteman graduates do enter the workforce right away but interestingly two thirds of the graduates do go on to college about half of those to four year colleges about half to two year colleges minuteman the district was founded in  it consists of sixteen towns lexington and lincoln which share where minuteman is located our neighbor arlington the route to communities of concord carlisle acton box borrow the far route to communities of blank castor all that stuff and the western suburban communities of needham dover weston lincoln sudbury think i covered them all but if not that gives you a flavor it's a pretty broad geography in addition to the students from those sixteen communities as you'll see in up the next slide perhaps minuteman also accept  fair number of students from communities that are outside of the disk this slide is a lot obviously a little bit hard to read from where you are so i apologize but i'll point out some stuff most of the discussions that i've had about minuteman the building project in our town has focused on and roman and school sizing this is not a slide that has been in this presentation for other communities but if you this is up about a thirty seventy's on that number is about twelve hundred so minuteman had about twelve hundred students most of which came from member town communities by the mid groups as me by the mid ninety's or so early nineties total enrollment dropped down to below eight hundred and that's largely where it has stayed ever since the drop in member town in rome and has even been a little bit more dramatic and by about the late ninety's member town and roman has been four hundred and it again except for a short pop up has remained at about four hundred since then this  slide doesn't accomplish what i had hoped to do i gave it a minimum and late but what i was trying to do here show the belmont and we'll just verbal e belmont enrollment has ranged from the low twenty's to the low fort right now six seventy three i think of which just under four hundred member towns all right so turning to the building itself all right so that the primary reasons for moving one we just moving forward on a building project we just talked about the physical condition secondly although it's not a driver it gives us the opportunity do enhanced the  programs or move the education into the twenty first century and then lastly on the touch on this or the time now the new england association of schools and colleges has minuteman on morning status it's two thousand and twelve sole for the reason of the condition of its so the video already pointed out a lot of the issues at the building some of those are like the roofs and like the repair issues it's also important to know that under current state building code rules if there's a certain amount of renovation that's done over a three to five year period it triggers the need  for the school to immediately comply with current handicapped accessibility and current fire and life safety codes and so we'll talk about numbers later but most of that number of the repair cost is issues with cracking of walls water that comes through doorways we already saw about the roof the roof is over thirty years old that has been repaired repeatedly accessibility issues that flow i'm going to like i do with the commercials on my t v minute man added these slides because they felt the presentation was a little too negative i'm going to fast forward through them in the interest of time you can read them as i quickly website i'm turning into turning from the physical to the education when that eventually probably hundreds of hours together in groups as a whole staff identifying the key components of an academy model for a minute and what they are us to academies that are formed around the occupational programming that we offer we have a life sciences academy and an engineering construction trades academy and then shared resources of both those houses that academy model integrates curriculum in a way that simply can't be done in the building that we have right this building was built in the one nine hundred sevent all right so i'm not going to repeat what was just talked about with about the career academy model i will say though that although it's it enhanced is the educational opportunity it is that we did not get into a building project because of  the desire to do this the educate the career cademy model emerge from the discussions about a new building and there was the discussion you saw in some of the video clips of the that most of the traditional trades are in an open room with less than full height walls which is clearly not a conducive environment and it's a it's a model for a class school building that has been derided i think since then  very quickly the shared model you can see the traditional academic subjects here the sixteen programs that minuteman is proposing in the new building there  are i mentioned before there in one thousand nine hundred three programs are being a limb unaided two are being merged into other programs and the only two new programs here being proposed under the new school is it dance manufacturing and a program called multimedia engineering but by and large the existing two questions at the end i touched before on the sac credit asian feasibility study kicked off back in two thousand and  twelve there's a long history in belmont and a lot of water over the proverbial dam that i'm not going to get into but i will say at least in passing that bill months might we had hoped that the school sizing issue would have been resolved go through a little bit of the the history of school sizing we're here to talk about the three alternatives that they have come up with the m s p has given us until next spring to approve a building project to get out of the feasibility study and approve a project that's the time frame we've been given this is another slide that is just in our presentation but it has been a big bone of contention for many people here  and even before the first date on this there was an wrong and study that was that recommended a school of eleven hundred my words nine minute ends words the m s b a said sorry nice try and came back and said a design of no more than eight hundred they then subsequently i think although i wasn't part of discussion so i don't know this is conjecture on my part largely because they heard scuttlebutt through communities came back and asked minuteman to actually think about two schools sizes one for eight hundred one for four thirty five which would serve primarily in district students in the february of last year the school committee because of the complications and the cost involved with doing two feasibility studies directed the architectural team to just focus on the eight hundred and then a few months later the administration recommended a school size of six twenty eight which was blessed by the school that school size was blessed the sixteen programs that i showed above a little while ago were approved and assuming the mind to go forward with a project at this point in time i disagree scuse me with that last fall that there's been discussion within the school committee about what to do if a building project is improved but i not approved but we do not have a defined clearly agreed upon plan so let's turn to what the building options are first next first there are three that are being presented to the m s p a three state funded alternatives the first is renovation this is the existing minuteman building just to orient you for those coming off here is where one twenty eight is and there's the route to a interchange the renovation option works within the existing footprint but it works around the existing school it has to be done while the school is still in  session we are all familiar with the modular classrooms that we added to the around the high school when we redid our middle school that's a little bit harder when you're trying to replicate the carpentry shop unary area so trying to do a renovation while the school is still operational does present challenges the second option is a combination of and renovation of the existing facility and a new edition right there is where the existing the school is here is part of the existing school and then in addition would be built here pushing out into an existing parking lot  obviously this is a little bit easier to work with because you can build the new addition and then move in there but it still has issues where half your facility is still being used  while you're doing the project that's just a very quick sketch the third option is a new school which would be built on land that currently serves app at the athletic fields and then the existing school would be demolished and athletic fields would be created this option would move the school from lexington into lincoln the borderline is right about there for for what that 's worth there's again a quick sketch obviously the newer school them the newer the building gives you the most flexibility in terms of educational and academic efficiencies and it is the easiest  to do from a construction standpoint if we don't go forward with the building project this slide presentation presents two options one is to repair the existing school  we're trying to achieve the educational improvements and frankly think that this is not a realistic alternative you know said i was going to offer my opinions but if we don't agree to an existing school to a new school project i do not see the school committee going minimum and saying how do you accomplish all of that academy model while still doing it through a building with a ration but we might have a repair only option that would be self funded would not be funded by the m s p i again the work would have to be done while school was in session or around the school calendar and as we've talked about before it can get expensive in a hurry if we start to trigger for life safety codes and list that was working and in the direction of castle who's the architect and these are the options i mean these are the costs associated those options i will let mary and williams and others talk more about the details of people have those in the question of the renovation of the existing or the repair is actually the lowest cost but it's not the lowest cost option  without the l s b any funding on the right you can see the duration i think ten years for the repair may in fact be on longer than it would have would happen if we trigger some of those requirements to meet building codes and that option would be self funded it would not be debt that cannot see our towns if they vote down the building project turning around in approving a series of  t bonds to do the repair so that will probably be a pay as you go so what's this mean for belmont here is the projected annual assessment under the three options it's important to understand what the assumptions are that lie behind this the first set of assumptions is it assumes that all sixteen member towns remain in the district it assume that each and every one of those towns has an eight percent annual growth in rome it for a period of four years so in roman is going to grow from member towns from under four hundred today to over five twenty five in a period of four years it assumes that the remaining one hundred seats are going to be filled by nonmember students which in aggregate has not been a problem but under this model those not member towns are going to be cessed a capital budget charge of capital facilities feet equal to their students pro rata share of the  concept has been bled that idea has been blessed in concept by the department of elementary and secondary education but the major and non member towns like watertown wall them medford are saying that they will not send their students to minuteman or or will fight that the assessment that assessment so there's some risk there as to whether or not the assumptions here  met the the the debt is funded on a thirty year level pay bond at a three and a half percent interest rate so those are the assumptions as you can see in the far right  column it shows what the assessment or the impact is per household for the median homeowner and for people who may be trying to do the math are in rome and under these sets of assumptions grow from just under thirty to almost forty and so that assessment would work out to about ten thousand dollars per year versus i'm not going to spend any time on the revised agreement  all i will point out is that from belmont's perspective the impact on our cost under one model versus the other are relatively in consequential already talked about what we need to do something these presentations what are the what's the process from here these presentations are being held in all sixteen minuteman communities they've already been held in ten it's a preload for the school committee to spring there will be a vote on the project as to whether or not to fund it now i know minuteman would like to focus your comments and thoughts and questions tonight on which of those three options you but this is eventually going to come before town meeting and potentially going to come before our voters under a deck that exclusion so in addition to those three options if there are things that cause talked about that so your feedback i would love to turn this back over to questions i'm going to ask the folks from minutemen that i just introduced before to kind of come up to help answer questions what i am going to do is ask folks to use kind of a modified town meeting approach please make sure you line up at the microphone actually questions with the microphone and not only introduce yourself but if you're here representing a parent constituency let us know that too because that is very helpful for us to understand where the different perspectives are and what the breadth of the the interest folks here in addition to asking questions here minuteman would love to have written feedback they have promised that any question that you give me in writing they will post an answer on the website and they want to dot org there's a school building website there's a survey monkey there and so on and there's a dedicated website so would love to have your  written feedback in addition to the book so with that on the turn over the questions and i'm probably going to just feel just what i moderate from here let me start first with questions from members of the board of selectmen and i am going to ask the first question if if that's all right let me start by saying i strongly support vocational education i think it's necessary to be offered by communities to their children and i think it's you know for some children they find themselves in for creation legislation which they don't and in a traditional high school setting it also appears to me based on the numbers that you have provided that into school with exists with demolition of the existing buildings seems to be the most cost effective option of the three that were presented but my question is this we are being asked to approve the construction of the school as a community but i've never heard anyone ask say what size school should it be i've heard eight hundred in the past i've heard four hundred thirty five in the past and and now we're given six hundred twenty eight and it's basically take it or leave it you know it's a six hundred twenty eight students school approve it or don't approve it or approach one of those options and i guess my question is where did the six hundred twenty eight number come from and number two why shouldn't we be asked as a community to also comment and provide input on the size of the school and consistent with what we were looking at in the educational program plan we were identifying areas that we felt based on the the fact is in the indicators  evaluate in terms of student interest where there are a living wage job opportunities what the workforce required we work in the way she had the committee looking at the educational program plan and developed a list of the sixteen programs it became evident to us that the four thirty five enrollment wouldn't work from a new building perspective because as mary can it would not be supported so when we looked at it we we took a look at where we thought we could only could grow where we thought we could improve the educational program plan to attract more industry students meet the the workforce the mans that are that exist in our area and when we looked at that and developed the education program plan we develop the capacity for each program and from that we developed the six hundred twenty year old woman that we then used as our target of moment to develop the the building proposals and what i'd like to also add to that my name is miriam williams i'm the program executive with usa we started with the requirements the with the agreement from the mouse school building authority and they started out with and a roman number of eight hundred this was prior to the design team and the owner is project manager being brought into the project so under the grant program the s b a invited the minuteman school district in to conduct a feasibility study based on in a role design a moment of eight hundred at that point in time i believe the a moment was somewhere around seven hundred fifty six students and then prior to hiring the design team in the on this project manager of the mask the building authority said ok we understand that if we look at your in district and out of district in rome and it's approximately eight hundred students that's based on looking back ten years in the projecting forward ten years  and so they use real data or in this is the kind of exercise they do whatever they are inviting the school into the pipeline the four thirty five and roman number came from believe that based on their calculations looking back ten years and looking forward to new years that number will be flying to thirty five students and so as we continued with our feasibility study and we had submitted our first of mission to the m a repair project because we don't think it the repair project supports the educational program and so that our direction going forward was to continue studying the eight hundred and the four hundred thirty five said look you folks have been invited into this pipeline we we invite communities that are prepared to move forward with the study and the program and we want you to keep moving forward with this program what what they also did is when the superintendent and other folks went and went out and talked to the superintendents from the member communities and some of the nominee for communities one of the things that was coming up was that there was study to confirm or you know that really whether the trends of were changing and so that was how that six hundred twenty eight number of volved it was it came out of a study that was then  discussed with the mass school building authority and they so we're not going to prohibit you from submitting on a six hundred twenty eight student enrollment and then i think i'll turn it over to ford to discuss what happened with the building  to the enrollment issue is not a building committee issue is a school committee issue and the school committee supported the ministrations six twenty eight number the vote there were two votes against it all the rest were for  we had talked to communities no community had come to us and wanted to challenge that number or have a discussion other than through belmont and as we've told you could we think we're an important community excuse me let me finish told jack any time you want meeting in belmar we'd be happy to do that and this is the first opportunity that he had thank you yes jim if i may i mean just thank you very much and i agree with you in terms of vocational education i think roman trends going down dramatically since the early days of the of the agreement over the last five years it's been pretty much flat around four hundred four fifty is the expectation that th member town or roman will grow to that six twenty eight is that the expectation or is that six twenty eight building also take into consideration which as you know we've expressed this many times before the money is very uncomfortable and does not favor subsidising nonmember towns at all from a deaf respective and also from a payment perspective so is the expectation based on the size in that the role men will increase even though historically it's been flat for the last ten years increase for six twenty years remember times i think the expectation over the next five to six years as jeff pointed out in the presentation was that we would expect  with the with the growth of we're anticipating to be closer to five twenty five two in the next five or six years though once the buildings online we could then a vision of going to six twenty eight when we when we look at the the eighth grade  percent application rate from our eighth graders in the district a typical suburban vocational school somewheres seven percent so what we're estimating is if we can increase application of only one tenth of one percent for the next five years plus the other piece that we're trying to do is we're trying to attract more young women to get into more the stem related programs we ran as a camp at the february  had thirty three's seventh and eighth graders thirty two which were in the district women doing doing stem related activities you know also be running a program and in august along the same way we're trying to target think that if we have improved access because we've seen in various towns where our access is better our application rate is better so we're also trying to work with with the superintendents in the middle school principals in the district to tr increase our access to to give us more visibility we think that with the increased access we will see increased applications thank you kevin just to just to put the put the point together so what you're and plan b i don't know exactly what it is but with seven or eight hundred thousand dollars i would think it would have been started what is the possibility of building a school with an infrastructure heating system and so forth that is a four hundred fifty school student school and if you build it and they do come like the baseball field then have a wing that you can be added at a later period of time and as you've heard me say before my continual beating of the drum it is beyond that we don't have the study of at least an appraisal or what would happen if we sold that bill and if we reconstituted the district and we put the school closer to the medford in the some of those in cambridge and indeed even near the red line and reconstituted district with people that would be members and build it for the members it just amazes me that you're going down this one road where it's one hundred forty nine point nine million dollars i don't think you have the votes and i just say to you you've got to do a lot more convincing than me and i'm sure a lot of people thank you ok thank you bob and thank you for all your work as as the  i think the primary issue as you've heard from the two select mean for me is the sizing of the school and and you have let it go this far down the road without getting the input from the sixteen times the feasibility study was approved in belmont on the condition that you'd go back to the sixteen town to you would have unanimity on the sizing and the cost of the school before you got this five down the road now you this down the road in the giving us one alternative so what do you say should be done there was a question bob that you had mentioned about a program of shien's and as part of the education plan task force we didn't start as at ground zero how many programs should we have and what size school results the education plan task for started with the four thirty five the eight hundred in the six twenty eight and said what is the number of programs that you can run the m s b a guidelines are  roughly forty students per program is what their estimates were so when we were down at four thirty five it would have been about eleven programs we skimmed that and made some programs smaller and at the four thirty five level we're able to support thirteen of those existing one thousand programs or thirteen of the sixteen that are now being proposed at four thirty five so if you were to increase the roll litter the size of the school into the low five hundred you're talking fifteen of the sixteen programs or so at the six twenty eight from my perspective at least there is not a huge loss of program diversity if you the school were twenty percent yes my name is pat i'm a town meeting member from precinct two i'm a member of the capital budget committee a long time member i also happen to chair the town's permanent building committee and the first thing i would like to say is that it in belmont at least the first thing we look at from a building perspective is the size of the building and the appropriateness of what's being proposed before we allow projects to go forward and i think we have done that with every project we've done in the last thirty five years which are the projects i've been associated with prior to that i think we also did the same thing i just wasn't associated with them at that time so i'm i can't be positive of that  one of the projects that has had a lot of problem in belmont is the belmont public library project and one of the reasons for their issues are that there is a perception in town that they are asking for too large a building and that they can't really support that they have twice been approved by the state with grants for greater than thirty percent of the eligible costs and they have twice had to turn those grants down at the state the last time there were problems with the site too there were a lot of issues that factored into that but we don't have a habit of going forward with the building just because it's the one alternative that is given to us at the time i think this  issue is critical i was the person at the table with the arlington people in two thousand and ten when belmont town meeting twice turned the feasibility study down and arlington came up with an amendment which  was a negotiated amendment with minuteman people and part of that amendment said that before any money was spent on project management architects there would be an agreement by every single one of the sixteen towns to what the and anticipated a moment would be the minute me and school committee confirmed that with the vote and the minuteman superintendent pledged that on belmont's town meeting floor we have had many exchanges back and forth in legal exchanges and all that kind of thing but i think the belmont has been very consistent that enrollment is key and if indeed the enrollment were for thirty five instead of six twenty eight there would be  corresponding decrease in the size of the building i saw it happen at our wellington school when m s p a would not give us the size we wanted and we discreetly decreased the school by a six and indeed there was a significant savings in the construction cost of the building i'm not sure that was the right decision i'm just telling you that that is what happens in that particular case we knew where the students were so one of the questions i has is have is with this nasdaq study that was done when was it done and has that eight percent over four years how many years into that four years are we back in september when we really had implemented the recruitment strategy until you were so we're expecting to see it for the the fall ok i would well since i thought jack represented that that there was any anticipation of growth over four years the four years having begun i think the the four years are projected going forward but there is an assumption in those numbers of a growth of eight percent per year over a four year period so it's about a thirty three plus you know on a compound basis growth in member down a moment that's how you get from three eighty to the five point five that is embedded in those numbers and you know i am not to itself their assumption in that study and in the recent study is that not only is the cohort of eighth graders growing but minute man's ability to capture or higher percentage of applications of those eighth graders will also increase with improved marketing and new building ok thank you the other thing i would be very interested in is seeing the figures from minute man as to what would happen if this growth doesn't realise does that then mean we have to have more nonmember town students what happens if the regional agreement doesn't pass  and what happens if whatever the sick remain as we have with the state about capital costs is not approved or that many of the current nonmember towns refuse to pay that which i know some have said they're not going to pay it so  i would take them at their word because it seems to me that that changes the cost to each of the sixteen remaining towns the other question i would have is if the member agreement the regional agreement does  pass i know that there are between six and eight towns who have expressed a desire to leave the district taking us from a sixteen member district to maybe eleven maybe ten made nine  i think that's a completely different figure financially that we're looking at and i think it's absolutely critical that all of these things be determined before we go forward with any more money being spent from the sixteen towns on designing a school if indeed sixteen towns levy even if they're the towns that have the lowest in rome that does increase the cost to everybody else if the state decides that the enrollment for non member towns is going to be capped they just lowered it if they decide to do that again and they can our operating costs are going to increase so i have some real concerns as to how this is going to work thank you just what is it that drives you to want a larger school why does bit minutemen want to be a six hundred thirty students school i'm not the school committee chair building committee chair and most of these questions are really something that should go to the school committee and so i'm going to have to leave it all i think from what i've heard in school committee discussions there hasn't been much analysis of ground up i think there has been a for lack of a better term a goldilocks approach to school sizing and i think there is concern amongst many school committee members i would say that i share those concerns that a school that is too small will not provide the program diversity  that a larger school offers there for students from those member communities who are attracted to the programs who might get a limited don't go the minute man and you start this kind of downward spiral to the  devolvement of the school itself ok i hear that but i guess i think that that question and answer to that question is very fundamental to this kind of presentation and i think that it would be helpful if the minutemen administration and school committee would make that case because this discussion has gone on for a very long time and frankly it just keeps going back and forth you know in the same information comes it doesn't seem to me that the case coming from minutemen is very strong about why the our school is necessary and dick madden precinct three town meeting member you know i really don't understand some of these questions that i've heard here tonight it seems to me that people want to hand serious to questions that there aren't any answers for the schools already been scaled down to six twenty eight from what fourteen hundred but my question is this really you said that there were three programs that were going potential portions of that program will be subservient into the plumbing program although it's not exactly a trade off the second one is robotics no actually will be telecom telecom thank you a copy of telecom is the other one here with the notion that portions of that will be merged into electrical and you nearing and then the third one is welding  with the thought that there are elements of that program that would be included in a new advanced manufacturing program so those are the three that are slated for removal but there are some barbering  hospitality i don't how part of the merger into other programs but those are the three h v a c electrical and welding that are slated for complete elimination even under this school program i just like to comment that if anyone goes to the minimum website they'll see the meeting minutes they'll see the studies that see the information and the work that's been done over the last two years since january two thousand and thirteen and that unfortunately not everyone knows what is happening but i invite them we do have members of the district the member communities serving on the school building committee serving on the school committees where we ideally hope that information is making it back to their community but that information is there the rationale of how we've arrived that if you want to look at the redesign program you'll see a document that's about four inches thick you'll see the nasdaq study you'll see pathways to prosperity you'll understand the rationale about the programs that were selected based on the six and and how and looking at the educational program that they're looking at the emerging technologies in jobs of the future and so the changes that you're seeing are evolving out of what's really happening with workforce development and they're really critical issues that if you're asking questions and a vacuum i really invite you to those that have genuine questions i really believe that you will find a wealth of information there and it may not answer every question but we certainly invite you to to look at that and then please come back with the questions ok last question because of our time constraints if anybody has more questions i do encourage you to put them in writing you know and you can either submit them you know even through the top administrators office they would be submitted to the minuteman people and and to towns need to approve by a vote of their town meetings for this project go forward is that correct that's correct is it your expectation that each town or at least a large number of those towns will also require debt exclusion votes in order for the project to go forward i would have to guess that maybe five or six will focus around five or six and presumably if any of those sixteen towns either fail to pass it as a town meeting vote or one of those five or six failed the devastation that would be that would be problematic and it would actually stop the project is that correct that's correct are you envisioning that it's possible either likely or possible that the new building will be approved by the sixteen towns under the things that we just talked about before a new agreement is actually greed upon by the member towns i am assuming that the vote next spring will be under the reconsider it so it's dead at least you know for now until the next town meeting cycle and i think there's a growing sentiment that the the linkage between those two which was really driven by arlington may in fact not happen and communities may be forced to consider the building project in the in the end of the revised regional agreement ok my only point and i'm not as close to the issues obviously as you guys are every day but if the sixteen towns are being asked to basically take on the debt and at least six or so maybe eight towns that actually expressed a desire to leave the district it strikes me as being challenging pretentiously unlikely that those sixty eight towns would agree to take on the new building with the expectation that they would want to leave and so that it i mean that's for you guys to figure out what that's suggest fewer and romans they still are going to drive the number down and so i think one of the things that i would encourage you to think about which i know you mentioned earlier is is there a scenario where if the if a number of towns were to leave and you're talking about a smaller group that may actually still be viable with you know you know the scale that you need to have where you would actually take what is apparently a i think a very primal cation for the school right now and then put a more rights high school in a different location so i think it may be something to think about where the towns that actually are going to remain might actually approve that sort of thing reza are now saying let's have sixteen towns which don't even plan to stay vote for a large project which they don't intend to stay with so it just it seems like you've kind of put yourself in a corner that's very difficult to be successful from my perspective if i may there will be sixteen towns within the district no town will be getting out only one town has asked to get out under the new agreement which will not happen this year because when one said no and lancaster passed over so you're not going to have a new agreement no matter what dover who was in voted or belmont that's number one number possible but doubtful so i believe there will be sixteen towns within the district voting on this project now one step further is the towns do not approve the preferred option which will be selected eventually by the m s b a in july if the towns don't approve that next year then they are faced with one of the plans for repair at the hundred percent cost of those sixteen towns fair enough so and i'm sorry for taking so much time out said a second but the one thing i would say just as a single member of the warren committee is that to the extent that the word committee is meant to make a recommendation to town meeting about whether this project is something that we should vote for when you look at a chart like that and you see the trend line of that chart and you say that the expectation for the red line is that's going to be at six twenty eight in a few years that's hard to understand it requires some degree of logic or evidence that is sort of compelling and i think that we don't have that yet and so what i would encourage you to do is to the extent that that can be shared with us in any way that would be helpful to us i would encourage you to do over time the red line is the member is the average essentially of the member towns if the goal is to have a new building of six twenty eight that serves the number towns and it's currently at three five or so the idea that it's going to go to six twenty eight is a sort of hockey stick growth assumption that's hard to immediately say oh i buy that so i would say is the more data the more logic you can share that helps the warrant committee that helps to meeting say ok there is that even though that growth is actually quite large we can believe in that i would encourage you to provide that and i want to thank you because i appreciate that comment i will say it's something to think about if we do a new building which i think is logical if somebody set up there that building will not be built o occupied until the year two thousand and twenty one construction would start of the earliest two thousand and eighteen so we're looking about at two thousand and twenty one when the building is occupied the state board of education has already voted to approve and a fisa bill ity assessment fee for out of district students they've already done that that's fait accomplis so for the first time in our history we are going to be able to charge an operating cost and a facilities  kevin said earlier there will be a delta between in district and out a district students of about one hundred out of district students were for seeing for a period of time and i'm not sure how long that would be but starting in two thousand twenty one the selector and omar telling us that there is a legal misstatement about the voting requirements amongst the sixteen towns for a capital budget expenditure and the assertion is from the school committee member minute and school committee member it's not it is that the requirement is it is a two thirds majority it is that a correct statement or and i believe in answer to michael's question the consensus was or the statement was that all sixteen are required for a capital expenditure in order to issue debt all well there's two paths to it to issuing debt under state law  the path that is the more common one and the one that we've talked about tonight is all sixteen alan meetings have to approve the bond issu agreement the sixteen times have to pledge their credit that those bonds will be paid but nevertheless it's only a majority vote all sixteen times majority vote of timing but unanimous of all sixteen each town must be that's fine with me in each town the the debt has to be approved by town meeting i think that's a simple majority under the current regional agreement right so sixteen towns who voted fifty one to forty nine right would bind the district if fifteen towns vote ninety ten for it and one town votes forty sixty against it that cannot be issued by the district there is another path though there is another path to address that kind of situation it's permitted under state law it's unlikely that minuteman would do it first but it's not impossible to believe that they would do this minuteman can choose to have a public election over the election within the citizenry of all sixteen member communities and just like an override ballot if that the aggregate number of yes those votes in those sixteen communities without regard to don't think this is the case if we voted for in town mean the issuance of the debt by minuteman then we voted to move forward we can then choose to do a dairy solution to fund that if our debt exclusion fails i believe we still have voted in favor of the debt issuance but you make it contingent i'm not sure whether it could or not so we can't tie the two together so the concern would be of course there with the pay three hundred thousand dollars out of our are pretty fine and in their poor a member town the least the representative from the member towns is like you know supporting the preferred option but we seem to be moving forward to the emmis be angel like twenty fifteen then we're going to do it's comerica zine which is going to cost money and then we're of the school committee speak for their community ok thank you and i think you may have an exam for that's not understand ok jack any closing remarks i had thought about doing this there are a lot of people here and i appreciate everybody's attendance particularly school vacation week who did get a chance to speak i know minuteman would love to have written comments and written questions so i'd encourage you to all do that but in it in absence of that i just be curious by show of hands based on tonight's presentation what people know how many people here are prepared to work think they can support one of the three options versus how many people are kind of undecided about the project is that a fair so people who faced on what we've heard tonight are prepared to just support i part this is helpful information for me as your the presentation people who think there are still critical unanswered questions before they can support a project well that seems to be the majority vote to the thirty second recess while while people adjourn and then we will open up with this eight sixty three concord having you as a board of survey so we are going out of our agenda  with the meeting of the board of selectmen after our brief recess next matter which i am taking out of order on the agenda because we are far behind convening a board of survey to consider the petition of  the owner of eight hundred sixty three concord avenue to create a roadway on their on his property for our approval to allow him to subdivided into  two hearings that the board convene regarding as i understand it the way things were left off after last hearing that the board was going to consider the application and  give it some thought as to the waivers that were being requested so we're here to hear what your thoughts are with regard to the waivers in the application ok i guess the question i would have is have there been any changes made to the plans or are they the same plans that we considered and our last meeting that the plans are the same and my understanding was that the board itself wanted to consider the request for the waivers and what the implications were there ok and i take it you're not asking us to close the public hearing depending on what we talk amongst ourselves you may want to make changes to the plans is that what itself ok just to remind the audience and to remind members of the board i think the three waivers that were being sought were no sidewalks ok slope of the road correct increased slope and and reduction in the length of the road to less than three hundred feet three hundred fifty feet which is what's required by the birth of border survey regulations that have been adopted by the town and specifically i have copied that section of the regulations and i'm going to read it streets of less than three hundred fifty feet in length will not be accepted unless the size of the lot makes alternative street layout physically impossible my recollection was that mr hahn at the last hearing said that it addition i believe the rules and regulation also state that because of the size of the lot there can be an exception granted the also the topography here also creates a bit regulations is a compelling reason for a public safety perspective or otherwise a prep school in commuter some a commuter that the roadway needs to be three hundred fifty feet so i guess from my point of view i'm not all that concerned about that i'm more concerned about the  a private way a public way if you will ok and and and you know mark i think you know as a lawyer i think if there's something wrong with the regulation it's the regulation that needs to be a i'm i'm not in favor of the proposed and the reason i'm not in favor of it i don't think there's a compelling public interest to do this we haven't a bugger who's opposed to a long term resident i've received feedback from other residents who are concerned about the traffic on conqueror and the the blind driveway aspect of it which by less than three hundred fifty feet and that the guidelines on the rules and regulations say that we can you should read not that i'm an attorney but it says that can upon an express finding that such action is in the public interest in this is not inconsistent with the intent of these rules waive strict compliance with any provision contained here in a pretty broad statement and i i'm i'm basically a champion for public or for private property and i think if if this could be done without objection from the voter and with no waivers which i think you have the right to do in any case then there's nothing for us to decide but it doesn't seem to me that there's any compelling public interest the question of when jim thank you for it literally in the in in light of the the a butters objection and then also last time we were talking about the issue of precedence so it wasn't only the waivers that we were thinking about we were thinking about if we do this for one property what happens in a broader sense so my i mean i'm not in favor of ok and just a point of procedure ok which we need to disclose on on camera jim was not a member of of selectmen when we opened the first public hearing he was present at the table and and and a member of the board when we had the second continued public hearing on this so in the interim w that would allow him now to participate in this discussion and be a voting member on this on this matter which actually helps you because now you can get two out of three so so that's in the interest of of disclosure require any waivers as i read the case law or the board it's hands are pretty much you're obligated to to grant the application mr hunt has put forth an application with the neighbors in mind trying to reduce the impact on the neighborhood by having the road at the shorter distance at two hundred fifty feet rather than three hundred fifty feet so from a public safety standpoint the the regulations require that there be at least one hundred fifty feet for the person exiting the driveway to be able to see to the road so i don't see from  public safety standpoint where the additional hundred fifty feet creates a greater safety area for the roadway  the board has discretion here to determine what is in the best interest of the neighborhood and the town and i would submit to a year that what is in the best interest here is to grant the waive r on the length of the rope because it is less impactful to the theater but are given the alternative so i would ask you to keep that in mind and with regard to the issue of precedent i would urge the board to look at these matters as each application is unique each parcel  unique and that the board has to look at all the factors to determine what it is willing to approve or not approve and so by the fact that you may approve an application with certain waivers doesn't necessarily carry over to the next outlook and that comes before you each lot is different so i wouldn't say that there's no starry decisis precedent of of your decisions but i think there's a possibility of precedent clearly and i also think that if the situation reversed and your position was that the inviter could not develop his property you would expect us to explain respect that opinion as well so you know again my sense of this is that it's not in the public interest it's opposed by the  impactful and then perhaps there is room for more discussion between the two parties if the board is inclined to deny the application i would request that we be given additional time to perhaps with a different story if it i think if you were to get a vote tonight i think what you're hearing is you would not get a grant to the three waivers now whether there the i mean your involvement it's refreshing ok as an attorney want to turn you to another we help each other ok but this is the third public hearing you  know and we've kind of rehashed on the same issues you know over and over again so it's a while whether you're coming in with some new arguments i appreciate that you know but but i think you know i think the board has spoken pretty our next set of meetings for the border for town meeting so that would be the fourth the sixth the eleventh and the thirteenth which are about an hour before town meeting so we can show that we would have time to do anything about david is there a time period within which we have to take action i mean the regulations are silent for such as well i mean we can always we can always by mutual agreement you know the reasoning behind the euro my decision is not based solely on what an honor says i mean i'm looking at the public good so so bear that in mind i mean if they feel better comes back and says you know grab the application that doesn't mean at least i personally don't necessarily going to vote for the application i think what you are hearing is we do need a new plan excuse me the applicant is still in the room this is there any objection is there any objection to you know general or would you want to get he's going to the mike yeah i i don't want to take comments the applicant being here ok it's very simple a lot contiguous with their life is done by another limited liability corporation like this so if you grant this kind of like way they will do the same thing on the next so mr williams is correct clearly oppressive they could solve the whole problem by making it a driveway not a public street but i'm not sure they have that intelligent now but making it making it a driveway doesn't give them to the right ok you can take my place all right thanks ok next item the next item we are going to take i am going to skip around on the agenda is le request to relocate traffic control cabinets of the total road and we have with us one clancy community development chair would you like to give us  intended to place these cabinets but the private property abutting property owners have raised an objection to the location of the cabin if you saw him here before you tonight to ask that you support the town funding the relocation of these two cabinets mass d o t well while it's a state and federally funded project mask the o t has said that since the infrastructure for each one of these cabinets has already been placed they will not pay to relocate the cabinets and therefore the onus is on the town of belmont to come up with the funding to locations that we're referring to the first one is six fourteen chapelle road it's a residential property that also has a home daycare this property is very close in proximity the beaver preservation sweet peach diner there is a pedestrian signal crossing in that location the proposal is to move the cabinet from directly in front of the property at six fo box the relocation of the box in front of six fourteen chapelle road though we are talking about one location where the box would be relocated there are several different ways to run the infrastructure to get to that location there is a range of prices to achieve that the lowest price associated with that would be six thousand seven hundred eighty one dollars cost to relocate the box in front of wheel works is eleven thousand three hundred eighty nine dollars and so what i'm recommending is that we in fact do relocate these boxes and that the board recognize that ultimately the cost to relocate both of these parts is going to be somewhere in the twenty thousand to twenty two thousand dollars range and as i have very limited access to funding options my proposal is to pay for it out of the paper management funds  i have a question with all the scrutiny that the belmont you know that the pell road work had and it went through traffic advisory committee reviewed by engineers professionals and how can this be overlooked i mean i you know i have driven by and i've seen the foundations where these things are being you know located right and it's really unfair to the resident ok and it's also you know we all works it prevents them from maintaining their property in the future it's so close right well i mean how did these slip through the cracks is what i'm trying to say ot the contractor i mean they all they live in a certain world they're accustomed to doing this kind of work they do it all over the state everyone understands and recognizes that these controller cabinets are necessary evil because of the  because of the traffic signals they locate them in the places where they think it makes sense to locate them and i think that there's a feeling that you know they're they're part of what is necessary you cite them where you can if you move on i don't think that there's a lot of thought that goes into well if we put it here what are the implications for the private property owner what are the implications for just the a statics of the placement of it i really think that that's secondary to trying to achieve the goal which is to get a cabin in place regard to these two boxes well the answer to the first question is absolutely we have looked at the rest of the project certainly on the heels of the concerns raised at these two locations one of things i did was notified the designer that we should look at any further placement of control of boxes to make sure they're being placed thoughtfully and i think we've done that and however i need to put a cabby out here which is that there may be a location where there is but there are no options on where these cabinets can be placed and so we have looked at the locations where the cabinets will be required we have made sure that they're going to be placed in a place that is thoughtful and considerate to the property owners is our opinion going to jive with the property owner for the down belmont street when you know as i said i think we've taken our best shot at putting the where we think that they should go but nothing is obvious of these two nothing is obvious in my opinion now and then how big was this project the total cost of this project approximately fourteen and a half million dollars so it's not that something like this could happen of a project that oh i can assure you that there have been several details that have been altered refined redesigned it's inevitable especially when there is so much subsurface work associated with a project like this ok and the only other thing i would urge using again to ensure that the location of these boxes aren't going to interfere with handicap accessibility was going to be a need to call for a special town meeting to deal with f y fifteen budget issues namely a transfer from free cash to fund snow and ice deficit in the amount of seven hundred forty eight thousand dollars and we have mentioned and presented on numerous occasions that the current year school budget is in a shortfall by approximately five hundred thousand dollars and that the proposal to use you take  two hundred fifty thousand dollars from the special education stabilization fund which was created in ceded a few years ago for this specific purpose to basically allow a transfer to he cover the shortfall related to special education services that are being provided to belmont public school children in addition to that the balance of the shortfall estimated five thousand would come from a the budgets for later the fiscal year so basically this would call for special tell me on the second night of the annual tile meeting for these two specific  for special time means to fund our deficit but in effect if we approve the war as stated here we are in fact approving the mechanism terms of how they will be funded yes i'm not ready to vote on simply because a i understand the need i haven't seen the details around the deficit i haven't seen the analysis to fund for free cash of his hundred forty financials i haven't seen the decision  been made by the work committee or feel as though we're being asked to include something in the word that we can vote on subsequently where we haven't really what and perhaps because the time limits and we've had it right i think there was a request to put this on the first time meeting as opposed to saying no there was no in our discussions we know that something would be coming down the pipeline out of fairness you know as the as the board of selectmen and these are special warrant articles coming from the board of selectmen we haven't seen any of the specifics so the numbers are that you know we haven't been given any backup and boy that is not the way i want to chair a board i'll say that so i agree with you i think what we need to do we have a working session on thursday could maybe we can get some back up materials for thursday and then we can have a deliberative discussion where where where we can feel that we understand we can explain the perhaps that's fine and the idea of the sped fund was to build up the reserve over time of a couple million dollars to try to smooth out the spikes in special ed needs and you know fortunately we have no  into these articles if we vote them tonight including the warrant but not deliberate and vote them favorable action we in effect have done that anyway because we can now go back and say on fable action we have a new mechanism to fund issue is do we vote to open and close this is you know mark's point is well if we vote to put these articles on the board of selectmen then we are in effect recommending them horsehair and then to sit down and deliberate and change our mind afterwards and vote no against our side so vote in favor of this which they likely will then we're we're we're caught with what we do then we have to fund it somehow it doesn't give us any time to consider an alternative funding mechanism if we suggesting then we're kind of left short there with with if it's not favorable action by tell me what do we do at that point chairman i think based on that comment david if you would if you would wouldn't mind i would be in favor of opening closing the war on these oracles tonight just to meet the deadline but i would ask mr chairman and david phillips i would like to really see the analysis on this matter before we deliberate they actually the i guess the issue on the i'll tell you what i said to the war committee on wednesday we have a six hundred thousand dollar budget for snow removal we've exceeded it by seven hundred forty eight thousand dollars and that basically was typically in an average year we get forty five to fifty inches of snow we got over one hundred inches under an eight inches of snow in town basically this allows us to cover the cost of that overage through free cash  fund strategy was basically choose again we're waiting for the third quarter it appears that the shortfall will be approximately five hundred thousand dollars the superintendent will be making that presentation to the war committee at the end of the month clearly the sped stabilization fund was established as you know to cover this particular circumstance where we we basically have an overage in special ed which see the three quarter to validate that basically five hundred was still the number but we clearly know the number will be a least five hundred thousand and hopefully will certainly have a chance david phillips to see that analysis prior to voting substantively this matter whatever point to put it on the may and segment because i think it's important to understand whether we have a favorable voter and i'm willing to move forward with this but you know i think the lesson learned is that a million dollars is a million dollars i mean it's not procedural and my mind and you know it implicit in these war warrant articles are some substantive and policy decisions that we i think having no but for the future i think that the administration and i need to work more closely together to get these in advance to the board so that we can have a substantive discussion as the highest elected officials in the town so again we're not voting on the we're not avoiding it we're not voting on this in favor of favorable action which is voting to open and close may david wrote likely the plea in which he just substantively thinking just thinking about we're going to see some additional analysis maybe there isn't much to see but david are you going to be present hopefully someone will you be i'm talking to special the two special town meeting orders that we just signed there's others there's other ok great you're not going to vote those tonight ok vote on those tonight to make a recommendation to vote to make a recommendation tonight we will deliberate more closely on those and then vote at a later meeting of the form a six of course on or before may six why don't we since we are in the tone in the meeting it mode of thinking why don't we skip to discussion and vote on annual town meeting warrant articles ok and some of these warrant articles you know specifically in segment we're talking about war and article one through nine some of them are very procedural ok so i think i think they'll be easy to vote on article nine which is the citizens petition non binding resolution so over policy and all the my board is meeting tomorrow morning and is scheduled to have a substantive discussion on that article so i suggest since we're wearing two hats even though we're the same people i suggest we have that light board discussion before we  officially both as a board of selectmen whether to recommend approval of article nine does that sound that's all some assurance of the point is we'll get we'll debate we've discussed a little bit further to morrow and then we'll vote substantively on the assign appropriate alphanumeric references you know what typically happens is his bylaws are adopted by town meeting and then they have to be inserted in our books and their numbering may change some of the numbering may change and technically when you change the numbering you're also changing the bylaws so you have to go back before town meeting and request permission to change the numbering so what this would do is this would authorize citizens petition one year moratorium in a portion of the single residency zoning district on the construction of oversized single family dwelling units you may recall that is the mor prohibits people from demolishing homes and then building oversized replacement homes and it measures the height of the house up to the ridge of the roof they say thirty two feet up to the highest petition and in favor of some of the restrictions on hike that they be suggest here so i think that some of these buildings are a character for certain neighborhoods so i don't know i don't know how you fall in mehmet i mean there were you brought into expensive here you know well let me sh a town meeting on this matter but they just raise it as a point tonight you know we just rode in on the citizen petition and i don't know what the time frame is phyllis to submit amen board chair himself has indicated they will be looking down wide the why don't we have a moratorium time wife ok let me make a suggestion ok why don't we vote on this article and then why don't we direct our town administrator to would deflect the debate to a town wide discussion versus just a specific area because i do support their moratori mars why don't we get that information and then i suggest that that is something the planning board is there for a reason so that it's something i would suggest that we would ask the planning alternative to it to family dwelling you know just by way of summary currently are zoning by law doesn't allow two families by special permit and allow single families only on laws that are five thousand square feet or greater and there are situations where you know that there are a limited number of lots in town that that have eight to ten thousand square feet of area where actually below ten thousand square feet eight to nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine square feet of area and because they can't be subdivided in two independent law it's because both lots wouldn't be five thousand square feet developer has no alternative and planning board has no bite but to allow the construction of a two family such a lot with this b amendment would do is it would allow the planning board to work with the developer to build single family homes on smaller markets rather than just the two family home on a larger lot so for example case in point there was a mob that was about ninety nine hundred square feet you know the developer was a man of all to constructing two single family homes which could be more in character with belmont you have more open space you know for example space in between the two units but they were unable to engage in that kind of a planning discussion because the by law didn't allow any lights under five thousand square feet to be built upon by a single family home so question to me is if they can't do all that work in one year you know if they can only realistically do one hundred fifty thousand i work the more we spend five hundred dollars but i think the discussion was that based upon the amount of work  on clearly i think the selection well where the fire that happened on saturday evening and basically with the court work of the belmont fire department with mutual aid from cambridge early to wal in watertown the fire was contained again damage was done to that block of stores but i think it was evidence that the fire department through their quick action allowed this store front not to be used the images they could have been so i just i think you know closer to eight thirty david showed up as well david kato and you know i was i was told that flames were shooting thirty forty feet up in the air from the roof of that building and for our firefighters were very heroic they were able to contain the fire prevent it from spreading onto other neighboring properties we had firefighters from cambridge you know from watertown back up from lexington and  utilize parking elsewhere instead of the conservation property and this decision is in part based upon further review by the p g a of the possible traffic impacts of the site in a reevaluation with using our conservation land for the parking of how many vehicles a thousand vehicles you know and it's too bad you know it's too bad you know it's one of the alternatives emitting gasoline and our land is is much too valuable so i'd like to say that is a welcome decision i think from the towns for specter as well with that more flood just where the meeting with regard to requesting that they provide financing and training as that discussed at the meeting so if you want to take a vote to send this to joseph nolan at city point partners who is the individual that represented the so from ocean just to prove the letter will send it out before you ok i don't have a problem n and i think these are all licenses that we have in the past ok they are renewable and there are no outstanding license violations are safety violations current or objections from any any department heads so i will entertain a motion to approve all three for move ok and that's for the approval of all second on favor that said i think no other business to come before this board at ten forty what a dedicated board we