waste management january seventh through the seventeenth no exceptions please plan ahead all of the recycling of trash information will be to cardboard drop off events saturday december eighth nine till twelve noon and saturday january fifth nine till twelve noon at the d p w yard thirty seven c street that is c like in the letter charlie not see like an ocean that was weather permitting so if you have a lot of amazon type boxes you want to get rid of september december eighth in thirteenth the sixteenth which you still have time for festive holiday reception has already passed so i won't go into that but the indigo fire pottery studio has guess artists it's here the town hall complex one thousand more street third floor of the home or art form or building art gallery  robotic technology to help with pain management productivity and fitness and aging population do you believe robots can help as we age you can answer that for yourself would you ever consider using one in your daily life joining us as shares more about new developments as products and why believes robots are an important innovation for the future of health care the cost is free again that is friday december twenty first one fifteen pm at the beach street center and the other  the newly installed breeze table speed bump in front of my home at eighty five cross street i reached out to the town at least six weeks ago the reason i'm here tonight is just to stress the importance of what's happening with this raise table i'm not sure what's happening in other areas of town where it's been installed but in our particular area it's causing extreme shaking in vibrations in the house i have been working with mr you could tarion he had come out very briefly he basically told me i have this in writing that i'm feeling vibrations because i'm sensitive he did admit to feeling them across the street at mr mercds residence and it's a serious issue and i just feel like it needs to be addressed in vetted i was informed that the town needs to follow a process which would be very lengthy to address the situation and i just really need to stress to everybody the extremeness of this the house is literally shaking we're experiencing cracks in the walls in the foundation and i just needed to be addressed in my daughter would actually like to have something to say as well shakes it's to the point where i wake up in the middle of the makes my bed shaking i sit at the table to do homework and the table shaking and like my mom said there are more cracks in the walls like almost every wall downstairs has at least like a  small crack along the front of the boards which wasn't there before and the bump i know was there to stop speeding but people aren't stopping and the faster the car goes in the bigger the car it shakes there were snowplows going by the day that it snowed and it was almost every like five minutes it was like violent shaking and there's no room in the house that it doesn't do that and it's difficult to get things done so i think something should be done about it i just like to add one thing the reason we're here tonight is because this is a serious issue it's not something as simple as we don't like a speed bump out in front of our our house it's really unobtrusive in the way that it looks and if it did actually come the traffic that would be a great thing unfortunately it's not only not calming the traffic it is doing serious damage to our home and i would just really like the courtesy of the town to to hear us and to come out and spend a reasonable amount of board meeting tonight would agree to have that removed he said the engineering department came out i heard the rattling in the my windows then these speed bumps can be such a problem that in other parts of the country there's been legal cases where they have taken them out there and they've had to take a moment one of the reasons why you might not have heard other areas i believe this claim below us in these buildings and that probably in acts more as a sponge causing this which is one of these that you don't want and ground is moving you have gas lines running through that area also well we don't need to have another lowrance here so your utilities could be in jeopardy by allowing that then that to what i'm asking the selectmen is i don't know if any one person here except the selectmen can make the decision to remove you know we've been looking at this and now for six or eight weeks i think it's time to make the decision investigating we have not been able yet to substantiate the claims that they're making and that is not to suggest that i don't believe that they believe the claims that they're making we've just been unable to substantiate them we are in the process of testing an application for that's used by a smartphone to that measures vibration has used it already on cross street along the race tables in front of their properties he's also used it as a this is does a test runs now mind you he also used it on the concourse at the belmont center commuter rail as well and so the device works we've seen it operating the next thing we'd like to do is go back into the properties if you want to clarify one thing are you gretchen never said that he experienced vibration in mr mercer his house what he said was that he heard a plate vibrating on a window sill and he only heard that once and so but as i said i take their concerns seriously but i think it's important that we do substantiate the claims as best we can because these are the race tables that were installed on cross street these are traffic calming elements that are used in a lot of communities i see them as being one of the one of the prime tools that we have belmont to help slow traffic down i think we need to have the ability to substantiate claims that property owners make about the adverse impacts of these tables because if we are just going to take it at that if somebody doesn't like them they don't want them whatever the reason may be and we have to remove them or even worse non stall them at all we are removing a very significant tool that we have in our disposal to calm traffic in the town and that is my biggest concern and once again not to minimize your concerns because i really do appreciate where you're coming from but i do have a concern that we're going to lose a main tool here in our in our efforts to try to mitigate speeding and that's out of the month thank you glenn i mean obviously we do take these comments seriously which is why you know glenn's been looking into it and i know i've seen the e mails going back and forth and i know the town is working on this but this is you know that the neighbors and the whole windbreak area had asked for something to be done for the speeding on cross street and this was the race was put in place want to address briefly the the comment about having them removed immediately that the unfortunately because of the time of year that we're out we're not going to be able to get a contractor back its remove them removing them also includes patching the roadway once the element is removed and we just don't have the ability to do that in the middle of december which is one of the reasons why this has to push until the spring as we evaluate this and we hope to have a conclusive answer or a conclusive response before that time there's been some talk about actually holding up a public process to discuss this is well i think that's the process that was alluded to earlier all of this once again in the guise of trying to come up with some kind of a solid baseline to discuss these elements before you know just to make sure that we're doing our due diligence you i don't want to belabor the point i understand what you're saying i understand what he's saying we're obviously not solving it right here right now but one of the you want to mention to you you don't think we're up here to something that is not happening one of things only you can do all the study in the world but that's not going to stop the damage being done in the the underground utilities are all rob buildings and i have checked with contract yes and these units can be i says can you remove these when i talk to this particular condor could you remove these but no matter what is said or done here it's not going to stop the damage now we would not be here and less we had a grievance and i think you have an obligation to satisfy these agreements as if this is the only place that you having it  and by the way one of those race cross walks on cross tree was taken back out i don't know why but it was but i know when i drive down the it's taken oh just the two places where the where the slots about this wide glass up against the window is that's all i need to know and he walked out you know i don't think he was in there for three minutes but it sounds like they want to get back in the stores or so at any rate i mean i don't we're not we're not solving this fight this is just a community common resident comment period it's not up when can i when can or will this board decided that well our grievances are going to be taken care of them protect our buildings of cells a community development is working on it and six weeks and they've been out there a couple of times i'm in my house for three minutes i mean if you understand there's scores and scores of people in the winter gayborhood who want those i've been in the phonebook and right in front of this house for forty eight years and i have seen you know i'm not going to methods of the ten year waiting these speeds that we can solve these problems with you're doing damage to the environment you're doing damage to the cars every time somebody says you know you're increasing the time frame for the fire and i never have a problem the fire engine going over them because they stop and they roll over meanwhile some heart attack down the street is being held up i mean it's a lot there's a lot there i mean i think that what we need to do is we need to get to the facts of the stuff rather than just have subjective statements about i mean are there it's damaging utilities or not it's causing response time issues or it's not is causing vibrations or is not these are not subjective things there's meters you can put them in they either vibrator they don't and it's all i mean i just i think that this is one of those things worse i think scientifically we can answer every single one of those questions it sounds like that's what community development is doing i think we should let them do what they're doing and then if glen comes back and says there's a problem then we can address it but can you have him back and says there isn't a problem that maybe we don't address it maybe we put it on the future agenda to discuss whatever the results of the of the testing is but i don't think i personally don't want to go taking something out we just paid to put in if we can substantially in the future it could cost a lot more can you explain can you tell to the instrument doesn't work very good doesn't show what i mean i mean done we we take your complaint first i'm hearing about it if i've got an e mail that respawn apologize so it's not like we're not taking the grievance serious in six weeks is the first time you've heard of an please let me finish in the glen is looking into it you know we can look at other ways perhaps one of the things to think about on whether the signage is there too sometimes folks don't know if you're not driving that street you know on an ongoing basis like i do now you know the mumps are there i'm slowing down at those by that rather than speeding up that can perhaps have a little bit of an impact in terms of vibration so do we need to sign them more than we have like speed bump and have that sort of thing i think we'll look at all of those matters i mean it's not like we're not taking the series that we are done and will respond when i can and we're not going to ignore it when as soon as the you you and still raise these issues we immediately put glenn's office on task on this thing so it's not his only anyone's ignoring anything as soon as you mentioned it we immediate community developers start working on it they're walking on cross street when school had expressed deep concern that cross street has become a speedway and i think it had and i think these traffic calming measures have helped to slow the traffic down so there is a positive impact to having those there too and really the safety of our children and i think you know i know you agree with this is paramount to this board you know as you continue to look at these traffic issues the glens right i mean we're looking at putting race tables throughout the town as a way to slow the traffic down town because people are public service i need that pavan also before you break up the piping in there no matter how little it is and just because something is putting an instrument in and then maybe the instrument isn't working properly also says all kinds of variations why back on your  so there's a lot of things there can vary these studies all over but one and one on this i'm going to be honest i mean we've got a lot of people here we have a very loose and i mean if we heard i understand what you're saying i get it but we're not taking it out tomorrow if that's what you're asking i don't think that you're here and i want to i want to know when we're going to get results don't think we can give you a set date well can going give us a set date when you when you might have an answer to this one can you give us a set date when you might have an answer to this problem glen clancy director and i can't give you a set date but i would think january's a reasonable time frame and i thank you so we're going to move on to the next item in the agenda unless there's anything new a new subject matter all right next item on the agenda collins center presentation collins group we appeared before you earlier in the year and made a presentation on the long range revenue and expenditure forecast for the town of belmont at that time we discussed the strengths  and opportunities of using a revenue expenditure forecast and specifically to techniques that can be used in relation to the forecast the first was a gap analysis gap analysis  the difference is the gap is between the revenues and expenditures on an annual and a cumulative basis and that was basically the heart of our presentation in our last meeting the second use was something called the what if scenario and what if scenario just to describe that again is that once you have a gap analysis you could then drive back to the analysis in a den of fire one variable and isolated  and to see what happens if you change the variable if you change collective bargaining from i'm making this up now from two percent to one point seven five percent or from two percent to two and a quarter percent how does that ripple existing funds that reside in the general stabilization fund are you stuck there would be a dramatic increase in the gap or in the deficit projected fiscal year two thousand and twenty two  the outcome of that meeting was a suggestion that before considering possibility is of overrides it would be best to look at other possibilities  and what can be done to effect or drive that those projected deficits down and so this evening we're going to start with the basic gap analysis that we presented to you and we're going to look at a series of options to can be used those options so there is those options i'm going to list for you know and i'm going to show you the impact of them but we're going to start off with the original forecast and development now you may recall it was a wall of numbers at the last meeting but you may recall that in our gap analysis we used nine hundred thousand dollars of estimated new growth development in fiscal year nineteen and seven hundred thousand dollars a year at the year after from twenty to twenty four so we're going to be looking at that the second another option we're going to look at is what happens if we have no inflation factor for fiscal year twenty four other expenses excluding schools so this would be all that the town department will expenses which in the original forecast were projected at about a two percent and two percent inflation rate what would happen in fiscal year twenty if we reduced that for one year to zero just flatlined those that was those numbers another option that we're looked at is what happens if we lowered the steps in our projection for salaries now the way we do a forecast particularly in for wages and salaries is we pull the numbers for wages and salaries off of the minas financial statements and included in wages and salaries are whole bunch of lines some of which have are not affected in any way by cola or inflation they're flat things for a stipend or something longevity or something along those lines and so you have some have some since we use the two percent for the entire wages and salaries there might be some area or of read reduced potential reduced expenditures and that in addition to that we used a one half of one percent step increase for all employees well you don't have all your employees who are at the top step mutually about a third of the employees a third to forty percent of your employees half steps in the the remainder of them are already at the top step now things change of course employees get older new employees come on so there's always a changing pattern there but it's fair to say that there might be some room in your step account if we looked to reduce your estimate of forecast by one quarter of one percent in steps the next thing we did is we looked at what would happen if we increased local receipts by a hundred fifty thousand dollars the proper overhead charge was being used and finally we looked at an option what if we created an enterprise fund for the recreation part and therefore creating overhead charges back to the general fund as well now before we go into each of those options i want to take you back to the original forecast again it's a wall of numbers and i do apologize for it but i wanted to point out to you the bottom line annual surplus or deficit and particularly the column fiscal year two thousand and twenty two you see that the deficit for fiscal year twenty is six hundred in two thousand and then three hundred and thirty thousand for twenty one and then suddenly in fiscal year tw twenty two the estimated deficit annual deficit is two point three million dollars and the reason for that again just to remind you is that you had money placed in your general stabilization fund which was a strategy that was going to be used in place over a number of years to offset any deficit that you have you now have approximately two point i might get this number wrong two point six million dollars of in that general stabilization fun soon that one point three million dollars would be used in fiscal year twenty the remaining one point three million dollars would be used in fiscal year twenty one and therefore you wouldn't have anything in fiscal year twenty two and therefore your your deficit would loom to very very high number so that's that is those were the numbers that we presented to you at our last meeting and that was the the reason i guess for the charge of going back and looking at at the revenue growth under the japanese i was correct in twenty eight my property tax levy is ninety five million and change then it increases this there are some out in the hallway in the original gap analysis we projected new growth development for fiscal year nineteen of nine hundred thousand dollars and  and fiscal year twenty three twenty four we were projecting a conservative number of seven hundred thousand dollars a year since that presentation the actual new growth has been certified and it was certified at one million seventeen thousand nine hundred thirty dollars so there for one hundred seventeen thousand dollars of new revenue is now in the mix and in the base so for this what if scenario we put the actual new growth certified new growth in fiscal nineteen and we increased the fiscal year twenty through twenty four new growth from seven hundred thousand to seven hundred fifty thousand dollars a year now why do i go through that long explanation for you on the slide you we have a live in years of new growth and you could see that your average over eleven years is eight hundred sixteen thousand dollars a year so the question should be asked can the town afford or assume that's a better way of saying assume that there will be new growth in the future years of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars well the eleven year average indicates it can beat you never know one way or the other it's intil it actually happens you might be in your assesses a new building department might have insight on what's going on as far as development in the town whether small development a large development but at least the historical record historical trends indicate that that option of increasing your estimate of new growth development probably can be done the next option we go to there was an option for level funding and the expenses i have no spreadsheet or slide for that only because we're just basically zeroing it out for the the original forecast but the i will show you the impact of that in the latest slide also the steps again i don't have a slide for that there's no need for a slide for that it just we're just taking going from essential e a gross of two and a half percent increase a year per for salaries and wages to two want a quarter percent a year for salaries and wages and again i'm assuming it's coming out of steps not of the collective bargaining so there's no there's no issue here of whether the union is going to say or dollars in fiscal year twenty and that's of course would be in the base well the slide before you know the local receipts slide history gives you an indication of your actual collection of local receipts over a period of time we have five one two three four we have four years of actual and i want to point to the column saying f y two thousand and eighteen actual you see that you've collected actually collected in the year just ended nine million seventy four thousand dollars for in the gap forecast for fiscal year twenty we are estimating seven million nine thirty two so there is a million one of excess revenue there so if the question is asked can the town afford to raise their estimates of fiscal twenty by a hundred fifty thousand dollars yeah it's likely that you can would have no impact at all and would on me put it this way it would not be an over aggressive move that would be risky would would not be very risky at all to do that now we go to our enterprise zones and we have one for water and sewer and we also created one that now does not exist for the recreation department and what we did is we took the water and saw a budget that existed in the forecast but we then drilled down on what the overhead charges were and i want to just point out the lines in the very bottom you see total overhead charges which is adding down and then you see this next to last row it's just forecasted overhead and that's what we had in the forecast so the very last line says lost revenue or you could put it in if we expanded revenue increased revenues if you went to the correct overhead charges there would be a dramatic increase in revenue going back to the general fund which would be used to offset any deficits that you had where do the overhead charges on put it in a different way in the existing overhead charges what is not in there that should be in there that's the best way of  saying the biggest number of the biggest change from what you have to what you probably should have is the an estimate for retirement now the good thing is do you have first of all you have an extremely good consulting company siegel consultants is i think the best and they in their estimates of retirement cost to get you to full funding by twenty twenty nine twenty thirty they have what  each of your enterprise funds should be budgeting in each fiscal year to meet and get one hundred percent of fully funded for your retirement so the number we're now using in these water enterprise fund in the sort enterprise fund are in fact numbers that come from an outside independent actuary that says this is what you should be putting into water and this is what you should be putting in this war for retirement and there was a big difference there if you see in fiscal year most of the growth in overhead is from that one number we do put in some numbers for overhead for what i refer to as service departments departments that service everybody the treasury department services everybody the accounting department services everybody the h r department any info technology department service people and so we want to come up with ratios of but conservative ratios i'm not one who likes to  over estimate the overhead charges in enterprise zones because of frankly think that that's it's not what the enterprise fund legislation was about to be honest with you there are communities to do that i think improperly but in this particular case we want to be very conservative so for instance on the general management services which is you know the the the selections office the town the minister's office we said well let us assume one percent of the town administrators office goes to managing some of the activities of the water and to price fund and so forth i was on accounting and treasury we looked at the the water revenue to the total revenue of the town the  revenue to the total revenue of the town and so for them we came up with ratios that the accounting department consumes six point nine two percent of the treasury services and a little blind in the accounting services and five point two six percent of the treasury services all else are really is one percent would trying to be very very conservative in this again i know communities did use higher numbers ratios but being conservative you could justify your conserve number over a less conserve memory any day so there's a large number here and i put that in red the total of ahead and read that third line from the bottom just to highlight what the number that we would pop into the gap analysis under this what if scenario when we get to that and a review we did the same thing with the sore enterprise fun began the biggest change is in retirement and it comes right out of you siegel at your report you go from forty five thousand to four hundred fifty thousand tenfold increase again the same ratio as the ratios for the departments of the same very small amount but you could see that revenue expansion for overhead charges for the fiscal twenty for soar is nearly seven hundred fifty thousand dollars i mean seven hundred fifty thousand dollars could come from th we're enterprise fund back to the general fund to support services in the general fund which means that that money is going to reduce that deficit gap that we projected in our original forecast finally the recreation department there is no enterprise fund in the recreation department but there could be i know many communities to have enterprise zones for for recreation we again did the same thing we pulled health the recreation department and that's how we got that number we had to create that number anyone could use any other methodology if they want but you know if the number changes the change would be de minimus frankly and again the percentages on the left side for the line departments the accounting treasury town manager in full are the same so again in fiscal year twenty if you adopted the enterprise fund for a creation that would generate another hundred six thousand dollars of revenue for the general fund and i want to all of these very very quickly and i give you a sense generally a sense of what they mean to the gap that we presented our last meeting but now i'm going to show you and this is a wall of numbers on i want to go slowly over this you see the first grouping on top says the original forecast and that was the forecast we presented to you the forecast indicated that we projected that  hundred in two thousand dollar deficit in twenty three hundred thirty thousand dollars deficit in twenty one and then suddenly a two point three million dollars deficit in twenty two and it goes down now under this what if scenario the key to is we want to isolate one variable at a time and so we start with the original forecast we enter in the changes for these options to see what the effect would be so if you could see under if we increase we did increase new growth by the original use in the original new growth for nineteen and then fifty thousand dollars there out you change deficit if you just use change that one variable you go from six hundred two thousand dollar deficit to four hundred forty four thousand dollars deficit in iraq if you wanted to take all non school other expenses and just level funding for fiscal year twenty and by the way some you can and some you can't you know i didn't drill down to every line item within every single department but just the general approach you would go and you did enough is only for one year you're not talking about level funding forever but just for one year i think it's doable it would go from six hundred two thousand to four hundred thirty three thousand for deficit so again not a big change in the deficit but slight improvements if you change the steps from one half of one percent  one quarter of one percent you go from six hundred two thousand to four hundred fifty two thousand again a small change if you used increased local receipts by one hundred fifty thousand you'd go from six hundred two thousand dollars deficit to four hundred fifty two thousand now the big change is of course if you just didn't do any of that but you just took the water and sore enterprise overheads correctly under that scenario it's interesting because suddenly your deficit in fiscal year twenty in fiscal year twenty one is eliminated and your deficit for fiscal year two thousand and two goes from two point three million dollars down to two million fifty thousand dollars and finally creating a recreation enterprise fund doesn't away a heck of a lot in year one because there was always an assumption the revenues equaled expenditures but in in the out years there's a slight increase a slight decrease in the deficit by just doing nothing else but creating an enterprise fund so that's the individual pieces but now it gets the interesting part this took you through that because i in my opinion the proposals that we put on the table are not political they are some of them are painful i'm not going to hide that one at all because when you increase enterprise fund overhead for water and sewer your water bill is going to go up and your rates your increase rates because you have to balance it but what it does far your operating budget is that it creates a surplus in fiscal year twenty in fiscal year twenty one and you see that i painted it in red you have a surplus of one million three sixty two in year one and one million three twenty three in year two now as i said in the last meeting that those dollars if they are created if you do all those options those dollars cannot be used that was dollars that savings that surplus has to then be put into a general stabilization fund because you are deep the existing general stabilization fund and that created a structural deficit so you have to take that surplus increase put it in there in order to be honest prevent the possibility of a lowering of your barn rate now i did a quick analysis on it here in the projection by sent it on to the administration here what would happen if you went from your last one one rating step if you went from a aaa to a double a plus average the average cost of one step drop in your bond rating is somewhere between fifteen basis points and forty basis points so i took an average i said well let's cut it in the middle and say what happens if you lose twenty five base your interest rate on your borrowing goes up by twenty five basis points on that large school construction that you're about to do well i wouldn't mind you that's a dead explosion over it it would add about eight million dollars of cost over the life of the borrowing which would then drop into the property tax levy so why is it important to keep your liquidity up it's very important to protect your bond rating so that you don't have extra costs which are then pushed into your your levy so you have surpluses in two thousand and twenty two thousand and twenty one and then i want to particularly look at fiscal year twenty two originally the forecast was two million three in fiscal year twenty two but if you use all of those options together you have surpluses in twenty and twenty one and your deficit in fiscal year two thousand and two goes from two point three million dollars down to seven hundred fourteen thousand dollars which is a significant a deficit in twenty twenty two now you do you deplete the the money that's in there now is depleted in fiscal year twenty one and that's why you should be using that basically revenue well your revenue comes from undesignated fund balance which is free cash it comes from your your trust fund for capital and ahmed for capital and it comes from your general stab those are the three items and so if in the largest piece of that is the general stabilization fund so when you depleted in two thousand and twenty one roughly it more than a third of your total liquidity goes away scenarios and i guess sort of what we're thinking before you open this all up is to go is when we get to the next item on the agenda is to create a second financial taskforce we're going to be discussing the charge we're going to discuss the charge after we all meet here tonight and then shortly least from looking at your analysis here stephen is really well done thank you very much is the water and sewer rate increase so what percentage has that what so is it in fact it's not not that it's a tax but certainly some increase in costs for all of the just on the the because i think some of these like new growth in local received seem to be a sustainable you know proposition but things like change in personal steps that's a contractual matter and i'm assuming it is but that is under the forecast process we just took the general number and we said for total wages and total personnel cost we took a two percent of at all you know it's just an let me put it into a different way it's probably an overestimate in the original gap analysis ok and then one of the question on on one level of fun other expenses that include salaries no committee in the past the budget has included i think six hundred twenty five thousand from the enterprise funds to the general fund budget that reflects i think that has reflected overhead or retirement funds have you taken that out there not just shifted it to them but you know in terms of the budget you want to see it here is the water you see in column nineteen of the in the first column you see three hundred and four thousand and next one is sore and you see four hundred seventy five overhead charges for nineteen and what we're saying is that instead of that they should be nine hundred thousand and five hundred sixty two thousand so so just to be clear the general fund would not have the six hundred twenty five thousand because that would be that would stay i mean there's two parts store budget is revenue and expenditures these costs are in the appropriation portion the general revenue or i'm so sorry ok so if we were to price for the water and sewer enterprise funds retirement correctly and correct our overhead charges instead of taking those funds that are the new appropriate charges for retirement costs and just placing them in the general fund for four general expenditures shouldn't they be allocated in principle for retirement costs in other words spent pension pension liability reduction me when they are part of the appropriation for pensions is four  you'll in the long range pension retirement right so we were two pieces one of them is two options you could have your retirement costs centered in the benefits section of your general fund budget and have your enterprise funds pay for that service or you could put the cost of retirement for water in the cost of retirement at the store and recreation not in those enterprise fund i same i understand that but i guess that this is my question so the funds that we would raise by pricing correctly within the enterprise funds for retirement are we already paying for those retirement costs through the general fund yes yes ok all right will mention them and but for the purposes one of the main rules over of an expenditure forecasting is you can't assume a change that hasn't occurred i could tell you that if there is a softening of the h maybe excise taxes may be sold delayed purchase of a car things of that nature state aid is possible you know if the state income goes down you could have ninety cut you could have i've lived through many a time when state aid in chapter seven in general systems have gone down five ten or fifteen percent i don't think the recession no one is talking about a recession that deep right now and sometimes recessions play themselves over over a couple years but for the purposes of this forecast i would be inappropriate for me to assume that it's going to happen if it doesn't if i may just to it tony to receive with the column center just expand upon something steve mentioned earlier that's really related to your question  really don't look at that extra in all economic factors but it will be important for the community as you move forward with with using this revenue forecast as steve mentioned to carefully work with your planning board and you're building the to look at the what is on the horizon locally for construction activities and i know you don't have a really large commercial industrial base  t there are other activities that they may be aware of that you should be aware of and that we would in fact recommend you do factor in to your to your revenue forecast or at least in a what if question yeah i would just point out to our local receipts we always forecast them very conservatively and we would forecast two years out at the same level that we're actually normally taking in in this current year so that's pretty that's appropriate given that although mary but i do have a question related to that which is with respect to receipts did you look at all at the increase in beyond looking at new growth the in increase in the number of people through some of the larger developments that we have had that we typically don't have in belmont such as at the uplands and also include cushing square which really isn't online yet but in terms of motor vehicle excise tax and some of those some of the other related receipts that beyond the new growth in the first of all this second engagement was limited to about twenty hours or so but in the original forecast which was one hundred hours of work  we had already built in new growth development we had built in increases in local receipts excise taxes going up by three percent a year believe the meals tax we had a two percent and departmental a few departmental we had going at one percent a year but the rest of the flat and again people said why excise tax will i've been looking at excise taxes for a long time and  someone has to buy a new car your values are going down on the existing car and when you replace it devalues sky high so it's just a depreciating value that they haven't and so typically that goes up by about three percent if it gets a real bad recession it could go down to two and a half to one and a half but it'll still grow  like it was any consideration given to the pilot payment from belmont light which i know hasn't changed in like ten years when we were talking to fifteen years well compelling to me is the liquidity message that you deliver him we have such a strong financial team and we've been able to maintain well because of you know the management around that issue our finances are aaa bond rating but as we approach  meant that we've experienced over the last three years and we have that in a different place we used to school departments projections in the school department had a budget we did a couple of things we we just re positioned the benefits of all departments instead of including the schools into the benefits package because that's a formulaic way we project forward but the numbers for benefits for the school department are they are just the way we thought they would be seven and a half percent but i have not seen let me just put it that way sped going up by seven a half percent for five years in a row which is what we included in our forecast so my understanding or my impression is that that was sitting there intentionally and strategically by the school department i would say to four additional staffing that may be needed if not then that will be another general i guess that's the point  making is that you know we've seen the need to increase staffing within the schools because the ongoing increase in rome and frankly you know what to build a new high school going to be going to continue to see that sort of attraction for you know folks who want to get into our community you know not only that but you build a to provide energy for and it's more expensive even though you have more efficient at the structure well the beauty of this is that we've got a good good timing on this because we still have some time while we have money in the stabilization fund to sort of play this out and have this next financial taskforce do its work before we hit any kind of wall so just hope the public understands what we're doing here is the override bought us a period of time and we're productively using it to try to avoid another override that say nothing else than the next item we're going to be getting into is the fight is the charge for this next financial task force for which many in this room may be interested but i don't know if the committees who are other committees here want to stay in session for that or not that up to you the one of one of our contracts was to work with the town to develop a comprehensive set of financial management policies just to get just briefly go back to over the process we started this back in i believe it was march  worked closely with both internal staff with the town administrative work closely with members of the of the warren committee the board of selectmen capital the capital committee many many a plan moving forward with many different areas of financial management and the second benefit is as steve mentioned how important is to maintain your aaa rating the bond rating agencies really place a high degree of importance on on i'm on probably four areas four years of finance one is your budget process two is your financial forecast that's what we've been discussing three is your capital improvement program and then four is a series of guiding financial management policies so the document itself is very comprehensive as i mentioned it was a result of many meetings it's it it's the proposal from the collins center it's not it's something that that you will be working on over a period of time to adopt modify the approach to this was was really twofold one we utilize best practices identified by not just massachusetts municipalities but the national government finance officers association very well respected  represent communities all across the united states so it's a very comprehensive plan and the other piece of it and i've included in the patrice included she had asked me to to specifically pull out from my records those policies guy procedures that belmont has previously adopted now may have been adopted by one committee so in the financial policies there are cash there are items that we've proposed in there based on best practices but then there are ideas in here that are in your existing practices yes not to say they shouldn't be changed or that they're good we did not as the calls it did not want to to to jump into that without a lot of discussion internally so that's going to be this has not been handed off is part of the time so task force that we're going to be doing i know is on the i was at the work committee meeting with there's a lot of discussion about it i know good financial task force charged discussion of possible vote this is to create a second financial taskforce which really is jumping off from what the concentra just provided to look through all this look at the policies look at the numbers and try to find out what they college center stuff and pulling out a run and i mean one of the items that is missing from this is the policies and to go through the policies and in depth like they want you really need a small group of people that's in it's in this the other thing that that you know if it whether we believe that's important is elected board and i think i do believe that we did have a member of the board of the give us one task force in you know that i think it's an important board in town i you know again i agree that limiting the number is important i mean you could always suggest perhaps that you don't need that one resident because there's going to be a number of applications are going to get them have to make a decision on that rather than only ever will be a resident well there are really that's right that's what i can never country and people i think that's sufficient right so right right exactly so the board of assesses brings information and brings levy information it brings you know now we can always tap into that but having them at the table to me i think was it was going to be a big public process us well until the number you have to do is you have one year and haven't see where they are yeah so i guess there's that and then i think the second question is ideally it would be nice if some of this guess they probably won't be done in time that's awfully aggressive i think it's a long term thing tom i think it really looking out over the next several years we want to get this done before the stabilization fund runs out that's to me i think a one year term to sort of put in place recommendations to this presumably the information to share of i don't think they'll have enough runway to sort of come in with sort of solid recommendations and package on the other hand patrice's you know you're doing the budget now and you you've seen what you've been working at the constant all this time you don't have to wait for the committee to implement something you think is a no brainer for like me yeah let me give john the op the superintendent of schools who's going to be needy if you get in that school out of the ground have an opportunity for him to decide whether he wants to serve or designee i have no problem with ok i don't i'm not on the f y twenty budget process that we're going through right now so i'm loath to wait for this group sort of a year from now to make a recommendation on that i think some subset whether or not it's this board or group of folks has to take a look at what the college there is recommended and make a decision as to whether or of the meeting you want to talk about the charge for the financial taskforce  done with the report recommendations and whatever we didn't do and for the f y twenty budget we can roll it into the twenty one and then where we can sail through and see if we can put that override off for future tell as long as we're going to or at least reduce it  next meeting next monday because the other monday is a holiday falling into the holiday season so we're backing up week to week so be nice if the various committees could put names forward for us for next monday then to fill the slot because i can tell you the slots are board of selectmen one so we have to pick a person school committee one word committee one capital budget committee one town administrator town treasurer school superintendent of schools or designee school finance director and so the so those if we could get those who are not identified as individuals those committees to put somebody forward to patrice's office so that we can create the committee monday on the seventeenth because otherwise it will have to wait till we meet jan force it's not out there i thought it was out there right sharp it's not that long so it's nine members one year appointed by board is likely but actually the board is like only points one person purpose to work off the five year friend anshul forecast developed by the center in conjunction with the approved financial policies of the town develop a multi year financial plan for the working off the financial forecasting that we just saw and the financial policies that tony just explained membership is the town task force comprised of town and school officials elected officials representative from various committees and citizens the task force will be comprised of the following members to be selected by the chairs of the respective boards or commissions or the selectmen one school committee one warrant committee one capital budget committee one the town a minister eight or the town treasurer the superintendent of schools or designee the school financial director and board of assessors one description is the task force will look at the following areas structural deficit salary in compensation fixed costs educational expenses operations and maintenance facilities revenue sources and review recommendations of the prior financial task force to identify specific budget growth areas that are increasing in unsustainable manner and provide financial programatic information in the development of the overall plan deliverable develop a list of potential actions prioritized on size and duration of financial impact ability of town to adopt and any potential risks thought i just read the amended version of yap on revision yes those working off of it it doesn't say bound by it but i mean one thing we could have missed here if you think this makes sense is is we can this revise it's in the doubt to the respective committees and if they have any sort of changes we can take just consideration for next monday designee life what it's like to get these people up and running immediately agree with that this could work on that thank you troops next item's high school traffic working group motion from eleven sixteen eighteen meeting discussion and vote for wh i'm going to recuse myself unfortunately because i have to because i live on a golden street we come and so tom just you know just let you know for the viewing audience as well that the high school traffic working group is continuing its meetings in fact we have i mean this friday we had one rather less it came in by helicopter how us in the unit on that street if you have access restrictions so we we said let's consider that you know and evaluate that so that was the motion that with the recommendation to this board we can talk about that time secondly i think what we gathered in perhaps might be helpful to you and we can provide to time is that we gathered all of the recommendations that we've provided so for to the board that we you and i voted on prove and we ask glenn about you know how do we know execute on this and we have all these wonderful recommendations in the sort of floating out there and so what glenn is planning to do over the next he's out there now what glenn is planning to do between now and the end of the early states what he told us is to hire a traffic consultant engage a travel consultant he doesn't need our approval to do that he might come to us next monday and tell us you know where he might stand on that because i think we made all these recommendations from you and i have  had at the last has the traffic working group while you were here to go to or to means you go about access restrictions from get out of the auto state when you're outside there one of the things we talked about is now that we have all the wonderful recommendations would we go from here and you you you discuss the need to hire traffic so that if you want to elaborate on that and also on this recommendations well sure glenn clancy director of community development yeah so there have been a number of recommendations that have come out of the high school traffic working groups on the thing that just made that point so there are a lot of things that are going to have to be evaluated i see the new transportation advisory committee is sort of being the mechanism to do a lot of the public vetting of these ideas street we've got the term restriction recommendation here this evening they were a series of recommendations that were made that were really more direction for the high school building committee because it involved the signal designs of code in concord ave so yeah i mean i i i haven't really determined yet how all these little projects will piece together and i say that because i don't know if it'll be one consultant that does all of it or whether it makes sense to kind of petition it up one of the things that we're working through right now through the complete streets process is how to prioritize these projects recognizing that there is a schedule for when the high school will be constructed when the new high school will be open an available there's also an immediate impact on traffic to the hinge of trowbridge neighborhood because of the the rerouting of pedestrians and access during the early phases of construction and so i you know there are these little sort of subsets of projects that have to be evaluated and we're determining the best way to bring consultants on board and have them knock these things  if that's now beginning then then that whole interest that whole area and cockpit avenue is going to be impacted so do we need to start to think about implementing some of these recommendations right so what we discussed was the come september come the new school year in the fall of nineteen the traffic patterns will be rearranged so that there is access on the hidden jatropha bridge side of the parcel and therefore we recognize that there has to be some mitigation some amenities in place for pedestrian bicycle access in the hidden job which neighborhood i'm so that is the neighborhood that we're focusing on immediately the idea would be that we develop some kind of strategies over the course of the spring have the construction months of june july august to implement what's decided upon so that we're ready for the opening of school in september and then of course will be simultaneous conversations i think about school in golden because i've said all along you know what what school st go to st what they experiencing is immediate i mean it's occurring right now it's not it's not that i mean there will be an additional impacts from the new high school but they're already dealing with traffic issues and so you know i think we have an obligation to look at their perspective absolutely months ago looking at the complete streets process that we're in now determining whether some of these projects can be pulled oh and identified as a complete streets project in prioritized for funding through the state if that can't be done then to determine how we can fund these things internally maybe using paper management funding or some other source but yeah i know there's this there's the there's a priority station of the projects and then there is the golden street is pretty well closed until you know because the construction activity is set to begin in april that window has closed and as i mentioned earlier there has been some direction coming out of the committee to the board of selectmen that will go to the designers of the signalized intersections funded by the high school building committee the left turns the the access in and out of go in street all of that stuff would be evaluated by the designer for this for the permanent signals that would be in there's a belief that it needs to wait until the high school is open but that is something i think that is still being vetted through the high school building committee right so this is got to do with the room the renewal of the license for star market to serve alcohol we've got four plants in the application we have more data this year i'm sure not to sell alcohol and i guess the question was is it  is being kept to the to the same to the required square footage which i believe in the paperwork we have here says that it is yes and i guess you want to introduce yourself and tell us how it came to steve during i'm still a director at the stock  a chair glenn clancy director of community development a couple of inspectors from committee development with stock market we didn't inspection to check up consistency with the conditions that were established when the license was  issued everything was in order as a gentleman said there was some confusion about the lottery but that that question's been answered i should also state that the allowed square footage in the in the conditions is actually larger than what the store was using at the moment so condition has a fixed amount of square footage and there's also a floor plan that identifies how they achieve that square footage so my inspectors went in they they went by the plan and determined that in fact they were using less than what the plan identified yep only thing i would note and i would just since you're here and i've got a star market a bit not that there's anything wrong with it but i mean i know when i go to that they have those little displays in each other just the food aisles outside of the out of the side of the alcohol area you know you have a little special things that kind of hang off the shelf  or you know vertically hang off the shelf into the aisles when you walk down the aisle things stick out like a blade sign kind of thing well she's not picking them up on the camera aisle and i see the things like packs of ping pong balls and like red solo cups which clearly there's just a little you know obviously for the liquor because otherwise why would you know ping pong balls in the middle of the cereal aisle so i was this i mean i don't know if that's a that's not a i move that we approve the retail all alcohol liquor license for star markets star markets company located five thirty five triple robot one mass second unfair thank negotiations with nonunion personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non union personnel fire chief in a motion to go into executive moved second  cause of their choice and so it was directed towards the fire department so we'd like to use that money for employee appreciation vents one of the things that during these tough times is we really don't recognize and appreciate our employees enough in town so this allows us to do that without impacting the budget it's gone over well and so we'd like the town to accept the gift and questions recreation program in cooperation with the belmont fire department and good evening so we've got everybody here so i guess when you explain to us what's going on here ok the one of the problems with placing them around the town is this time of year they have to be in a conditioned cabinet so they've come up with a condition cabinet will actually have heat inside so that the batteries will not freeze and the gel that's on the pads won't freeze they'll do yes for the for the summer and so that these strategically located around the town at the athletic fields they will have a combination lock on them if somebody were to have an emergency they can dial nine one one at which time they would be given the combination code to open the box obtain the different relator and the different relate is give you voice prompts they'll tell you what to do with these instructions on them early different relation can get you almost fifty percent increase in your survival rate from sudden cardiac event so it is important to get that so this couple of things that are important when you suffer a cardiac event one is early different relation to is good c p r and three is quick transport to medical or quick medical attention like the paramedics getting so you know to let you explain the donation part jo impact a lot on the town's budget we thought a fund raising effort would be a good idea so we reached out to several youth groups in town and we'll continue to reach out to groups in town but the bellman soccer association after of the the second day that the fund raising letter went out they offered to fund exactly the amount that we asked for which was ten thousand dollars to get us started so this is charlie khan right from the belmont soccer association  are very very appreciative of a lot about thanks very much i think we'll continue fund raising efforts to to continue to maintain the the machines to train people how to use them even though they do tell you how to use them but  training for like the soccer coaches and youth baseball but but i think it's a very important thing we're following a model in westerly rhode island who already have them at i think it's  five ten years it's really the batteries need to be changed once or twice a year once once a year or every other year depending upon which model they get the pads last and depending on the mob you get a couple a couple of years they have to be placed there a little over one hundred dollars a set just for the the pads that go on so that it's a good investment for the ones we buy i believe you're looking at sol which is the same ones that we use on our trucks and those are eight nine years old so they're good unit they last a good long time and are they only one time use no well hopefully we never have to department and that was it chris and tore the parks to choose locations which would be the best location to one for people to know where they are and to see them in this second point was for power so we'd have to have permanent power puts all of the parks so it's like department says be done it's not that hard and it might be a little costly at the beginning but it can be done is th them on the back of the message board or ill have a standalone post so we're not having to build like a pack of no no no no very easy going to be underground electrical to it or it'll have to go underground yeah it's and that's why their location was so important so that we could find a good source of electricity and i guess are they going to go in before the fundraising is done are we paying this and their fund raising the come no we're going to start we have some more and we have some more funds committed from other groups that we haven't seen department in that regard so so training is an important part just letting the public know that those that that the equipment is there is an important part as well we have to we have to educate people to let them know that the opportunity to help is there and to be honest there's a lot of off duty police officers firefighters nurses doctors on our soccer fields and softball fields that know how to use this equipment so they just need access  to imagine i mean what dispatchers will know that they're there as well and could direct something to them so that they'll know that it's there they'll be able to give them the code on lock but the cabinet and they will be able to give them pretty arrival instructions and talk them through if they can't understand what they're supposed to be doing but it is important we've had multiple people over the years have cardiac events on field more field stuff that's great thank you so very much  about ten years ago or something through town meeting do we had financial pressures during the recession and you have commission had had its budget cut cut cut cut cut for a period of time and then it just got defunded entirely but the and if you go back to the town meeting notes at t was speaking as the chair of the board of health and he's here tonight to say that when we had the money we would bring it back and we never did so now we're bringing it back so the with the increase youth population in town we feel it's time to to bring this back now youth commission charge one out of twenty in the commission tonight just to be clear we're approving a charge for the youth commissions we'll have and then we will have to appoint it we'll have to discuss how long we want to leave open an application period for people to apply through the town website and then we will my guess would be like till the end of the year and then maybe our meeting again a very generous seventh it's our first meeting in january to maybe make the appointments at that time i know that patrice and sent out the draft everybody and asked if anyone had any comments but we so twenty seven twenty eight is still available you can give it back again so there you go first star so we did have a discussion i actually attended the the last board of health meeting i was invited to come pluck about this with them sitting on the other side of the table it's a little strange and we did talk about the numbers the range of three to twenty one is a little frightening a twenty one member commission seems a little much cumbersome the best but i believe it's in the statute statuary yeah well we don't have to appoint twenty one well we don't know and that was kind of my point is personally five to seven is a really fun usable range we will get twenty one applications and it's well you might be surprised the last commission was up as high as twelve  at its height so i mean there are people that are interested i mean i hope people people will we've had good luck with the whole lately because of our new outreach program for committee point which is getting pretty robust response so that's i hope people if they're watching for want to be part of the youth commission  grandparents aunts uncles of course that some point to be more open about that at this there's a clarification here the youth coordinator receive administrative oversight by the director of the health department which i think is probably well said and you're ok with that  ok i made a change down here number eight which said collaborate with other is had collaborate other entities i put the with and there i collaborate with other entities in town it said outreach worker school re source office will go inside added including but not limited to belmont wellness coalition the wayside and at least a couple areas here for that you want to come up lease and explain to us what's going on and why i don't think this is why i lisa pointed this out to me and i thought this was a good idea that we do not want to duplicate effort or and we certainly want there to be you know working together so this introduce yourself and your i'm lisa given area and i'm working with wayside youth and family support network and wayside has to grants that impact belmont one is a substance abuse prevention grant that's a state grant and the other is a federal grant which is a drug free community grant so the charges within especially the drug free community grant is about very similar they'll be a lot of overlap with what you know i saw the charge to the youth commission so you know building a we're raising awareness peer leadership working collaboratively with parents with community members with  departments so i just thought when i heard that the youth commission was being resurrected i just thought well you know we have such similar goals with regard to preventing youth substance use and keeping kids healthy and empowering them to make good decisions that it would just be a perfect opportunity to continue our collaboration wes's on the belmont wellness coalition so i'm just here as another agent in town working toward similar goals with regards to our youth and doing it collaboratively because that's part of the the of the youth commission's charge would be also we're working with that provide support for our students with obviously the youth commission as like ten things in the laundry list of things they're going to do so it's a much broader spectrum but coordinating with what's going on with the beaumont wellness coalition is key because i mean to do you want to duplicate effort or be in worse like at cross purposes with each other that doesn't make any sense i think it's it's an asset it's not a wonderful if you know the drags right we're sharing similar goals and yeah i don't know what it would look like i just i just know that i've already been thinking i've been talking to people that already said on the wellness coalition about potentially throwing their names in to so i think i feel like i'm already generating some awareness for the potential you know for potential applicants of the great and i think anybody out there who wants to serve you know would be would be well keep in mind that this is one of the aspects i wouldn't edition with all sorts of other things like filling voice that exist with their early release evening weekend you know finding things for kids to do when you know he thing struck off and that we ran into with the last commission was volunteerism you know anybody who's and i'll say this to the audience as well anybody that's looking to serve on the commission needs to realize you're going to be putting in some man hours when we have these events to be chaperoned and it shouldn't be just the commission members of  prior model yes i just want to clarify exactly the price structure but already marissa's contacting other town is just wonderful thinker and so she's already hit the ground running you know getting ready so that when the commission is put together we can if we get a dynamic group of people morris is pretty to work collaboratively and to you know we can shape we've been doing a lot of data collection which i know is a different place of focus but data informs practices and policies you know and we're looking in belmont is slated to do the youth risk behavior survey in the spring so that'll give us a lot more data on what you know our youth are engaging in and where that might help inform these activities so i just see it as a place for collaboration and cooperation and as you if you framed it perfectly we're all we're working we can be a more robust group if we all kind of work together given that a lot of our goals are shared so i'm here is a resource in here and you know just as just to continue the work over like you have a charge of the commission which changes as noted so you're all in favor i'd like you both so i'd like to see if we can you guys agree about leaving the the applications open till the end of the year and then that way we can get them and then we can look at them for your generous meeting and put it on the areas of the meeting to apply so if anybody out there knows anybody or any of you know anybody get people to apply you can do it easily through the town's website you can upload your resume and fill in the form and then we get all of ten years ago i wonder if anybody is interested in kind of coming back around just going there just a minute i just spoke to june how so when we decommission the youth commission the few programs we had left we handed over to the rec department and kept them going for a while with a movie theater for after school you call that's when i sign discussion a vote of one day liquor license application for event on december fifteenth two thousand and eighteen at the beach street center and this is through will baby shower  position and the major focus is to direct the recreation department kant's name is john marshall and he is currently the record creation director in arlington so i plan to bring this his appointment to the board on monday december seventh appointment was that your quest is one million dollars and sign funding for the community path that stretches from brighton street to the clark street bridge community development office notably jeffrey wheeler and spencer goober were instrumental in getting this application ready and submitted also the community path project has begun to meet and will be working on putting an r p out to bid to select a design firm to design phase one a and one b of the commune path pending final funding of fees and we're going to have to come back to this north south route thing after we've run down the what are your thoughts about this mr chair think we bring it back in january so it's two booked on the seventeenth and then and then in terms of you know a follow up i mean do we need to meet with mass thought i mean yeah i'm trying to get a sort of jewelry here we're trying to get the guy from and comments that came through the beach people p g p is also sorting through the research and design where the town is already conducted for example the time when traffic study multiple public meetings will be scheduled the first being the first week in february at this meeting b h p will ask the community what it would like to prioritize for funding projects for example pedestrian safety the first public meeting is scheduled for february and hopes to be able to present the board with a final prioritized list to submit to the state in order to receive consulting firm being considered by going as well in the recent ok thank you the bellman business study has been has been meeting in working on the business survey businesses will be asked to complete a short survey that focuses on their a separate entity with their part of money that they can i know this is a private business is there a broader point for us to think about i mean you know if this had been a community bank for any number yes so one of the suggestions was to meet with the principals from has been phenomenal you know corporate citizen over the years and bob leadership in particular you know and you know i think everyone's concerned least mine and others is that we may lose some of that so we're hoping to get a meeting scheduled prior to completely the town is not able to apply for green energy grants work was done by bowman light facilities and plan class to my office to get this completed spot because i had business the air and frankly i think it's so we can let you know i think from representing you know from our sort of activity in the community to be there in show that a member of the board