that the issue of amending the regional agreement predates my involvement in the school committee back in two thousand and ten so this has been a long process and it was predicated as i best understand largely by arlington although it's a separate issue separate and distinct from the building project is inexorably linked with the building project and i think the impetus for this was arlington  ballot which sends about a third of the member town students to a minute that they said the building probably has no hope of passing you know our community without changes in the your point in time per student basis so a task force actually two task force met one mark polow was involved in for a while one bob was on for a very you know from the start to get of the more active participants to come up with change and regional agreement which was brought voted on by the school committee and brought to member towns back in two thousand and fourteen and passed in ten towns one town voted no and five towns including belmont just passed over now we passed over for a couple of reasons one that had already been voted down so there was little benefit that any amendment to the regional agreement requires the unanimous approval or it requires the approval of all sixteen communities so once one community voted down there was little reason for us to go forward but there was also concern within our community and i think i found who was going to remain district and how would that impact the school sizing issue and i'll get into some more specific details so a bunch of towns voted no it seemed to be dead in terms of a change in the regional agreement until this past fall when minuteman was discussing how should we go about bringing the school building project debt issuance before the member communities let's set aside not i want to get too deep into the building project let's set aside that in my opinion in the opinion of others it was way premature to have those conversations since we don't even have the m s b a approval of the schematic plan yet and we don't know what the level of state of reimbursement is going to be that aside a newly appointed member of the school committee from box paro who also happens to be a selectman from box borrow made a very compelling case to the school committee that was actually in addition to the arlington argument a number of smaller community smaller sending community their interest in the regional agreement was as a way to potentially not definitively but potentially e district so you had to pressures saying the debt issuance has no chance of success in our community unless you first amend the regional agreement so minuteman said ok selectman you guys the selectmen in the communities we've been down this path before and we only got two thirds of the towns to say yes if the selectmen want to push this rate the selectmen have to take ownership of it so the selectman with the arlington selectman in the west and selectman pull together a group mark polo was our representative and they met on a number of occasions between november and december to do slightly change the regional agreement to make it more  amenable the whole of the idea was let's come up with something that we believe can be accepted by sixteen community so that's where we are today that group of selectmen hazmat it included the representatives from i would say at least fifteen of the sixteen communities it may have included at some point all sixteen and it's now been blessed so unless people want to talk more about history or have questions on that i thought it would make sense to just talk about the changes in the agreement and i'm not going to focus on how the two thousand and sixteen version differs from the two thousand and fourteen version because we never although the warrant committee and bob and i did discuss the fourteen amongst this group it never came before town meeting and so it's kind of irrelevant what the changes are since fourteen or so so to just kind of go through the changes and i think bob you know share this kind of cool brief two page summary  first i would say is in terms of operating cost right now operating costs are assessed point in time in rome and your enrollment in the october year october two thousand and fifteen in rome it will drive belmont's fiscal year seventeen budget the budget that's going to be passed now effective in july point in time the new agreement changes that to a four year rolling average from my perspective and i think a lot of perspective is it that just smoove is the year to hear change particularly if you're small or sending community but even in belmont you know if we go from thirty to twenty five or thirty to thirty five that has a material impact it's the four year average smoothes that the second big change was changing the capital allocation formula and that has been a part of the discussion from the get go there were myriad of models i couldn't even begin to tell you how many that were discussed and analyzed but the new formula was always predicated on two additional components one is a big component that's still driven by enrollment but instead of one year point in time in roman which is the current model it's the same four year average  so that's fifty percent of the new formula the other two components are one what i would say is a cost of membership it's simply i flat fee assessed to every community regardless of how many students one sends so it's you know if you want to be part of the district and have the option there's a cost of that membership that membership fee is one percent of the capital allocation formula not a big driver for larger sending communities is a big driver if you said two or three or four cities that's a second one and then the third component has always been some sort of wealth or ability to pay factor and that would be the way they define that i still struggle with the logic behind it but but there's a component of that element that makes sense a component of it that makes less sense to me the component that makes sense is they base it on the state's calculation of combined effort which takes into a fact that something the d s e out the bessey calculation which takes into effect both household income and property value so it measures wealth into at least from my perspective logical ways but then they multiply that factor or how you your community compares to the norm for that factor by your community's utilization of minutemen so the higher your percentage of kids that go to minuteman the more costly that factor is it seems counterintuitive to me to you know to but but that's where the formula came out and and bob was part of the group the group looked at all of these formulas and tried to come up with something that incorporated that membership component and would be for a new building project under the current formula belmont's assessment would be about two hundred sixty eight thousand of us from under the newest about latest form which was a change from the few thousand and fourteen version new formula versus the real whether or not people think that that's appropriate or not from my point of view another twenty thousand dollars per year in a nine million dollars town budget is not assessment goes from forty thousand to eighty thousand you know so it's it's it's far john a personal basis which was one of the pro ball last changed in the we just simply can't reopen the whole capital allocation formula discussion again you small communities have a choice you're either in or you can get out you know you'll have to decide and so that's kind of where things that originally and what we're actually proposed whalen actually put a request to leave the district out on the table i had actually proposed at the school committee where that was presented to modify that request to prohibit whaling from sending kids back on a nonmember basis for i had a considerable period of time i said twenty years and what the right number was going to be  surprisingly that did not go over very well and quite frankly some people did say and i don't know dessie well enough to know what they thought that the amended regional agreement has to be approved by dessie there was some concern that if we sit denied certain communities access to minuteman on any basis that he would simply flat out reject it so in this most recent task force that was position number one that mark took a position number two was well ok failing that non member community should be assessed a capital fee equal to what they would pay if they were a member of the district that will take away the incentive for some communities to say hey wait a second is a better deal for me to be a nonmember when i leave the district come back in the door as a nonmember that was not something that was going to yet you now know of consent by sixteen communities so what the new bit of the most recent version of this formula has and one of the key changes is it has a provision in there that says subject dessie state regulations and absent a two thirds of the weighted vote and i'll get a weighted vote in the second vote by the school committee nonmember communities have to pay no less than the average capital assessment of the member communities that has taken the concept that was talked about as a separate agreement and injure municipal agreement between the district and the individual member communities and codified it into the regional agreement itself so that was something that we frankly were the community pushing for that we did not get what we wanted but we got something that was stronger than the last  for sake of simplification you take all of the debt service for all of the member towns and you come up with what's the average of that debt service and that's what a nonmember town would pay  with the average calculated before their withdrawal or after their withdrawal the average calculated drop the average in place of the time for those communities who are members that would be a significant still is an incentive for people to leave and return we did not eliminate that the just weren't going to get what we were going to get an agreement that would be passed by sixteen communities if we pushed that point where we wanted  fee so that's you know one percent of the total capital cost is now allocated to two students and then you if you're a wealthier community have this kind of wealth impact so you can easily have a purse student cost as a member that exceeds what your the average is for all of them that most of are they are they being assessed the average voting right now management is one sixteenth you have sixteen school committee members one from each town everybody's vote counts equally and i think arlington had a fair concern that said wait a second you know these town and two three five students you know were making fortunes decisions that have no material impact on that town's budget but we send one hundred thirty students and this has a material impact it's still almost as large as our council budget so the there was some discussion about having the weighted voting be purely weighted based on four year average enrollment but the compromise much like the u s senate u s rep the compromise belmont case it's hard to know where we're going to come out right now based on this year's enrollment we are about just under seven percent of minuteman aroma if we if you took one sixteenth of the vote it would be i don't know six point one or something like that percent so we're we're a slightly better off with the weighted voting because of our own but if seven towns leave their all small sending towns one ninth of the boat would be like the eleven percent and hearts are proportioned after you know those small communities leave again just based on this year's point in time in rome it goes up to something like nine percent so we could be slightly worse off but either slightly better off or slightly worse off i don't believe from my perspective that it's a material driver to whether or not we should agree to this change i think there are benefits to the changed agreement partly in general partly in getting consensus or agreement among sixteen towns that just say whether we're slightly better or slightly worse on weighted voting you know shouldn't be a driver in our decision and it seems again to introduce the element of fairness it seems a fair way for me for the pool committee to conduct its just this may still be in that we'd get out of it but i'm trying to i'm trying to do th  look the average cost per member time per student member towns depend in part on the number of nonmember towns students are being sent then yeah i mean so where in time does that calculation take place you look is it seems to me that one of the input variables changes when you've decided what the fees going to be in another student's out  yeah yeah i think it's important to understand it and i need to i will confess bob i need to probably better start from you know step one of the calculation the calculation that i have seen is  and and i'm not sure that this is the right way but the way the analysis has been done is your it total in roman is x your total debt service divide it by x is the her head cost of capital you will for every nonmember town that's what they will pay that will get applauded against the debt yeah i mean the member bit the deep per student cost is deducted from the the amount of the debt that's then allocated amongst the member towns that's how the amendment a group reads is you allocate that debt service net any other source of revenue towards capital so if there are hundreds if the debt service costs for the year were one hundred thousand dollars and there were one hundred students now be a thousand dollars per student correct right that's for the member town total total in rome to one hundred thousand six hundred thousand dollars one hundred total students so it's a it's ten thousand each then or two thousand each twenty five of those people home from nonmember community so the nonmember communities are assessed a thousand each now you have seventy five thousand dollars worth of debt service to allocate amongst your member communities running it think when we get to the building project vote which you know i don't want to get into that ok there's some real risk here because middleman is simply assuming that they'll fill every seat in the you know in the new school and to the extent that we don't have member towns filling those seats they'll just be this unlimited supply of nonmember towns and that's a dangerous assumption i think but that's not for tonight's discussion is the mind average always smooths things its impact to any given town relative to the current formula depends on whether total school enrollment is increasing and declining and your town in roman is increasing  declining so they could go into lots of different directions for your average always makes the year to year variation less but how any one town will come out in that mix always depends as does our current point in time assessment to pan there are been years when i've been operating budget i've said guys big increase here in our assessment  been that big an increase in the budget the reason our sussman is going up is we are now sending proportionally more kids this year than the math does work in the other way around the software your average i that i mean i mean if it's a year to year then then the fluctuations actually apply to what's going on in your town but if we stay at forty eight forever and if the school goes from you know four hundred to seven hundred correct nobody knows though which way that's been a couple of under your scenario up yet but there's going to be an minuteman hopes it goes up in all communities so we don't know whether goes up proportionately more or less  eight students school there are three hundred eighty four member towns we have done what we could do always saying we thought that just going to be reconstituted the issues of the nonmember towns like t and a lot of town that is sending many most jews and belmont we're getting a free ride completely on capital and and a lesser expensive ride on operating budgets and so forth and we  school and we were walked into an agreement that we could not get out of and now we had two very bad choices we could either pay a share of the under the old formula pay out share of one hundred forty some really from a nonmember times paying a fair share of the capital expense we could either do that or we could vote no and then they are saying they being the administration the minuteman that they were then going to have to repair the building building bill for twelve hundred students and nineteen seventies and they said that was going to cost one hundred five million dollars which i think was probably inflated for political reasons but there were very significant repairs were going to have to be made no state aid and since it was in debt you wouldn't even be getting any capital contribution from down there but so that i was saying and i think i surprised a few people say i think of the two bad choices that the less worst choice idea that they could get the agreement the amended agreement changed passed they had concerns of small towns with a five point minimum objected to that so they won the case say sending your own students here we lost that in any event in the saturday meetings of the of the selectmen they hammered out an agreement which they then originally wanted to send to walk town meetings because it requires you know must consent at the same time that they sent the approval for the for the debt briefly on the debt do it two ways that can be approved the minimum building committee devoted that then if they vote in the affirmative within seven days the clear to the minute and district must send a notice to all a select and telling them that that has been approved and if any town doesn't like it they must within sixty days call a town meeting and vote to disapprove and if one down does that so you don't have a unanimous either deemed a loud or unanimous towns taking up with their town meeting  approving of one negative vote the debt is not approved and then there is subsection and which allows the so called district wide vote and the district calls a special town meeting they pay for it majority of those voting in the towns vote to approve that even if your particular town i don't want voted against it but if they were voted by the carrying of the votes in the other towns in the majority across the district voted then that is approved so so in any event what this new agreement has a provision that first they must try to go to the towns and section d if not then they go to the they decided that it was necessary to decouple the vote on approving the agreement from the vote for one hundred forty four million dollars bond approval or some discussion for whatever they have right bring into t to get the debt approved to try to get it approved they had to have some specificity so they did couple with two votes and therefore they're asking every town i think every town has agreed to hold a special town meeting before m presumably the bond issue is dead if that doesn't pass i think who knows there will be a second town meeting when within sixty days after the school committee authorizes the bonding of the hundred forty four million dollars which will probably coincide with annual time it will be asked to prove that now if we have approved the agreement what should we do when that comes up before this project was ill conceived ill administered and should be voted down but having said that and i think that's the best way in the long range for a dumb one but if belmont votes against it then or any other town votes against it then they have to go to the district wide vote now if they go to the district wide vote i invite your attention to what jack is passed around that particularly the one two three four forth to be able to vote down the debt within its borders and have the debt cram down its citizens that to me just to trouble me a whole lot so that there is a provision if you read under incurring i have to go through the deep provision which is that all the stafford county and you then can what happens if they proceed under section and which is the district wide vote and it said if and when section and that that is approved by subsection and the following option will be open to member communities if a majority of the residents of voting on the question of that community float to disapp incurring of the debt in a search and an election said community may seek to withdraw from the district consistent with the procedures of section roman ruling nine going forward on this debt bear in mind they're going to go out for a district wide debt by that time seven towns may very well be out of the district but those seven times are going to be able a vote this came up as a discussion of sutton's the selectmen group unanimously agreed that if you were a community you should be able to vote for the debt but we have this funny thing about state law and denying citizenry their rights to vote and if the district agreement is still effective still there is no legislative power regulatory we can deny citizens of the town because suppose suppose the dessie who has an approved get the regional agreement then says sorry sudbury you can't leave you said you want to leave now well because done long lost the battle that you prevent you from sending a student to the school they'll go out they'll vote for the debt that they're not liable on and they'll send their students to the new school and they won't have it on their balance sheet alone for to me they will have to pay their share of proportion and share the way this is coming together let me just go through the past vote to approve the agreement vote against the debt town wide election town wide district pray to god the belmont within its four borders votes against it and let's see where the dust settles and then we can have a second look and we can look at one of two things will happen either if the vote does not pass approving the bond issue and seven towns around it down to nine towns with an all school no money to rebuild it at long last there should be momentum to be able to reconstitute this district and bring in the lot of towns and methods and everybody else and it's going to become a major issue and maybe they'll be some help from the state that's one possibility the other possibility for the other sheet he can send its students just the same way they're always cool so having said all this what was originally to terrible choices i think has now evolved into two acceptable choices vote against it at the town wide alexion in the second look decide what's in the best interests of belmont probably if the if the school is being built in here and it's three hundred eighty four students with six from sixteen  probably elect to withdraw from the district and then have all the rights to send our students back there so that we might have to do use and choices and of this debacle that's been going on for  controlled by minutemen so you know from that regard it's not but you wouldn't have an impact on you would have a say superintendent not that we have much of a say now you wouldn't have a say on program but that changes you wouldn't have a say on all those other operational issues i can't handicap or say whether or not i think you know that's a huge issue i think a lot of that stuff  this could get more complicated but it does the one thing i lost track of is in the original previous ever alternatives build a new school versus spend one hundred five million and repair the even if belmont voted against it but we lost because of the votes from the rest of the district i have heard them say they intend to fix the school up and make it appropriately repaired and their est building fails then what's to stop them from doing exactly you just said they could do it belmont's not a member of melbourne at belmont would have to pay it's no probably not because that passing along is the annual assessment correct where we are no longer a member of the district we are not impacted by how much minuteman chooses to spend on capital repair because our only obligation is to pay to ation at dessie sat or mandated rate rep you're describing a scenario where we have successfully withdrawn correct so if we are unsuccessful in withdrawing then we are asked to pay one hundred five million then we have to pay or that we should be correct and that that's where arlington's push for a weighted vote matters right now you've got a lot of you know smaller senate communities who are frankly happy to do whatever the superintendent wants the whole business that in that scenario that you just laid out those communities that bear the big brunt of that cost will exercise some more fiscal discipline then is recall is what it is to leave the district i know it's now a majority in the community but it has to be ratified by all fifteen towns under the new agreement it's two thirds of adamant and so it seems to me there are a lot of decision tree issues out there but the one thing that seems fairly clear the small towns are going to leave i think that they will be i think that that's how close it why they would what i don't see why they necessarily wouldn't if they're thinking purely from a financial point of view but towns like west and in dover and to some extent box morris said what used to be is the one percent minimum of one percent fee plus capital was assessed as if you had no know what you were going to five students some of those towns have said if you reduce if you get rid of that element then we can swallow the higher cost of what we're going to listen to town we are going to lose something that's going to increase what we have yes on an operation i'm not ready to strike right so i'm  thinking of the reasons why to vote in favor of the agreement i come up with for only three of which really close as one would be as we save money and it doesn't sound to me if the other towns leave do second would be the way to the voting that you described which i don't know how it would be great going forward i don't know how important it would be unless a we could use it to undo the size of the new school or put off the district wide vote or do something like kill the debt issuance unless you could use that way to vote to do something like that i don't really know that's terribly important three would be to get money towards capital from nonmember towns which is great but again we're still paying more than we were before and the last would be as if we could withdraw can we withdraw because you said seven towns i don't believe are one of th me at all that going to jesse and say we're just going to send them all right back to minutemen is going to be a winning argument to get that that's the approval so it's it's not as easy i don't think as the legal pa at least eight of us to get another reason to go but then the last one would be we keep talking about jesse ventura when this group like met with the people over there to talk to them about exam these scenarios and how just hypothetically speaking if brought them in front of me we might say yes so you know you use the same things until you call the person who makes the decision and sometimes you get some kind of informal reactions like we did that with the diving or with the pool with the state board of public health or though i know they're not going to the diving board know they're not going to do and then we talk to them like we could do the diving board if you did x y z you know so you kind of sometimes talking to them might be helpful sooner rather than later jenny that was going to be my question about the commission and jessie and the approvals and just just to carry that little bit further we're all assuming that if this agreement goes through we're going to lose some of these little towns but they have the same issues with the commissioner so i mean i would like to know if anyone has spoken with the commission or anybody in the state to talk about what their view of this is and whether or not they in fact would be likely to say yes if this goes through these seven towns have the right to withdraw from because you know tha also i think most of them are going to turn around and send their two or three or five students right back to the minutemen which is the same thing they'll be doing now it's fewer students but not that many are that you know so i don't know if this whole thing holds water i discussion discussions you know that are being held and i think that's an easier discussion when you are a community that has three students i think it's a harder discussion for belmont where minuteman is physically closest and we said on average thirty students  but there are some of those discussions but those are individual ten pounds talking to other school of about having a plan to present to test whether they're talking to the commissioner of education i have no idea because jesse may have point of view the composition of the minutemen district too i mean i don't know if they do or they don't but it's you know they have an interest in what happens with future history so if there are scenarios said you know that working group yes we will hold a town meeting by march first so there's no compelling but there's kind of implied pressure of it applied agreement by stockmen there's the sequence would be all towns would vote on the amended regional agreement and then those seven towns would have a separate folk within their community as to whether or not that's who leave under the amended regional agreement to then we know that  know how many students are currently attending the school that are from non member districts what's clear as of now and all that stuff is is very interesting basis  and sorry hall i know there is there lexington has a program where students some students spend half time at minuteman they are educated for the academics within their community and then take trade it's called the morning program and they are treated for certain things as happy you know that in full time equivalent so i'm just coming total enrollment so that the slight difference between my three eighty two and your three seventy six is twelve kids who does have time from lexington postgrads in the know just just so if for simplicity  is to fifty three from one hundred fifty three that three eighty to council eleven have time students as full time people but it's now what i think is more interesting than just the absolute is the trend in october of two thousand and thirteen the total high school enrollment minute and was seven twenty five last year it was six eighty three this year it's six thirty five big drop year over year has been nonmember students from nonmember communities which on the one hand you know those of us who've been saying you're too reliant on nonmember you know maybe that's not a bad thing but what's really driving that drop in nonmember roman is not anything that minuteman is doing although they would dress it up as they're getting they're working their way to the six twenty eight what's really driving it is dessie instituted a rule this year that said if your a nonmember student and you come from a district whether it's a town district who are regional dish that offers at least five vocational programs within your school district you can not send people to minuteman as freshman and participate in their  exploratory program you have to go at your freshman year you have to explore what are the vocational opportunities within your district and that i believe is what has dropped the nonmember and ro i personally believe that minuteman is just fantasy land when it believes that when you over lenny a seven thousand eight thousand per head capital charge odd to nonmembers over and above that dynamic that you wouldn't have a similar big drop in nonmember dollars so that's why i'm nervous about the building project but i'm trying to divorce myself from the building project vote from the regional agreement think the regional agreement is on balance better amended regardless of the strategic just from a pure or well you know what's a more effective efficient and fair agreement i think it's just more effective fair and efficient i mean revised for another in one hundred forty four point nine million dollar are ok with this revised regional agreement so dessie has said that either it's hard for we have been told that they will approve it whether that means they will approve the seven communities leaving that's not clear because that's he still has a second bite at the apple of that and i haven't been part of the discussion so i don't know what the density approval means but that is that it relates to the agreement itself we have been told that dessie will approve it in its c and let's just say for the sake of argument we had enough students that came from the never towns that we had all six twenty eight right and i think so what it would be if we're in the district so what's our capital fill it with people who are paying the average capital so our capital assessment isn't going to move a whole box or the down side that fill it with people who pay at the average so it was about says the downside scenario is if you underutilized a school front it's a political decision by jesse and jesse can always change it down the road where we're dealing or worst we're we're having to deal now with a decision by jesse a couple years ago that they are going to th scenario there is not a meaningful difference in capital cost whether you're a member district or you're in another district is that correct what i'm saying is under it if you assume that the vacant seats will be filled by nonmember students there's not a meaningful the difference between how many towns are in the district and how many are not and how many students are being sent from member communities it's just not that sensitive if every reduction in a member town gets replaced by somebody who's paying the average cost of capital anyway your does that make sense it to you it's all in a slight difference in how your allocation share compares that's not a big driver oh that's not exactly what i mean and so what i'm saying is i'm essentially saying are we better off being out of the district or in the str funds that are coming in to reduce the debt service based on the nonmembers being assessed the answer and i don't know how the accounting works from a balance sheet point of view i can say that when we go out for that debt issuance each town has to have one hundred forty five who has to have the full amount of that debt issuance in the boat and i can say based on how this formula works i think it's a challenging argument in each community because you can't say beyond one year what your town share that gets service will be and i'm assuming there so is there any way they feel strongly that they would actually like to see us vote tonight on this issue ok is there i just is there anything else you need for me that was my next question which is are there between now and june twenty seventh and other than the question that you're about to try to get an answer to david just talked about just getting simplify this much as possible i'll try and you know be helpful so then the next question i guess for you guys just really quickly is how are you thinking about communicating this  both the the twenty eighth meeting and the rest of the fab eight meeting you tell me in a way that actually is digestible and workable can know what to do i mean are you going to have presentation materials with a plan and i just have and yes i mean have you thought about talk about that what minuteman often does is they have their own powerpoint presentation that we usually edit i haven't seen one yet but you know there may be a base that minuteman is preparing now the work of is that part of what that sent out today do you know that so i guess any kind of laying out the strategy but there's presumably like some reasons why one would have voted for the new agreement so do so out in talk about for example you would do it because you would save money you would do it because you would get the benefit of this weighted voting you would do it because you potentially create the an ability to exit which is largely nonexistent today number three number four which i'm not sure you've quite said is you would have the ability to stop the building of a new school potentially too large new school without the ability to allocate capital cost to nonmembers schools so today if you build a new school we do not have the ability to allocate capital costs to nonmember schools correct and that's a big thing  greater ability to pass on the capital costs to watertown for a new school under the new agreement versus under the current agreement under the new agreement we absolutely would pass a bill pledging to the agreement is a that's what i'm saying that is a reason why you would a new agreement because if you build a new school you can appropriately allocate capital costs to nonmember towns right even if they don't join and then the last reason i think of the five is it's a vehicle to seek to reconstitute the district  right so i think something like that where you're kind of outlining these are the reasons why and then you kind of help people understand and i think it would be helpful mechanism and he both for us to talk about on the twenty seventh but then also on the twenty eighth and also on february eighth as well and slide you're going to lose understand right now probably not going to save money under this new the new agreement which would mean it's been sort of it's and causes more money out of the new agreement based on the way the cost get allocated and the way to develop voting is actually we get a little bit more voting potentially maybe not if seven seven towns leave but that's kind of a wash it's good for our own to not a so good for us on terms the ability exit big wind potentially we go from zero percent chance to exit to only some reasonable chance of exiting if you have by the way just to be really clear sudbury exiting at twenty five students we're at twenty six to district i think is also when for that so for me i mean there are a bunch of reasons why i think that this actually is compelling and you know a bunch of reasons why i suspect that at least speaking for myself i will say that this is actually a good amendment and i think we want to be clear about buttable presumption in the agreement that they will be charged on just to get a two thirds vote override under the current agreement the school committee a majority of it has to  charged with the hurdles in the school committee material i will send around again the template that we've used for data collection for questions everyone just to remind everyone of of of that we will use that template and fill in that template to generate questions so what i do is going to center on the material and the template to everyone either tomorrow or friday right what i'd like to do is i'd like to get a first pass of questions and comments and and did a question needs back from everybody by thursday january twenty first ok so we would normally be meeting on january twentieth we're not so if for some reason you haven't got a chance to read all that stuff please use the time that we would have at this time to go through that so everyone should please get me the questions by thursday twenty first i will consolidate that into a single set of questions and redistributed to everyone and the goal will then be to create a final set of questions on our meeting on the twenty seventh right which we will i will then distribute to the c p a committee a committee will then give that's all the sponsors they will use that to answer our questions and send them back to us and they will all come and see us on march second on our meeting on march second to answer those questions and to provide any commentary and everything else that we do typically with c p m projects so i want to be clear about that timetable so i'll get all the material to the next few days everybody should get me back questions by thursday january twenty first i'll get that back to you then relatively quickly and will finalize on january twenty seven story with dio are approving our free cash and certify has not been certified a yeah you know the answer that question it has not been certified yet but we're waiting any time there so there are there are there is some headcount there are some people to change at the department of revenue that's impacted us and it's ok we'll get resolved relatively quickly but i need to say in terms of setting out the mid year updates i want them in your update to actually include what our free cash number is and i'm assuming i was hoping that it would be already resolved by today but it sounds like it's meaning update the letter we will not finalize that tonight i wasn't expecting anyone to finalize it on the twenty seventh but i'd like to hopefully ever visit chance to read that already i have received some comments from folks and i actually turn you back and other another version of that's i think that there are copies of know world what i'd like to see us do is sort of just do this as a matter of course every year i did essentially a version of this last year although it was not quite this to the same process i didn't do it the previous year or there and there were shorter letters that had been distributed in the past for those of you had been the work committee for some time this was a little bit longer and more descriptive but hopefully this is kind of a an appropriate level of detail open the floor of commentary does this seem like a good thing to do these seem like it has exactly joining it is a fair point and if it which i think you're making as well and if there's a roundabout number that we can generate very great even if it's arranged you know roughly you know what this wouldn't tail for us that would be helpful if you can't do it then we can't do it yes you are now i think we raise it looks to be about thirty five percent of what's approved reimbursable affect the last figure right and so you reduce it by  a plus or minus fifty percent on page three the special meeting will have two primary articles ok one is whether to approve the amendment of the minuteman district dream and the second one is whether to authorize establishment of a building committee for the belmont high school i think the school administration the board of selectmen and members of the capital budget committee and the permanent building committee felt that even though as we sit here today we don't a temporary building committee for belmont high school you know the idea is if m s p a did not approve the project then we could just withdraw it at town meeting but on the chance that they're going to approve it this will allow us to do things like start drafting our a piece for feasibility studies and and you know get a head start on other actions rather than wait to the annual town meeting for such authorization ok so you might want to mention perfectly reasonable thing to say i what i would but i'm inclined to do is to conceptually bundle that with the new high school era graph so i'll mention it in that  some sometimes from david thanks and then if there are other comments that people and other i don't mean to cut off the discussion of it when i want to talk more about this letter or has any other feedback i'm happy to get it but there are other other you know that it's small whatever the people at the sent to me when i was on corporate down to redistribute the the thing is in theory seventy final form and then will will vote on it on the twenty seventh hopefully will have as well the number for our free cash which as you mentioned david when you were not in the room that we don't have yet so hopefully we'll have that twenty seven this will be good to go and we want to ship it to everybody swords are our sewer pipes and our storm water pipes are aging and we've got some illegal connections into those pipes as well and as a result you know contamination is entering into the  island and we still get charged on the basis of volume not the make up of the volume so so the town has been working very actively to try to rehabilitate our systems to try to remediate them and you know plan and staff you know phyllis and david spent many hours putting together a great presentation it's about an hour long presentation and that was presented at our last board of selectmen meeting so i would encourage you to that the slide presentation is posted on on our website and you can watch it you know on t v very informative you know and very very very good presentation second i did want to report to the board selectmen did last monday actually sign the warrant for the special town meeting and you know it's got three articles one is you know to hear reports from town officials and town committees and then the second is on the minuteman district agreement amendment and the third is on the establishment of a building committee for the belmont high school renovation slash reconstruction that's it any questions or comments about it that  causes that were originally in the first design are now being use first teaching spaces i mean it really is federally every inch is being used at the elementary level the wellington now has a five class grant all the way through there was an extra there's going to be a need for my daughter's spaces at the elementary level work that's probably a couple of years away and then at the high school this year there's some classrooms are moved into the modular units that are behind the high school about having that is being used for classrooms and the idea is to use an additional cautiously optimistic to see what that decision will be on the twenty seventh but this has been great you know ellen has been serving a lot of there been principals and teachers and really my heart has drawn the capital budget committee so i think the superintendence been doing a great job of doing some very proactive projections clearly timeframe in terms of just those two things will generate the need to have them printed extended period of time the whole idea is to try to do things in a very gradual way so that we can monitor the enrollment very  see if it is going to plateau we know we have the uplands and pushing the village hopefully coming online soon and exactly how things will play play out over the next two to five years plus being watched thank board and asked for a one year extension on the special permit which he did receive but it was conditioned on not condition he got the one year extension but within the decision there were also some milestones that he had committed to comply with and one of those was to close on the parking lot and financing by december eighteenth not met a second one was to commence you know pull a demolition permit and commence demolition of the buildings place january fifteenth unlikely ok and so you know he certainly continues to be optimistic he certainly says you know i mean i'm coming back he is scheduled to come back before the planning board again for an update on at their meeting on february