seat we are about to begin great thank you good evening welcome to the belmont candidates night sponsored by the belmont league of women voters and the voter education fund of the belmont league of women voters i am and it will come night the president of the belmont league of women voters the funding for this program is provided by our nonprofit arm the voter education fund of the belmont league of women voters as in every year the voter education fund of belmont league of women voters at candidates to submit a candidate statement which we compile and distributed in the form of the voter guide each year we've done the new goes to every household throughout the town this gives you an opportunity to learn more about the candidates position on critical issues that face the town the league's voter education fund welcomes your tax deductible donations to offset the cost of printing and mailing the voter god please see our share of voter education fund carla who is here in the audience or pick up a donation package we have loads at the end of the table over there we love your contribution and the way to help us greatly appreciate it additionally i would like to thank the beech tree center for hosting us tonight the belmont media center for televising this evening the members of the league's voter education committee service and our moderator tonight ellen hardy thank you all the candidates they're here tonight and you thank you all for coming tonight organization and does not support or oppose any political party or in candidate the league of women voters the belmont encourages informed and active participation in government information about the belmont league can oppose candidates election day is monday april fourth with the polls opening at seven a m closing in a pm the belmont league of women voters will operandi to the polls on election day between ten a m and six pm please call six one seven forty nine eight two three nine to arrange for a ride we would like to thank the beach street center again for hosting us and encourage you all to vote on election day please turn off those pesky little cell phones that you may have if you haven't turned and now i would like to introduce tonight's moderator ellen hardy who is a founding member i'm carolyn bishop reelection hopefully for a town meeting member of the precinct one and i live at seven orchard street in how much thank you i'm from i'm a candidate for reelection to town meeting with a three year term and my addresses and id schools  road michael even son i'm a current time any member in prison five but having recently moved to perceive one i am now a candidate in person one i live at seventy four hope crest road good evening may was lance pearce i'm a candidate for reelection for precinct one for town meeting and i live at thirty three temple street  good evening my name is christine doyle and my candidate for a two year term and precinct one and i live at fifteen cedar r hello i'm rachel berger i'm a candidate for election for precinct two and i live at thirty three style road good evening and bomb went off on candidate for re election and precinct to live at eighty one wellesley  hello my name is bill lynch i'm a candidate for time meeting in precinct two and i live at ten dorset road thank you i'm liz allison i'm a candidate for reelection precinct three and i think sixty nine pinehurst roa julie barton i'm a candidate for reelection in precinct three and i live at sixteen charles street janssen i'm a candidate for precinct three and i live at fifty nine marti cohen precinct three and i live at twenty one dunbarton road her candidate for reelection precinct three way lease street number ninety seven hello i'm phil lawrence i'm in principle four and i'm on sixty eight agassi avenue precinct five gene widmer one twenty six killed it road hello i'm picking right sixty one hammond road precinct five precinct five nancy carlson twelve poplar street well mark wagner twenty one he stings road precinct five good evening david alpert precinct sex one ok avenue g money precinct six sixty sorenson precinct seven thirty woods road riley one thirty three dollars road in the seventh precinct support of received in the past the moderator has screwed me to principal functions one is to moderate oversee town meetings and the other is to make appointments to the warren committee and other important  committees terms of town meeting but i've tried to do working with others of course is to improve the value of town meeting as belmont's legislative body and as for the participants the town meeting members a number of ways in which we've tried to improve certainly getting information in the hands of down meeting members in different ways as much in advance as possible i think presentations that town meeting itself that are clear and answer questions and then at the same time try to keep the discussion focused on the issues not always easy as we know but it's an important legislative body and  mportant that we have good discussions over already the critical issues terms of my other responsibility the appointments the warren committee and other committees i take those that responsibility very seriously i sit down and talk to any potential candidates for these committees try to make sure that they are committed to working hard that they have the kind of experience that will be helpful to the committees that they're committed to the town that the other things being equal that they've had some experience already displayed an interest in town and that they bring particular skills and talents to these committees  i think that i feel proud about the people that have i have appointed to the war and other committees in the time i've been moderator and i hope to continue that practice thank you very  meeting and i look forward to any questions are there any question comes in like ideas as to how we could rectify that situation beyond maybe pretending the town meeting was in march so that by the end of april it might actually be ready i know people would work very hard they're all volunteers but what can we do to make this better john that's a good question there are some proposals already of floor to begin the process at a different time and to try to make sure that everyone has a budget in that fashion yes right now is that the budget will not be proposed in april at the regular angel town meeting but rather at some later date and hopefully we'll have some more time to get the budget out for everyone to see in a timely fashion for it actually perpetual care for another million dollars we're also in the process of trying to develop plans to make the cemetery some sufficient so it gets off of the taxpayers dime and finally we're going to create a capital years we're going to have but i really meant precinct one but you've done a great job and i want to hear what you can do in the next three years one hundred residential units in addition to some commercial property i'm currently in school i'm working on my certification in residential property management and they opted to put that sometime late in the spring or in the job some in terms of my  another committee i serve on currently the human rights commission which ensures that everyone has a voice in the house and that everyone is treated equal again even though i am running unopposed i take a position thank you my name is am paul's son and i appreciate all the efforts that you have made in the town chuck and you've done a good job i guess that the question i have is what kinds of ways do you think that the housing authority can work to make the people who live in the public housing feel that they have path of the decision making well some of the things that we do especially being on the opposing tribe and the human rights many of those years i've talked to a lot of people in the community who i know i had in favor of a new library and decided to run i think now is a great time to run  i think we offer lots of great services at the library but now is not the best time for another override and i don't think the people again a lot of experience in that time working on long range plans interacting with other boards and committees and helping to develop the budget each year i want to continue to work to improve library services i know that the economy isn't good as some people are concerned about the cost of building a new library i'm self employed point to stand out the last couple years of difficult for me as well but where the library is concerned we can't just do nothing we have two choices first we  spend a lot of money to replace heating plumbing and other warning systems in the current building but that won't add any needed space to improve service second weeks we can accept the state grants and build a modern library provide the services the belmont residents expect a state construction grant will cover over forty percent of the cost of a new building and we're working with the belmont library foundation to raise hopefully millions of dollars in private funds that brings the net cost down to make sense financially compared with the cost of just trying to repair the existing building i believe we have supported the town for a new larger my goal is to help the board of selectmen schedule the debt exclusion when the time comes to the voters to decide but starting with or to build a new library or just try to replace existing building isn't the only issue there are many issues for the trustees and i urge you to choose a example i would like to thank the league of women voted for providing this opportunity to speak to the residents at belmont the belmont public library is a vital component in our community i became actively involved circe's member of the board of the friends in one nine hundred ninety nine and the following year of the feasibility study committee in two thousand and three i was appointed to a vacancy on the board and in two thousand and four i ran for election to fill the rest of that term participant in the work of the board i have advocated for sunday openings and local service by gents i believe that our library is not a luxury it is a necessity when citizens are assailed with data the library is the place to go to make sense of it all at the library the answer to the question is not a single response but an opportunity to explore a solution with a guy who's from the reference librarian or from a home computer through the library's website one has access to reputable databases from medicine to business with language learning opportunities i hope that every student in town knows th is the access point for homework cal dictorial practice s a t tests and all of this is for free in these tight economic times how can i vote just a man a grant for a new library to the massachusetts board of library trustees the and b l c the library seating ventilation and elevator systems has outlived their life expectancy the building does not meet fire are eighty eight codes and lacks the ceiling clearance space for wiring for new technology i'm afraid it would reimburse the town for up to fifty percent of allowable costs the library foundation fundraising lowers the cost even more the result would be a code compliant to building buildings with the technology for today and tomorrow me applying for this grant does not commit the town to any building plans that is up to the voters i would be remiss in my duties to safeguard the interests of the library and the town of belmont if i did not present this option to the voters it is a voters and only the voters who will decide when we are not to build a new virus say you think you so how would you apply work thank you we already have a strategic plan if we have to remain there and my fellow trustee how shubin has been working diligently with the architect for the propose building j stuart roberts and the library director with that and things are divided into absolutely required things that have to be done things that would be basic to staying there and things that would be nice to do over the years for example the elevator i believe is on the required list a couple of people have gotten stuck in the elevator it's past its useful life it's still uses vacuum tubes and there is a plan already for we came up with a list of many millions of dollars in repair work to replace these worn out systems we also discovered that once we spend more than thirty percent of the cost of the building within a thirty six month time frame we have to make the entire building be handicapped accessible that's obviously a good thing to do but it means moving the books stacked away from the walls and away from each other to make sure there's wheelchair access so we could spend a couple of million dollars to try to fix up the current building wind up with less space than we had before or spent just a little more than you know new modern building downloading audio books and that's an area that we're going to continue to explore but it will not replace everything that we have in the library now that doesn't mean that we're going to need less space or get rid of the collection that  think we also have to remember that belmont is changing the air are thirty five students in english is a second language in the schools in grade six or twelve there are sixty students and english is a second language in grades k through five i stopped by the school department the other day and we have to diversify our collections so we have age appropriate challenging materials for all the students and for all the citizens of  of the questions of the lady in red square person and are we in any danger oh i'm sorry christine doyle are we in any danger of losing our membership or whatever the correct term is for are not the minuteman network which seems like a great regional service that was  i have heard something about that but i really don't know too much about it here our membership in the minuteman next network is based upon meeting the municipal appropriation requirement network nothing to add to that but if we did fail to get the appropriate budget allocation for library materials for example we would not meet the requirements that has happened in some towns and other towns have voted to not let residents of those towns use their services so there's no way to sort of underfunding our library hope we can go somewhere else because nobody wants to be taken advantage of so it's important that we town meeting member precinct to all my questions about qualifications this vote for a new library or not need library will go to the entire town but i feel it's important that we elect the most qualified people to these positions so i'm wondering and this is because you're new direct and more to matt i wonder if you can tell us about your qualifications for being a lifer a trustee i'm interested your educational background if you have a college degree or advanced degrees if you have any prior library experience have you ever worked in the library do you have experience with the from ninety two when i was a senior in high school ted two thousand and seven so i dealt with budgets i used a library i used it a lot in high school i use it occasionally here and there and i've been i know the library attended yet i was planning on going to last one and i just got appointed to the traffic advisory committee couple of months ago and i was planning on attending and then i discovered there was a conflict with another meeting so i couldn't make it and i was planning on going to last month's exam because that is a requirement that we well yeah i understand the  john both from precinct six since we're talking libraries what was the last book you borrowed and read from the belmont public library and when  sir i have to say i have a pile of home from the belmont library that i'm trying to work through i think the one that i'm hoping to start maybe can nice is the one about the russian  royal family from romantics to revolution it looked wonderful on the shelf and so i took it out and that's all the campaign has allowed me to do with this point to the last book i returned was called the vaults i got some others but i'm not back to remembering their names there are so many of them my favorite thing at the library that i discovered songs that have a minute for the answer was years ago when a friend told me that libraries have cookbooks and i thought how great is that i can go and try one out see if i like it and i spent thirty dollars on it not that i haven't bought a lot of them that the last shot was probably years ago and i'd say the firm but i have been there in the meantime but other questions i agree experience in library matters for my work on the budget and policy smitty in my tenure as a trustee i have learned my briefer sieges and state requiring that i love library when traveling i visit the local library bringing back the ideas of best practice the public library plays a large role in the education of belmont students live revisions for seniors in sophomores history did a research program for preschool in elementary school getting them on the right track from reading currently libraries in our four elementary schools a diminished my decades of teaching experience instructing students writing curriculum taking my students to national history day opportunity to speak to the voters to the voters here at home please remember to go to the polls on election day while there are only two contested races voting is very important i've enjoyed being a library trustee because belmont is a town that really enjoys using public libraries as we said there's more to being a trustee than just deciding whether or not to build a new library understand the issues and work hard to improve library services here in belmont thank you to the league of women voters for hosting this evening's annual candidates night and thank you to those of you in attendance or viewing at home or on the web so the belmont media center outlet my name is the unwritten american on the candidate for reelection to the school committee it's a pleasure to be here this evening with these other fine candidates for town wide office as well as the candidates for town meeting in each of our eight precincts i'm proud to serve the citizens of belmont and proud to be a member of our town government the words of the people by the people for the people are words that speak to me at the deepest level of my being i'm endlessly inspired by the enduring wisdom demonstrated by our forefathers as a devilish star nation and i hear a call to step forward and serve my community that is impossible to ignore it is with a relentless commitment to improving our collective future prospects through continuous improvement of the public at our public education system that i seek reelection to a third term on the belmont school committee i'm proud of the work i've been able to accomplish in my six years of service in partnership with former and current school committee colleagues so my public school central office team and leadership council members school department staff town government colleagues parents students and citizens together we have been able to provide a high quality education to all the students of belmont with the monster ball and notable effectiveness and efficiency where in an unprecedented era of transition and on certainty the issues and challenges currently facing our public education system at the at the local state and federal level are significant and multi faceted so much so that they threaten our ability to continue to provide the level and level of excellence in public education we expect and demand it's only through a sustained commitment to understanding and grappling with the complexities of the issues and challenges facing us and to defining and aggressively pursuing and the equally complex strategies necessary to successfully address and overcome them that will be able to prevail in the continued provision of an excellent public education system that needs the needs of all of our students i believe that i've demonstrated the necessary level of sustained commitment throughout my six years of service and it's my hope that my fellow citizens of found my sustained commitment and involvement to add value to our community and to have enhanced our ability to continue to operate one of the highest performing most efficient school districts in the state if not the nation my commitment to understanding in grappling with the issues and challenges facing us and to defining and aggressively pursuing the strategies and solutions necessary to address and overcome them education i was a bachelor's degree in psychology from mit and a masters in education from harvard i'm running for school committee this year and i want to tell you why the crisis that we feared for years has come at last the belmont schools as we've known are now officially unsustainable unless we immediately develop and implement a long term plan to take us on a new course of voyage that will involve significant action by the leadership and the collaboration of the entire community we will enter a twilight era where the schools will irrevocably the teary or eight year after year and think before our eyes is it even still possible to keep the schools from sinking i think so but here you will need to do first we'll need to create a clear and credible multi year plan for handling the schools finances addressing both where the money is coming from and how it's used the plan must include real innovation not mere preservation this means seriously looking at options we overlooked or dismiss such as virtual education consolidation regionalization more intense lobbying at the state and federal level community business sponsorships and other approaches why not grant naming rights to businesses why not partner with parents to support programs why not work with local corporations to sponsor a new science wing if we even decide to build one next we need to immediately and substantially reduce all the cost drivers that we can in collective bargaining for example we have to significantly significantly reduce the rate at which salaries and benefits increase finally we near and we need to learn to live within our means we have to plan for and execute budgets responsibly and realistically considering not only the current year but the long term proposition two and a half is not going away hoping for an override is not a plan it's in the void of planning override may be necessary absolutely but the schools must earn them by making real significant changes first nobody's going to go vote for an override of salaries are growing over seven percent a year no matter how efficient the schools are clever arguments about efficiency will never justify the taxpayers truck anyway only real change can do that i'm running for school committee to make sure that these goals are accomplished look that count in my thirty's i'm a business process consultant by perfection every day i go into organizations and analyze their business processes and i help them design and implement whole new approaches more efficient and sustainable approaches to getting their work good evening and thank you to the league of women voters and to all of you for attending my name is larry graham and i'm pleased to be here as a candidate for reelection to the belmont school committee my husband dan and i moved here to eighteen years ago for program prior to being elected to the school committee in two thousand and eight i had the privilege of serving on a variety of groups and commissions on both the school and the town side and during my time in the school committee i served on a number of subcommittees and counsels the fellow committee members staff and community members and i believe that this work has provided me with first a broader perspective on the issues facing our town and a focus on providing the strong educational foundation that our students deserve i think that most of us would agree that the high quality education our community expects comes from a partnership between highly qualified knowledgeable teachers dedicated administrators and school committee members as well as family who hold everyone including themselves to the highest exacting standards a robust curriculum will provide a firm educational foundation for students with access for all and it can only be sustained through hard work and collaboration all parties involved this takes more than support and dedication and like neighboring towns don't want faces the challenge of an ever increasing gap between a leading cause and limited revenue with these difficult financial and fiscal restraint come equally difficult choices and we must be prepared to make these in a way that does the least harm possible to the educational experience of all the students we must also work with the town to strategically plan how to address not only the immediate shortfall establish solutions that provide sustained predictable support for the entire town the job the school committee member is one that calls for serious commitment effort preparation integrity and informed decision making the challenges that we face requires the hard work collaborative effort and perseverance that i believe i have exhibited during my current term as a school committee member i hope that i can count on your support on april fourth thank you very much allocation as as our superintendent has discussed and as the school committee agrees the allocation itself is not something that we feel very comfortable west however we also understand that asking the town to contribute any more would be taking things from them that are very needed so while we're not happy with the allocation we understand that this is the way things have to be and that at this point time we are not seeking to sure the allocation of resources within the school budget is driven by eighteen month improvement strategy which was developed in concert with the citizens as part of the community dialogue and i feel confident that  that process of developing the eighteen month improvement plan and using it as our guide for allocation has been successful and while i am not happy with the reductions that would be necessary in an available revenue budget i am happy with the way in which the revenue has currently been allocated there is one question that i have raised and that is whether we can continue with a part time human resource manager particularly as we now enter into a superintendent search months plan is a rational plan i feel that the administration the execution of the school is fears in fine hands it's the question of the funding of the schools that concern me so the way it actually gets allocated of the money the last year we actually had a process that we had go committee members divided into pairs to do a return on investment review on certain areas class size was one of them and guidelines were developed for the various levels  laurie graham was one of the members who was a part of that we put those guidelines in place and we have not been able to specifically stick to them but where doing our very best to be able to try to i don't think there are maximum or minimum i think there are appropriate guidelines and we know what the research says in terms of what would be optimal but the fact is we have a budget situation that does not really permit of meeting those guidelines whatever they are so i don't even think it's rational to talk about them as a fixed thing that we have to shoot for what's the difference between twenty and two and twenty three or whatever in terms if we don't if we can't afford it anyway as and said i was participating in the return on investment on class sizes year and a half ago and we are the stablish that for the early grades would be about twenty two or twenty three on up into the high school in twenty eight twenty nine but but we are living under these financial constraints and so that everything that we've been doing within the school department school committee is looking at how can we adjust these to live within the budget so again it would be wonderful to have twenty two kids in first grade class twenty four in a middle school class and twenty nine in high school classes but that's not the reality that we're working with  of the towns people things and what is it that keeps our school system strong and keeps the educators willing to take on wanting to to come here and his answer was leadership what can we do to ensure that we have tracked good leaders and keep the leadership that we have in our school system helping us out with that moment i thought the question was going in a different direction when you started because i think the the reason that all this work is the parents personally i think that it's because we have a community of people who pour out their effort so we can be efficient in the use of the teachers now as far as far as bringing in good leadership i think that the the very fact of the community being so oriented toward excellent education is itself a draw that's the draw to people they want to teach children who are interested in learning so i think i mean that's where i look at it as really the community lorie well i think that we've seen evidence of the fact that strong leadership can really affect quick change in having george and was healthy our superintendent for two years and certainly most people i'm sure everybody's heard by now that he has offered his resignation for the end of the school year but i think that he has demonstrated the fact that a strong leader leader in the school department along with a strong parent involvement can really affect great change so we are feeling very comfortable that he is leaving us in a great position with a strong leadership council that we have at the administrative level through the principal levels through the teachers so i do believe that strong leadership is here and that we need to attract them and we can attract them by having the parents support the community support that's necessary to run a strong school system and your boat from his well having been through a superintendent search already i can tell you that what we've  learned from of variety of consultants and advisors was that the two most important things the superintendent is looking for is a strong and united school committee who is going to be in support of them and strong and united leadership team what we call our leadership council who they're going to be able to work with and then beyond that they're looking for a community that places a high value on education has a demonstrated commitment to education and is willing to invest in education that's a place where  leadership wants to come and wants to stay and i'm hoping that we can demonstrate the belmont is that kind of a community think about how much to ask for an overall how to think about how to think about the whole process of of the ask of asking the citizens for more money do you think about it in just fix the so much time on the school committee but i approach it looking at because we've had a structural deficit for so many years we are looking at what can we do to fix the gap that we have right now and i think that the conversations that we've had in the conversations i'm having with myself are what can we what might be able to pass what can the community be able to absorb understanding the fact that there are people who cannot afford additional taxes as a school committee member we try and look at it once again what do we need right now and what can we do to sustain we know that we can be able to support us over right every single year the community has not been embracing of that so i think that what we are looking at right now certainly is what we need to get through this right now but with the understanding that we need to have a long term plan that we need to be able to sustain this and not have this crisis every single year because it is getting tiring for all of us to say oh my gosh once again we don't have enough funding for the schools and what goes into your own prison was well i think first of all it's not the responsibility of the school committee to approach the voters for an override is the responsibility of the board of selectmen only the selectmen has the onus lies men have the ability to put an override on the ballot that is not our role our role is to be defining what's necessary for the school system to report that information to provide the citizens and fellow town government members with the kind of information they need in order to make informed decisions about how we're going to fund our schools and certainly  we are part of suggesting a variety of the solutions that could be used but we don't actually think about asking for an override that's simply not our role our role is to to provide information about what is good what the amount of money necessary to meet the needs of the students that we have responsibility to serve is going to be what we have without risk without talking about the school committees role of the b o s role or whatever role we have a broken budgeting process is it we have a process let's release the budget let's have a crisis let's get all anxious let's call for an override let's scrape out enough money and then let's be done and let's have to live with that and let's go next year that is our budget process the process itself needs to be revised so that we can think about long term how to how to deal with this as for the how you go about thinking about it i absolutely think that one of the things the school committee can do whether they advocate or not or whether the b o s has the option to do that they can lay out a financial plan a multi year financial plan that gives face to the taxpayers that what we're giving our money for is something that we know it's going to be used for as it is now the last couple couple of our override attempts were like very vague as far as i