basic foundational understanding give people a chance to ask questions and understand what we'll be talking about on may second and fourth and and that's sort of basic agenda there's a microphone up front which not only allows  i don't think it actually will amplify your voice in this room but it's primarily for the television viewing audience or to the extent you have a question you'd like to ask please come up to the microphone and just again as a reminder like to have us have one question and one articles that will talk about tonight from any one time meeting and then three articles from a special town meeting which will also cover tonight all which are in the major town meeting and then there is the june town meeting which as marion mentioned we will do the briefing on may twenty fourth to cover those so where the construction of cushing village is scheduled to occur so these men and will not be required so i think it's pretty straightforward about why we're asking for the easement to be discontinued because it will no longer be needed projected christian village project yes it's basically a catch basin and storm drain pipe that has an easement attached to it so we can access it but as i said there will be a building over this easement at some point to help guide us in the creation of a replacement demolition delay by law and that work has taken us much more time than we anticipated so in order to have sufficient time to complete that survey and to work with stakeholders in the community we're asking to extend the current byelaw simply one extra year till june thirtieth two thousand and seventeen in the hope that we will be coming to next spring's town meeting with a law just to let you know the status of the existing demolition delay by law since two thousand and fourteen we've only had two properties on our list of buildings subject to the by a law come to us with demolition permits the first was two hundred fifty two fifty seven prospect street in the second was one twenty two waverly street in both cases we had public hearings and the historic district commission voted that both properties were properly preserved the owners of two fifty seven prospect street presented very compelling evidence that they had a very serious radon gas problem in their house and they had hired several consultants and presented the commission reports on from those consultants showing that really there was no viable alternative except to demolish that building in this case the commission decided not to enact the six months in the case of one twenty two waverly street we had a public hearing and again that property was deemed preferably preserved and there was quite an outpouring from that community of interest in looking for alternatives to preservation for that property we reached out to the owner in the developer in the hope that they would meet with us to explore alternatives unfortunately they did not and at the end of that six month period the demolition permit was issued and that similar to the prior a presentation the residential sidewalk snow removal by a lot had a sunset provision so the by law has now expired april thirtieth i believe was the expiration date so what tommy is being asked to do is to reauthorize the by law and make it permanent there is no changes to the language that was approved three years ago so that's the you have questions both to specific by law we can answer them but generally it is what you approved three years ago we've had experience with it and it has no change is contained in the language are there any questions law is to deal with what has been happening in the single residence see districts similar to it's very similar interprets to the bylaw that town meeting past two years ago to deal with the problems of oversized construction that was out of character with the neighborhood and diminished the value of surrounding homes you have some time this is the executive summary of the proposed showing of the proposed changes and they really fall into two categories the first category can create a sense of new rules for development in the single rest and sea area and the second category changes the process for a small but important subset of development going on in single rest and  see running through them roughly in order of importance the first problem not the first presentation in front of you probably the most important is the limitation on height that was the issue that initially led the citizens group to bring to town meeting the moratorium second there are some changes in grade because lowering the grade reduces the appearance of balkan mass of a home broadly speaking and subject just dharm water laws we think it's a good thing reducing the grade can be a good thing for the neighbors and the neighborhoods prior to would allow that to be played take place thirdly there's the placement of h b ac equipment and also includes propane tanks which one finds in this neighborhood again can't be in the front yard can't be in the setbacks and the idea is to push them back and to ensure that they are screened for the benefit of the neighbors front set back the gap toothed look does not enhance a neighborhood and the limitations on set back are intended to prevent there and finally  now we move to process if one is gone if there if the homeowner a developer is looking at an addition that will add more than permit the purposes of the amendment of these amendments are fairly clear we want to maintain the character of the neighborhoods we want to insure that develop improvement were in favor of development and improvement of the going on that there is a public process around them that does not mean that everyone will be entirely happy with the outcome of the public process but that there will be a public  it actually let me pause here and see if there are any questions so if you have a question please go to the mike and if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself saying your name  wonderful people i have no criticism of but one thing i am very interested in is this issue of size of of new structure and i'd like to know if any consideration has been given to placing the limits on the amount of additional size that the new home may encompass for example you have the new home is more than fifty percent in square footage larger than the existing structure is that something that you have considered or or i just actually curious your thoughts about that let me start and then i'm going to ask jeffrey to comment on that as well beginning with the example you suggested of a house that's fifty percent larger that would come to the planning board for special permit and special permit means that if the answer is no special permit you can't build it we would the planning board has in dealing with the general residence just read certainly take into account the size and scale of the other homes in the neighborhood we wouldn't we're not prepared at this point to put on some absolute limits for two reasons one is architecture matters so that it's possible to have a house that only increases area by thirty one percent and have it be more get from mental to the neighborhood than a house that's fifty percent larger the second is it takes some experience at some point we would plan to come back to town meeting with some rules that certainly where we're working toward in the gent what we're working toward in the general residence area but there needs to be some experience with the process before we do that jeffrey this issue of manson ization is not new for the town to wrestle with  want work were wondering if there should be an upper limit that you cannot exceed a certain square footage a certain size and what we discovered then and still holds lot the numbers of stories that are allowed the height that you're allowed the limitations on the size of a dormer and once you take all of that together that in itself is going to limit your size of structure now you may ask should those be looked at but that's a different question what has come out and what can the board continues to believe is that all of the financial regulations right now and my understanding is that the house that is increased by more than thirty percent and is on a non conforming lot that's going to require a special permit if in the example where the house increased by fifty percent but were on a conforming  t for example very large a lot it was not actually quite a special permit is that correct that is absolutely correct  to answer that factual question first this stoning does not doesn't affect zara single residence be our single residence correct now i understand that but my question is will we be general residence and now the single residency that encompasses about seventy percent of the residential lots in town there are roughly ten thousand lots in town so you know seventy percent that was done in order to turn to determine what regulations should be amended is that the vast majority of demolition is occurring in the single residency district now i'm not disagreeing with you so that's why i know that the question then the question becomes says one cakes away some property rights in service of some larger object i don't think this planning board is inclined to do that in unless there is some indication that the neighborhood where we  oposed to do that wants to see it we have other members thank you rafi would you want to comment on that we have other members the planning  here tell me member precinct three member the planning board i would agree liz it began a few years ago with the general residents citizens petition and it was asked at that time whether or not there would be an extension throughout the rest of the town for looking at reviewing zoning and at that time it was not something that was the will of the people if you will and then the folks and shot gardens hinge or district stepped forward and saw that there was a need because they start to see a lot of these homes that were built or not and within the character of the neighborhood so i agree with you liz and i think the planning board is thoughtful in waiting to see whether or not there's bigger moves afoot that would impact whether or not we would deliberate on that focus first on the intent of the phrase in one point five point four where you say single into family structures may not be voluntarily demolished  reconstruct it except in accordance with a special permit are you asking or demanding that the be a special permit for the demolition or are you saying for houses that have been involuntarily demolished you can reconstruct him only in accordance with the special permit because otherwise you're setting up to demolition permits the way it reads because there's already a demolition delay provision i'm just reading the words the way it was i think what you meant was if your structure has been voluntarily demolished you can only reconstruct accordance with a special permit that is under some stor circumstances you would not need a special permit to reconstruct it if you were going to build a house on the same point footprint of the same house but do you need a special permit to voluntarily demolish the house only the one that you are ready we are required to get caught i think you can fix that quite easily in the wording  by just saying it hasn't that have been voluntarily demolished can only be reconstructed and i think that would clarify that issue and the the i think there are three punctuation things i would point out where you say single and two family structures in some cases you do it correctly by saying single hyphen and two hyphen family structures but in the first two instances in the lend us your copy for the duration of the meeting on which you have marked these changes i think led to give it to you thank you numbers i have heard ninety percent or even ninety five percent we should be aware of that the question is why is the special permit to be issued by the planning board where then the zoning board of appeals in my experience on this owning board of appeals we were much more prompt in rendering the decision usually the same night as the hearing and where it was a joint decision by the planning board and a zoning board appeal of appeals we had to wait a mon so that indeed a majority of lots are nonconforming but by no means eighty or ninety percent as an engineer i'm sure you appreciate that correction as to the speed many communities and in the most unusual in doing this it's what the town adopted with respect to the general residence district was that issues of design and review of design is left to the planing boy whereas issues developers or architects or or or some other tra are there any further questions also a member of the community preservation committee so tonight we're going to go over the six projects we have five out of the six pontus here and before i turn it over to pay i just want to remind all town meeting members we nting please give us a general he more than happy to answer any of those questions to kind of clarify what i thought process process is ok so it's why i mentioned we have six projects here tonight this is our fourth year funding c p a projects i think we've done twenty two last three years the c p a is the community preservation act is a state statu it allows towns to fund projects in three areas open space which includes outdoor recreation historic resources and community preservation or affordable housing the monies are raised two ways some are locally generated and that's a surcharge of one point five percent on our property tax and then we get also get a partial state or match from the state and so between those two sources we get about a million little over a million dollars a year we can answer any questions from the first stop is not really trudeau on our it's a generational walking path if you cannot read the relatively small reading on the  several years ago the conservation commission went to the c p a with a request to acquire funds to create a master plan to develop a park at clay pigeon pond and what we envision was an intergenerational walking path that would be fully handicapped assessable and would go around the entire perimeter of clay pit pond you would have an entrance that hidden your street you would have an intrinsic at the school access road and it would maintain the existing access off of concord avenue to that end we engage the services of the beta group which is a landscape architecture firm and they developed for us a phased master plan for the entire park the that we're coming before town meeting with this year is the first and the largest project that they have developed for us and it will create a six to eight foot wide permeable pathway that will be fully handicapped assessable and will run between hidden street and the access road to the high school driveway at this point in time we are not going forward with the section of pathway that will go in front of the high school because we believe that there are plans for work upcoming at the high school that could adversely impact this path and cause damage to it so we'd like to do this as a phased pathway and we have proposed twenty five hundred linear feet of path when we started talking about this with various groups in town we were lucky enough to immediately find support from the veterans group that the veterans group has been looking for a permanent monument or memorial area and our lives gave architecture firm worked very closely with them to create a section of this park and that's kind of parks i can't see because right off of concord avenue you come in off of a y shaped access road and would enter a circular path area that would have benches a flagpole that they would like to like twenty four hours a day would have various monuments to the different engagements that belmont citizens have been involved in and it would provide an opportunity for both quiet reflection in community another part of this disrepair trees that have died have not been replaced and the labels that were there are no longer attached to the trees but construction of this pathway will allow us to restore the tree walk and create another educational aspect of this park we also have a variety of little phase projects that the list of architect gave to us that include things like this to clearing that would allow us to go in and create openings in the vegetation around the park restoring views of the water body to people who are driving by on concrete avenue or even just walking in the park we had people come to our meetings and tell us that they used to go up to the edge of the pond and fish and that and if you're familiar at all with this site that's no longer possible and we would like to restore that type of access to water body through some of the future projects at this point in time we feel that the construction of the path is key to all of that that once we have a pa that allows people to access this park safely in most types of weather we feel that we will be able to generate enthusiasm to create some of these other projects some of them are suitable for scouts to be doing some of them are suitable for garden of engagements we have projects that eagle scouts could work on there's a variety of ways that the community can interact with this parkway once we get the framework which we feel is the path installed the price tag on this is about a quarter of a million dollars it's two hundred twenty eight thousand dollars and that will create a six to eight foot wide permeable and well drained pa i have to one of them what is this material from a boat just don't know what what our design or has told us is that they will do very in layers of compacted crushed stone so the new water will pass through it but it will be firm it will if you were walking on it you might think that it was a stone dust surface or a hard packed almost concrete like product but it's a crushed stone base with different grades of par stone compact maintain it well that's one of the best things about this project is we have a d v w director who is already in charge of maintaining the mud path that exists there and he has agreed to work with us on the future maintenance of this pow repair should be minimal that we don't intend to plow it during the winter that it's really a three season pathway so while there will be some wear and tear and there may be a need to repair small sections of it there shouldn't be a huge there in the early in the early times for some not nationally for this but at least to clean up the area which nobody ever showed up to clean up that area with c p a money and it should have been done and i would expect it to be done i don't expect of our budget this million dollars a year that was spent on c p a wouldn't people be happy if we could do something with our roads but i don't i don't want to make this a challenge and of that i do want to make sure that these recreational projects budget to cut those trees out whatever it is to clean up the rest of that area one of the phased projects that we have from our landscape architecture is the control of non native invasive plant materials and if you're familiar with the thicket of vegetation that grows around that the much of that area would qualify this e p a is allowed to fund projects that control non native an invasive plants species so there is the potential for funding different aspects of the work that you  envision through the c p a other parsons of it we feel could be done through volunteer work days that we typically as a conservation commission sponsor or through from the high school we have a temple that generally helps out and we also have a garden community that's very active and does work day projects with us we also have belmont serves day which typically does some work up at the pond and we feel that with the direction that we've gotten through the development of this plan we can weiss precinct one before bounding up here i probably shouldn't look did i ever do i recall that there was a reference to kiosks as part of this process when i hear the term chaos i think about some sort of staff retail operation and i'm curious when you say use the term kiosk what you're planning or intending by that term when i use the term  of an informational bulletin board probably with a glass or a plexiglas plate face on it it would contain any number of types of information on this particular park we've considered a key that would discuss the brick yard construction that was the history that was the historical precedent on the site there's some really interesting features about the brick yard and some of the remnants the nerve ill will now that would be great interest to people we also develop this plan based on the nineteen twenty eight boring underwood landscape plan for this project and it would be fascinating to some of us to see information posted to compare the different paying tax dollars money to and addressing you know clearly some of the invasive aspects of what's surrounding upon now and how how this study and how our money is going  towards these initiatives sustainable aspects of landscape and addressing the the invasive aspects of what exists around clay pond ok i'm not sure i understand your question but i'll start answering and and you correct me one of the reasons that the vistas have been lost is through the growth of vegetation some of it is native some of it is non native what i would characterize as invasive we do have notebooks that our landscape architect has provided us with the deal with treatment method to control and maintain a more native vegetation i think the chances of eradicating all non station are minimal but i think that through a long term concerted effort whether it be through volunteer efforts or hiring a professional landscaper we could change the character of the vegetation around the pond to reflect what a more naturalized pond would have another issue that we have is that we have to note books that talk about what the original underwood plantings were for this park and some of the varieties of roses and perennials that he had proposed for this area are still available commercially so that at some point maybe that we substitute in for some of the plants that we have there now we would go back to our historical records and look and see what we could bring back as a tribute to that older original plan if you could just clarify what you mean by maintenance ongoing maintenance as with these efforts of rehabilitation both native and non native that would be helpful ok i'm going to pick one type of vegetation just to give you an example because the management of non native invasive plants is a very complicated process but we have  would prevail and throughout new england non native an invasive probably came from europe to eradicate this from a site most people go in and they'll take a weed wrench and they will rip out some of the larger shrubs they may hand called the smaller shrubs through a variety of polling techniques you can create openings in your planting bed where you can replace it with native vegetation if you leave these openings after you pull the plants they're just going to come back because the soils are more suited at this point in time for the non native invasive as we have found up approx meadow that when we treated the meadow with lime and added seed we did have some success  and invasive so i would say that it's a perpetual project that i think if every year we had a work party who went out and worked on culling buckthorn i would always have work for it's never going to be great thank you so i just encourage you during the presentation to tell meeting that the efforts of sustainability and noninvasive treatment and ongoing long term prospects are construction of such a path is a really good idea but in attracting people to the path you're attracting people to the pub and so i'd like to find out today not be the right person to ask but what is the status of the pond itself if the young person wanted to sail a small boat in it or remote control boat or something like that is the water safe will there be signs don't go near the water or what's the status of the pond itself i think that our board of health has already posted the pond as don't eat the fish that you catch so that it would be kept on fishing i think that the water quality issue that i'm aware of is too busy which would be i wouldn't want to  ring in the pond because you couldn't see them if they sunk below the surface of the pond has a long history of commercial activity associated with it and we also use it for storm water management in the town  in the first year the c p a came in we use that for digitizing our vital records we are virtually done with all of the digitizing portions all of the records more than seventy thousand have been loaded on to the town's networks and we are now working with our vendor to make sure that they are accessible so they'll be able to be issued to people upon their request that goes from eight hundred fifty nine to the present and we're using that system moving forward as well so of that one hundred thousand dollars we have about fourteen thousand dollars that's left at the moment and it is it was i guess our intention to begin the process of preserving the books in which these records really reside  and we are still intending to do that but unfortunately fourteen thousand dollars doesn't go that far and so we have proposed a continuation of that preservation effort which is really today's sort of this evening's first project the eighty thousand dollars we repressed during our first project we also had an item by item survey and excel i guess evaluation of every single one of those books and records and we have an that tells us from experts at the new england northeast document preservation center in andover to tell us what needs to be done to each record to make sure that they do not degrade to a point where they w and so it's our intention to follow their preservation priority list and that's how we would attack one hundred thousand dollars the rest of the hundred thousand as well as the eighty that were in the first project one of the most common questions that comes up is when a particular street was accepted by town meeting when the underwood family donated for example what were the conditions when they donated the swimming pool what were the conditions when the benton library came on those are very labor intensive sort of research projects and i did not bring the books be each way the original select wins books and town meeting books some of which weighed twenty five pounds and they are you know pigskin bound leather they are this week and they're all handwritten you're beautiful anyone wants to stop and you certainly can see them they're in our vaults however it does take a lot of effort to read through them and find out what's going on so one of the second project which is eighty five thousand dollars we have asked to have all of the town meeting transcripts which are many handwritten ones and then later turning into typewritten ones  digitized so that they too would be easily found so if someone asked a question about white street we would know all of the articles that ever were brought before a town meeting about white street without having to go back by our collective memory of the of activities and budgets that were ever done we do have a lot of those kinds of questions to the public records requests of the town are soaring they continue to soar and take up a lot of time and one of the efforts that we in the hearts of us are trying to do is make sure that we have access to our records in an easy way such that we don't have to waste the labor time we connect produced a record of past time to remember it is these are not just kind of fun increase some of them are obviously for the genealogy people those are fun i could add one other thing i know that the library is already funded to scale in newspapers some of the same issues come up might be interesting to be able to scan within one contractor that we had used on part one which is a company called amsi applied micro image i'm off them and they are pursuing a different method because of what they have they actually have microfilm so they are index lines in the digitized vital records we do as well as in the town meeting votes there's an index that follows every single vote so for the handwritten ones are obviously is going to be some subjective decision making about what that to it so there are very few years eight hundred fifty nine to nineteen i think it is one thousand in which they they are handwritten so that the decision about what the meditator fields will be and so forth that written or how the person who did the transcription in the recording what the article kind of main topic shows it's not just if it were white street for example it doesn't just show white street it might say white street extension once  railroad came in so they're actually much more detailed then maybe you're thinking but the ip department is also helping us with that so if anyone has any ideas once if we get funded we certainly will look forward to a lump sum vote for all six projects they're good individually and then a lot the second process come to make is that the work really has in fact reviewed all six of these projects and voted on them and voted unanimously in support of all six of them just for sections one up at the landing one on the stairs and one along the curved section down to the sidewalk the two opera most ones are deteriorated but there are salvageable we'll be able to refurbish them with some sand blasting priming and painting the forty foot section that runs down to the sidewalk that was is beyond repair and that will be replacement are our aim here is to replace that in kind they will look exactly the same as the existing ones to maintain the historical nature of the building and that side of the building in addition although it's not part of the c p a funds we're asking for will we'll be looking at doing a little bit a landscaping work in that area too because we think the overgrown greenery in that section has added to this tear ation want to cut that back a little bit thank you gerri are there any remove the tennis courts at a grocery playground and it was overwhelmingly supported not to do that and to actually invest into our tennis courts throughout town so back in the fall of two thousand and eleven we spent about twenty four thousand dollars to resurface and repair the task or the one that there is an increase based on we are not sure as to the anomalies of how the materials go it isn't a oil or petroleum based product that we are going out to bid for the asphalt is a very volatile market so we have we really only added five thousand dollars to teach court and with that it increased the cost about three to three hundred twenty five thousand it's appropriations that what i think maybe you'll talk about not talking so there and if we can talk about these but one is a provision for administrative expenses and then also an allocation of not less than ten percent to the the  whole bunch of tennis courts over the next two or three years that might be out of existence far god knows how long so the thought process from a community preservation committee point of view was we didn't want any of our high school tennis players male and female to have eighteen and twenty two away games so we thought it would be prudent if we had some courts fixed and when broke so that was really the thought process i only bring that up because there is there is concerns that we have way too many tennis courts i don't want to get into the politics of that but from the community preservation commission point of view we're going to be losing a lot of tennis courts over the next two or three years so if you've got kids cruising through the high school that play tennis just think of having eighteen or twenty away games because if we didn't have any call it farm would be would be in trouble let me let me move we recommend it to that group of residents down it they needed to go out and get a linsky park attack to design a playground be able to come up with construction documents substantiate why some of this project is from the planning of the p q playground i'm trying to be very specific it's purely a playground project in a little bit of confusion because you see p q revitalization i think with the really mean is to revitalize the playground so this is this is just the initial phase they will be back next year looking for  at least a couple hundred thousand likes are there any questions about th eckstein about their type five hundred one thousand three hundred dollars effect bailey mentioned earlier these three buckets that we've got to find from a community preservation point of view and these are the what i call the ten percent buckets you got historical you've got open space slash recreation and then you had affordable housing we did not have any affordable housing projects this year that means we still have to set aside ten percent of the c p a pool so that hundred one thousand three hundred dollars is ten percent of the revenue which we will raise their next year and that will be set aside for any future affordable housing community preservation project i think we have to make a small correction we're not appropriating we're reserving so i apologize for that small er operate the community preservation committee that's five percent of the estimate in appropriation if you look at aipac to chill safe we haven't really spent that much to spend all fifty thousand but you have to know if something comes up that we need to address from a c p a perspective i'll close by saying all the monies that are approved for into the community preservation part and if you read this report here you will know that these roughly about four hundred some one thousand dollars that we have not spent at this point in time   projects for the application materials and none of them were there for what we're looking for those applications before town meeting the remailer know send them to i think they should be available to all town meeting members i'm taking that writing that down and we're going to make that are there any further questions ok thank you for it thank you so that covers all seven of the articles in the main annual time being that means the three articles that are in the special town meeting so we have three more articles to  go and i'll deal with them in reverse order if you don't mind i'll just say that article one is the minuteman project article two is the appropriation of funds from the wood for road property sale for the bellman high school project in article three is the i won't go through the presentation that the superintendent went through at the special town meeting in february i will tell you that our role meant has grown significantly over the last several years and was projected to continue to grow  in the years the school department is undertaken a extensive review visit existing spaces at all levels and is using some classroom reconfigurations this current fiscal year and for next  accommodate the increase in roaming the need for classrooms there are folks who have been asked by the superintendent to serve on a space taskforce that are in this room and they can answer specific questions and we have a member of the school committee here at the end of the day what we are proposing based upon the needs of the middle school is to purchase six modular classrooms to be installed at the tennis courts at the middle school and to purchase those modules from the use of free  cash as part of the ongoing review of our space requirements there may be a need to purchase six more modular classrooms at the elementary level the year after two o'clock accommodate our moment the plan is based upon our free cash balance certified as of seven one fifteen and utilizing the strategy that we use for belmont center what we're proposing to do is to purchase these six modular classrooms for one million for fifty two use free cash is a funding source on designated fund balance because free cash is now free and purchase them from that source of funding and then take a look at if we're required to purchase six more at the elementary level to look at potential bonding  six elementary modules so that's the history again i have the slide deck for the superintends presentation but i think that sort of gives you summary of why we're doing this the school apartment has gone through the middle school and has  consolidated and utilized any and all spaces for instruction they have no options at this point in fact some of the instructional spaces that are being user inadequate so that that is the need for the six module classroom on that space for an indefinite period of time they cost roughly a million dollars to buy and then another forty thousand or so to outfit to fit them out to make them functional and there was a question was talked about about should we be releasing these or should we be so hence the decision to to buy them there weren't many was unanimous in support of this one point four five million dollar expenditure are there any questions stanton there's about forty five feet between the back of the tennis courts at the high school and the nearest the rail and if you look for example on south pleasant street you'll see that all the business owners have pushed their land use right up to within about five feet of the rail but probably many of them on land not nonetheless  they seem to get away with it the big if if they're going to be there for ten years and the tennis courts are out of use for ten years what does that leave the high school tennis team with and what about and what about recreational this is for the middle school  expected lower rated lifetime of the modulus are or what condition will they be in after five years or can we have modules that have been at the high school for use for over fifteen years jerry so i think we will maintain them and we will expect to get a useful life of a least ten years if not more are there any further questions about sorry precinct to town many members i can't help myself with the tennis you're putting the modules on the best sports unfortunately in the whole town which of the two newest ones which are in the middle school brand new tennis courts at the peak you shortly and there is a so for there if i'm not mistaken i'm not i'm not an eye for new brand new ones assuming the c p project passes at the wynn brooks yeah that's not what i mean i mean where are the other going to go for the high school yeah if there's a high school project i think that will have to be determined i know that they tennis courts was a staging area prior but that will have to be looked at as part of the process about what kind of project we will have and what that will require and where an adequate staging area might be located so it doesn't necessarily have to be the tennis club not necessarily right but that will have to be studying a review i'm not saying it won't be there i'm saying i won't i don't think we were at the point where we can give you a firm answer thank you when you are coming when i was making the comment about the last tennis coach when i look at the high school we're going to have a construction project i want a high school probably the first in the history of the town that you're going to be working around twelve to fourteen hundred kids lots of equipment so i guess to answer the previous people's questions there are buses and the buses who have to take the students to either when broke something else they're already doing it now you'll see buses down at the playgrounds where the teams are being play all i'm saying is it's really sad that they have to put them on the middle school because those are the very best ones in town and that's all i wanted to say and thank you for thinking of the tennis courts and i hope you all support the tennis courts because after those twelve you probably won't hear about project david you want to continue that as well so give a killer time mr schorr as you are all aware the town executed the sale of the would fall road properties for one point seven five million dollars in this fiscal year  board of selectmen have recommended that those funds be allocated towards the activities of the belmont high school building committee which will require the building community to engage a consultant to do a feasibility study to hire an owner's project manager to do soil sampling and testing and to do schematic design as the as as part of the process of evaluating the size and scope of the high school project in determining the cost so to using one time funds that have been realized to the town from the sale of the property to the belmont high school building project in order to perform a feasibility study in required activities as part of the m s p a product process again these are not tax dollars these are onetime funds and at the end of the day if the building project moves forward these funds will lower the cost in terms of with the tax payers will be asked to pay for the total project cost and it seemed to be a nexus to use these one time from to this purpose or any questions forty five million dollars total project with about forty five million dollars reimbursement from the n s a yes the total cost one hundred million which of course we only have organ but that is the total project markopolos human mind joining us as well don't finish beforehand we will have our stop at nine pm mr chair stuff i might add just for clarification i know that we've received some comments or suggestions jack is provided some visuals for tonight's presentation and there are some financials that will be discussed we will for them to tommy members as well as some other information that's being developed but we will push out some information to the tommy members so they can begin to evaluate  this is another complicated question from it it me in high school and we don't want to overdo it but we surely want to provide everyone with the town meeting any information that they may want minuteman high school has a presentation we might provide be in may but i am going to try to not just leave this open ended to questions and try to put a little bit of context together what i want to do is talk first just to let people know how  the the revised regional agreement impacted the district talk very quickly about some of the history or the need for this project some of the history of around it spend a few minutes broad outline of what the project is and then get into some of those facts and figures so since may when we met me april march of the last town meeting when we voted on the original at least in my view the logical geographic concentration that one might have we have a cluster of belmont arlington lexington right here and that what i will call the route two communities even though they don't all remaining regional of the remaining minuteman district the need for the school the school was built on plus or minus one nine hundred seventy two so the infrastructure and it's comparable in age to our high school the infrastructure is at the end of its useful life in much the same way that many of the components of our school  school has been placed on morning status by an accreditation group called the new england association of schools and colleges that's an important group for people who it's an important good housekeeping seal of approval that was placed on morning status by that group back in two thousand and twelve for the sole reason of the condition of the school in addition to just the aging infrastructure the kind of the configuration of the vocational schools are the vocational programs for not all of the programs but most of the trade programs is in it giant open bullpen much the same as this room is with partitions dividing one program for another that man was apparently in d in the seventy's when the school has was created but has since been derided as the optimal way to provide education now that's not the reason why the minuteman is moving forward proposing a project but it is an issue that can be addressed or corrected real quick history the minute man has been in the feasibility study since two thousand and ten i would go through all of the iterations but they have looked at several sides schools during that most of ranging from a school size of four hundred thirty five to eight hundred settled on six twenty eight as the schools size in june of two thousand and thirteen if memory serves correctly and before that six hundred twenty eight they looked at options including rehab and partial demolition partial new construction  the decision was made to go forward with a new building that seemed to be the cheapest and the best alternative that approach was approved by the end s b a in january of this past year and in conjunction with that approval and i think this is important because we'll touch on roman later in conjunction with that approval the m s b a put in writing that they would not entertain a school for less than six hundred stoop so that's something just so what is the new school going to be just very quickly this is just an aerial photo mass runs up here one twenty eight this along here the existing school it's very hard to see is that shape right here that's the existing minuteman school this is the yellow line here is the divider between the lexington and lincoln the existing school is in lexington there's a parking lot field over here and out here are the football fields the baseball field or whatever proposal or the plan is to continue to live in this school while building this school here on the existing athletic of vocational programs on either side minuteman calls them academies there are clusters of similar programs within the middle of the shared facilities like cafeteria library in the the one can't talk at least in our community about minute man without touching on enrollment in roman has been an issue for our community from the outset minute en this year sends or has six hundred thirty five high school students enrolled in it when you of that amount six hundred eighty two excuse  me of that amount three hundred eighty two were are from the sixteen communities that were the member towns in at the start of the school year the six member towns who are leaving all fifty one so right now this year there are three hundred thirty one students enrolled in minuteman from the ten member inances the project is projected to cost one hundred forty five million in round numbers with forty four plus million reimbursement from the state leaving a net cost to the ten member towns of one hundred million dollars part of the revised regional agreement that you all voted on to approve a few months ago has a three part formula for allocating those capital expenses it is heavily weighted towards in the moment but it's not exclusively based on minute man has received and we talked about this a little bit as part of the town meeting related to the regional agreement minuteman has received conceptual approval to from  charge a facility fee to any students that come from a nonmember town that fee would be equal to least as its comp contemplated the average cost of the debt service in any given year per student minuteman and its a sum sions in the financial presentation that will appear later is making very aggressive and in my humble opinion not supportable or sustainable assumptions about enrollment growth they assume that in a three to four year period we're going to go from three hundred  thirty one member town students to four hundred fifty eight that is about a thirty five to forty percent growth in rome and in a three year period when the long term in ro made and the way the capital works is that nonmember the contributions that nonmembers communities pay are deducted from the debt service and then the rest this allocated to the member towns minuteman is assuming that every seat that's not filled by a member student will be filled by a nonmember student hanging whose town will pay about eighty four hundred dollars a head in this capitol facility for so many demands assuming that one hundred seventy students nonmember students will be attending at a cost or at a contribution of about eighty four hundred so they will contribute in aggregate about a million four of the debt service under the current belmont share of the current and relevant and using that seventy two recent years we thank you if that facility fee goes away minuteman collects zero either because the nonmember communities threaten to have threatened law legal action and they may win that knows dessie can always change their mind or at eighty four hundred dollars ahead nonmember communities may seek out and find other alternatives for their students besides minute if that number goes away belmont's assessment for this project would go to four hundred ninety five thousand a year just under five hundred thousand beyond that the assessment can change and will change every single year there's this is not fixed for thirty years each year that capital cost is allocate reallocated amongst the member towns so how belmont assessment may change in the future is a function not only of how belmont's enrollment changes but how the other nine communities and roman changes and how much contribution is made from outside by and large i think it's a fair assumption although it's not the worst case assumption that our assessment for this project could be somewhere around three hundred seventy five to five hundred thousand dollars  let me say and perhaps i will advocate and ok my position my position is having watched this debacle for five years it's now out of the point that we get a say no even if we're the only town to say no read  twelve angry men let me say this to build a school for six hundred twenty eight well now remember down to three hundred thirty one students which is fifty two percent is just falling they've just been pushing this bar along and they want to get over the goal line and they lost all perspective belmont doesn't have the money to build to join this district with this nice shiny school with all the other concerns we have and i want to focus on the money if we vote yes this is proximately on didn't forty five million and forty some odd million only m s b a will looking no matter what happens paying  share which varies between eight to ten percent and it may change a lot of the flexibility of the district but somewhere out he did ten percent of one hundred million dollars the absolute worst thing that can happen to us and i said this  worst thing that happens is we vote is down is that there are literally motivated scare tactics and oh if you don't vote for it we're going to have to repair it would be a hundred million dollars it's the same hundred million dollars the worst thing that can happen to my concern is if you vote yes for this the risk factors which include and you've indicated them the proposal is that the nonmember towns are going to be asked to pay a surcharge o eight thousand four hundred sixty three dollars for each student they're not going to do it they're not going to send his students are they going to find other alternatives or as they have threatened they're going to legally challenge it and they might have a good lawsuit on television i  mention in order to make these numbers look maybe palatable they have made this assumption that every seed will be filled by saying we're going to have an eight percent growth in the membership districts which is absolutely contrary to what has been happening over a number of years it's like a ski slope if you look at the at the enrollment on the on a graph and now which they don't even address is this new policy of d e s c that ninth grade students used to be able to do an explor they can do the ninth grade exploratory by the time they finish the ninth grade they found a girlfriend or a boyfriend and they're on the basketball team and they just don't go so the in roman is not going to be there and without the enrollment if we're down to and you're not going to give me my press box and i got a hand this time pub maybe you want we can get two hundred thousand dollars to finish the project we've already started we're talking about a five hundred thousand dollars a year assessment and we just got to look real hard at the dollars now what happens if we don't if we don't vote for this i think there's a lot of upside first of all when i don't spend one hundred million dollars to fix that we have a flexible agreement where we have people who are now get skin in the game have the weighted vote and yeah we got to fix the roof we got to do is an exam we're going to have if if we repair it and adequate building which will be sufficient to continue the same sort of education that david receiving up there up till now  exactly what we want to accomplish and so i think the governor structure has been improved dramatically and we also did include the belmont provision if you recall was that at that chapel fee for non member communities are they bobbing  actually correct barbarella own secondary ed may not decide under their regulations to allow that to be imposed or nonmember towns will get on that matter or perhaps not send students but it is there as a protection and hopefully at some point in time also understand that we may be the only community if we do vote not to vote at time mean certainly the six declan towns have a have a vote and they're leaving the district so of course they want to send their kids back to a new referendum vote district wide go on a saturday for four hours so i think we need to prepare for that thank you just before we do the two seconds before we begin the questions i agree with everything that bob said but i also think that there are risks to all of those past what he's talked about and tonight for at least for me unless it comes up in questions isn't of the form a comment on mark's comment about the read i believe for two reasons one under the m s b a rules you have to get binding for the entire amount even though you're going to get reimbursement so you have to get authority for that and people here who are more knowledgeable about a may know that and as a member of the district each district town is jointly and severally liable for the debt so the amount that appears on that question and the amount the town meeting members have to land i'm not sure that the building itself has much value but there's some question about whether or not other than a ball field whether or not there is a potential harm to the lives of selling it selling it all the way to the private to the private market the we'll take our share of that or maybe even we'll take all of it because now you really need less state aid then you advocated for so i did there is it's not a pure panacea for the district and that's not to say that there's no benefit to considering it in there are some things that people are considering but they are i think remote conceptual thoughts at the stage where you want to look at it to see if it is going to avoid you the advantage of the district absolutely i can i look closely i can see it right now can i go up and see what the numbers are s precinct three the grandfathered students the grand the towns that are leaving yeah their costs associated with them they are they remain members of the district until july of two thousand and seventeen so for fiscal year seventeen the year that begins this upcoming july first they are members of the district they're after they are non members their students that are enrolled there are allowed to continue through through senior year but beginning in july one of two thousand and seventeen they're applying freshman to their incoming freshman will be treated the same as any other nonmember town they'll have to provide their own transportation costs will be treated just like any other non member communities and what's the typical cost of a nonmember community  state sets setting aside that capital facility fee that i talked about the state sets the two wish and level and it is zero ran around in round number seventeen thousand dollars now but there are two add ons to that first is there's a surcharge for kids who are in a special education on a special education plan of about five thousand a student in act on average about half the minuteman students are in and i e p plan so on average a nonmember town will pay another twenty five hundred dollars and then on top of that they are responsible for their own transportation costs so their cost to send kids to minuteman the somewhere north of twenty thousand in general and our cost currently now i should know this number that we just talked about last night i would say it's about twenty six thousand but i don't know if that's plus or minus sim r were higher for the in the past couple of years the state dessie which sets of the department of elementary and secondary education which sets that tuition rate has walked it back  us so the other schools like their other vocational schools in the area that towns that are not part of this district might choose to go to does anyone know what they cost the minute million jack this is true of the what we've historically see has made it made it one of the more expensive  four to provide you know career and technical education to your students that want to participate in a type of the plan they said we're just going back a minute man i said well that's just great government's going to leave us while we get you know what we're leaving as well and so that's when this whole assessment capital we can't do anything about the operating part of this his desk he does regulate that you thought it was important that if they were to come back and we we ended up building this new building that they would we would least have a three we are i hope about to build a new high school could we provide the vocational educational services in the new high school but less money than the projected costs of a new minuteman the it couple in short the answer is no and this is one of those services where regionalization does really create efficiency minuteman offers approximately sixteen different programs we send twenty six kids they're going to i had not looked at data recently and looked at data a few years ago when we sent thirty two kids minuteman those thirty two kids were enroll in fifteen different vocational programs there is no way we can achieve economies of scale thirty two kids spread out over four years is seven kids in a class if you had a single vote program so there is no way to provide this service ourselves so i think in europe isn't the final question just one question in the beginning there was a feasibility study  think it was about seven hundred twenty five thousand dollars is that included in this in this calculation is it included in the one or is it hours are going on now while they were in the feasibility study we're spending money on the design we're still operating within that budget i don't know whether the seven hundred twenty five is in the one forty four joe to be honest but i do know that we will get the the capital went from about five hundred up to a million there is money in the fiscal year two thousand and seventeen budget to pay debt service not only on the feasibility study which minuteman has borrowed against because we haven't received the