you if you have any hard copy that you'd like to give me after the meeting that would be great if the if there are any other miscellaneous edits you want to bring up now you could  make most of them but otherwise the and most are some sort of broader issue that people want to discuss regarding the report my major question for you as a group tonight was the section in the capital discussion that i highlighted in gray that discusses a point of view which i admit is my own regarding  articulation of capital funding with c p a and i fully recognize that this is by no means a unanimous position i'm not even sure if it's a majority position and i don't want to put words in the mouth of the more ready so this is something where i'd like to get your views and in the end  is agreement on revisions to the likely and i would revise that section and if there is a a majority desire to remove that section altogether that i would do that one but that's more what do you think about the following paragraph which just summarizes what the c p a is for for readers who may not be familiar with that's that's for i was going to interject i thought the second parent i think the first two paragraphs are non controversial still i mean i don't necessarily object to the third fourth paragraph but i'm not convinced that the committee has had a discussion of those and i guess i would have liked to see was perhaps a stronger statement that we would appreciate not appreciate there would be helpful if the c p c were to be more proactive in setting priorities or looking at long term you know i think you're sort of getting at that in the first paragraph but i think it needs to be by the nature of our committee we're reactionary i think possibility of a member of this committee attending the c p c at least in the early at some stage when they're evaluating projects i think that's an excellent idea no mentions but then secondly i'm not sure maybe the housing trust again you know we have an obligation to advise and well i observe you with the c p a funds is they come in and they have this money bond it just that's certainly not the highest priority to spend one hundred seventy five thousand dollars but it's in the historic budget and so we spend it and the c p a committee has a very good track record of getting everything approved and i just think that we are not prioritizing all of the expenditures of all of our money for operating budget and capital budget because we have these buckets to dismount he's going to respect  and i think it's i'm not saying we do away with it but i think it's good that we recognize this issue and we open it up for as you say it's a concern and it should be discussed may be eliminated maybe reduced maybe left exactly the same i don't see it as stepping on the authority of the committee they're doing their job they've given a million dollars a toll because spend it in these three buckets and then probably and understanding strategically how to use that money and all that but we haven't looked at all of this and i feel when i read it it felt to me like we're putting the cart before the horse particularly in the in the executive summary where you know we're we're talking about things in the executive summary that we have been talking about for a long time that are things that you know our the result of the work that we have been doing as a committee and i don't know really that you have mentioned it before but it's but this idea particularly with respect to what you know how much should we be allocating and all the kind of stuff is not anything that we've been discussing i don't have any problems with us discussing it i don't have any problems with things being elevated in the town as a discussion i don't think that i feel like it is the cart before the horse we we haven't discussed this and i feel extremely uncomfortable putting this out there that you know we are concerned about and we have a problem with before we actually had a chance to really talk about what does that mean and what is it that we're concerned about of what is it that we have a problem with and what might the possible solutions be i feel like this is i don't know it's i don't want to see it here but i was going to say basically the same thing i think you'll like it we haven't had a discussion here about how you know about nor i nor have we had c p c at our meeting really to discuss this with them to find out their perspective on it and i think we're we're making you know some pretty strong statements here that i think are not necessarily in line with the way certainly everyone feels but we haven't had a chance to discuss and i know i know i've heard this mentioned before and i know that there are issues here i don't even know how it would work would would because i think if you reduce the c you have to have a separate ballot that would increase taxes to replace that with with so i think there's a lot of issues around this that i think need to be discussed because if one gets approved in the other one doesn't or whatever how does that all work  to be a fall project or for the warrant committee but yeah and took what i was going to say is a small second point which i don't think you can immediately assume that savings  a can be offset by property tax i think they're separate and if you lower the c p a you're going to have to still go for a an override to increase the the levy so i think that's how it works i'd like to take a step back and say although i think c p a is an element i think the general premise here that that's the solution is only part of the picture i mean even the general premise i think the general premise is funding capital projects and having that be in balance with the operating budget where they're competing for dollars is really the challenge and we've got a capital budget of a million for that's about a percentage of our operating budget it strikes me that the average life of our at capital assets isn't seventy five years so maybe we need to do things about increasing the percentage of our operating budget that we devote to capital i think there are a lot of other elements that need to be addressed or thought about about adequately funding capital besides just we're concerned about capital funding we'd like to have a dialogue about with the capital with all i don't know who the right committees are there all these committees the major committee and then the capital budget committee and the c p a so that we'd like to have a dialogue with the appropriate committees about seeking to address the folded into the long term plan that you are already referenced earlier in the executive summary and i think that would be a way of bringing out you could the c p a could be one element and like a list of things that we'd like to dialogue with and sort of elevate conversation around it would be my suggestion for bringing the point in without kind of like kind of going down this rabbit hole you know one of the things that i thought was very treaty was the idea that the c p a funds might be used for reconstruction of the high school fields of that it's of the new projects approved by the community pathing pointing those things out might be helpful because we have discussed them quite extensively but something brand new that we haven't had a chance to discuss fully i don't think belongs well i'm let me say that what set me down this path in the first place was that each year we hear a presentation from the capital budget committee and nobody is satisfied because the level of capital expenditure seems woefully inadequate and then it seems to get  and then we reconvene a year later and have the same set of reactions so i wanted to at least and there's no natural vehicle for having this discussion the w committee is a little bit outside of the capital budget discussion the capital budget committee doesn't take a very visible policy role for the most part so i thought of using the  e executive summary to this report as a as a place to at least broach the subject and i'm in doing so course the idea is to have a discussion that ultimately leads to something successful committee there's no point in including them in the report at this stage so i'd be inclined to scale back the discussion in a way that is agreeable to most and well i do think the warrant committee is responsible for looking at the budget and if that's the capital budget discretion couple of inches apart of that i think there is a reason for us to have a discussion on it i also think there are other ways like we had this eight hundred fifty thousand dollars of  new growth coming in from that we didn't in to subpoena all of it we might have anticipated a small portion of it from the substation and you know that's an opportunity to discuss maybe take a portion of that which is a permanent increase to a tax base base that then rose every year and and give that to the capital budget money and those are the kinds of discussions i'd like to have too about what where else is there an opportunity here to find the capital discretionary capital budget those are permanent increases to our budget and yes we can always find a use for them if we're serious about capital budget and maybe that's another place that we can be looking for mine just this one out of the car and some other part of their financial policy  that would be a further discussion adam and i recall the other day with the cullen center and you'll be surprised perhaps to hear what they're thinking of as a benchmark for belmont you know we're spending roughly one and a half percent actually some into there's always been discussion about how is it that we're going to this is something that needs to be increased given the towns limited resources i think that's one reason  right i may have misunderstood what you just said but i don't think people are saying this isn't an average fix poor that i think what people are saying is we'd like to explore it before putting in the work but what i think you could put in report is just a summary saying we need to be valuable for these various committees to meet and start discussing them and if you make that an agenda item for the fall then there's no reason after we've discussed it you couldn't put something like this in next year report which may not be as soon as you want it i think you've done a service by raising the issue at least getting us to talk about it and think about it so i don't i don't know that i'm hearing negativity so much as just caution i think we have two issues here and we certainly discuss them both at different times one is how are we going to fund our capital spending and in terms of increasing and i just will point out that when we did the overwrite a few years ago we did actually build in five hundred thousand dollars worth of actually it was five hundred then another five hundred was another two hundred for the sidewalk so i thought it was a matter of it was also borrow way to capacity f war for capital projects and i forget what they got used on the use really quickly so you know and i think we all know we're going to need to go down there again at some point and i think that is also a way of looking to increasing the available funding for capital projects which is really i think the other conversation is about the c p i and one of the things that we have talked about a lot is trying to understand how to get pr which things get chosen is saving you know planning strategically some of those resources for the future i agree i don't think we can do that by ourselves but we do have a role in that conversation and so i would recommend that we try to know the c p a funds the capital funds the operating budgets i mean all of these things are did the funds that come back to the onset right exactly they're ones you know we're one town that they're all feeding into the various priorities i think it's premature to think about how those things get changed and so i and even to recommend specific you know  i'd like to follow up with ellen said it would come to a slightly different conclusion that and i'm saying i think it's appropriate to put in the report a discussion about capital spending in general and a concern that we're not adequately funding our capital resources and that we need to think strategically and maybe c p c is apparent that a coal reference to that but i think that that there is probably not i was just looking at the head nodding probably not much disagreement about that and saying that that's something that we need to focus on and we do have a role of the one committee i think it's fair to flag that in the report as opposed to something specific related to  that i mean by that is even when it and idea is proposed here which it's a good idea to actually have it mature into something that really is has force and takes action actually requires enormous follow up and persistence and everything so i think all that one can hope for from this executive summary is just identifying an issue that hopefully people will be interested in enough to the if so i'd be happy to move that we do that that is just i think that we also want to include somehow in whatever discussion we're having the capital budget committees to because they know what what projects are coming through them and sometimes those projects get passed up to c b c but i'm also saying when you talk about prioritizing and looking at things kind of to look at i think the whole scope i think there are pieces and one said that the c b c the concerns or things that the c b c that we've had questions about even i've had questions about why are we giving even a small amount to a private organization that it'll be sons of italy that's twenty five thousand dollars to go to something else you know  proper gutters on the barn or something but so i think there are lots of things that i think we may want to do that but i also think there's a broader issue of whether you know i always hear about the projects of the capital budget coming but maybe we need to have them come also and spend a meeting reviewing the kinds of projects that are being deferred in different deferred or not getting done and to understand that a little bit more and get their view on what amount they think is the appropriate amount or or what would make their you know what they you know what they think is a realistic amount that they could add to the discretionary count you just get done what they want to get done this may be a that effective in terms of promoting discussion at least between the work committee and capital budget committee and i have to say in the last year i've been great we shaped by my experience working serving on the a major capital projects working group where on the actually next week and raymone he will be here she is the the chair of i guess  that and also the d p w the police station building committee i don't know if i'm the vice chair but i kind of we've taken kind of an equal stake in this thing we will describe to you the proposal that's going to come before a town meeting in june for those two facilities which i think is spectacularly good but to get there it took virtually weekly meeting since last summer me and marie who's also on capital budget committee obviously but floyd was part of it kind of been a straight it was part of it little was there so it actually was a very broad based group but people who dug in and actually solved a problem that's been hanging over the town for twenty five years and it might be the end the major capital project working group is officially disbanding that's going to be in the report i think because people feel it's been exhausting and they have other priorities but it's disbanding with the hope that a successor organization will be formed possibly even as a permanent committee and maybe that will be the vehicle for organizing discussions at least of the larger capital projects you know there's a host of smaller things that the capital budget committee deals with that maybe don't require that kind of attention but we're talking about projects that are over a million dollars maybe that kind selectmen to do this i presume we do but it a subcommittee of the warren committee and the capital budget committee and the c p s way to think about the bigger picture strategy of how the town goes about funding and financing what i will call routine although that's probably not the right word capital projects if it's not the big debt exclusion it's not the high school but how do we deal with the myriad of playgrounds fire trucks and road repairs that and what's the right number to be thinking about what's the right funding mechanism at it and maybe it's an unanswerable question but i think if you put those three pieces i would say progress also has come of what a good ideas in terms of ways to look at our capital just even our discretionary capital spending in terms of even on public safety she had some really interesting ideas that we were sharing with her and she was sharing with us  chris can we you know on your great paragraphs rather than going with adams you know which is a little bit drastic to just hear what you say maybe deviate the c p c content but just the paragraph before the grace starts you basically talk about capital projects so maybe you can add a couple sentences about how you know we think there should be some sort of a group you can say the major thing is what is that called the major capital whatever  disbanded but something else needs to take its place there needs to be a dialogue i mean can you i'm in favor of socializing the concept and i think everybody is we've all sort of said that it different levels there's disagreement about like getting down to this one thousand foot level but i'm strongly in favor of socialized understanding what you said before that a report in and of itself doesn't change anything but unless we sort of start socializing at people don't like you know it helps to having you have some action go forward also i think that skeptics who you know people who maybe the some people that you know don't want us to fund the barn or you know don't want to fund other things to maybe make them i think we risk making people skeptical about  you know spending money on projects that some people might see is less sun trawled and you know when we're facing like kind of looming you know the living thing around the high school so if i have knowledge in that we know that i think it's important to acknowledge that and then focus well i tell you the thinking about next year already i take the point that if we're going to have any productive discussion with the c d c it's got to start in august and before we're supposed to just you have a summer project and you might have a subcommittee to dwell on it and whether it's a subcommittee which then has to post meetings and go through all that overhead or whether it's a single individual who would like to do it  we can decide that maybe the other project which you know we have which is the biggest project in the history of belmont that we have actually discussed very little high school and it seems to me that i don't know if they'll be any time in june but potentially over the summer and then certainly from the first meeting in september i think we have to get deeply involved in the high school because people rightfully expect us to have an opinion about it it's going to be too late to change anything i mean by the end of mid june we have to be completed with the cinematic drawings one reason i was reluctant to get involved by schools because of the such a complicated project i didn't think we had the capacity to actually really provide oversight so to is so enormous that one would have timed all those meetings and participate in all those discussions to really be a useful participant but doesn't our role is going to be how is this going to work within the existing frame the financial framework or a new framework and and how does that affect the budget off of you know foreseeable future not necessarily the cost of it which we are vetting and doing it's more how are we how do we see this affecting how we have the budgets will go going forward over the the cost to the taxpayer well the topic i would like us to discuss in the fall is not simply the financing of the school but  consequences of the school is not approved as opposed to the school is approved and which becomes a little bit of a forecasting exercise but i think it's one we have to do to be able to fully inform vote on this topic and i think that's a very good idea and i think thing that i'd be interested in is you know what other projects around the school are going to cost money outside of what the m s b in other words the fields for example which is not included in that budget and what is the you know just trying to understand are there other things i think moving costs and other things are included but you know i don't i don't really understanding you know i did hear bill available over the  general budget but i would be interested in what other things we need to be aware of that are and are there any other you know what's going to happen to the module just kind of get a better understanding of what other things we need to be aware of and how the buildings that you know the preexisting elementary school buildings are going to be used or what needs to happen there to if there's an issue that is really still up for grabs it's whether or at that point we put something out and that's what we put the election and so i don't worry about us wind up taking a political role they like ideally i would like to see us have an opportunity to do this well in advance but i really worry about inserting things at the very last minute and not having an opportunity to socialize and have have a discussion trying to analyze things to feed in to a decision as much as i would like to be able to do that anyway as wanted to raise it if the timing i was fire stations i can remember coming here to there and the override i think we do get involved with that but the time frame is different being right now it we didn't come for the pool to the white  the town was facing its largest expenditure in its history right exactly what role we could play that's useful i think we need to think about right so i think at this stage you know and you know this is a part of echoing what others are developed but i think one important role that perhaps we still have time to be able to weigh in on where we're sunk cost estimates some of the ability to suggest you know what what happens is and i think this is an important one as if the town rejected the debt exclusion how bad this plan to be book and what does that cost i think i think it would be good for us to be able to opine on that and  say something about what it looks like i agree you know in terms of the logistics of actually having time to study some topics some get our of thoughts together you know summer is always a challenging time i'm not sure what my own schedule is certainly in the month of july but you know we're going to have a meeting at least one meeting after time meeting still in june maybe we could devote that to making a strategy which will depend largely on who's available and has the energy to do it but i think  we have at least three broad topics to address one is a delegation to the preservation committee secondly a broader committee to take a look at capital projects and third is the high school can be meetings more than one in june and probably june is a better time to have more meetings than well so on my calendar here i have  our last scheduled meeting was going to be june thirteenth town meeting wraps up let's see going backwards to see who would be well ok if i turn it back to the executive summary could i make a couple of specific proposals one is in the first shaded  paragraph change the second sentence to hold on a second that's i know it's a little bit awkward to try to write things in real time but  let me give it a shot just bear with me for a second the the let me just read the first sentence the get the great challenge in addressing capital projects is finding solutions that minimize reliance on increasing the tax burden in this context the warrant committee believes that would be advisable to begin a community discussion for how to increase for how to increase  capital spending taking account of to adequately address the community's needs or the town's needs ok so that includes a conclusion and i think it's worth thinking about how we got here and i have to say i don't know what the capital spending was twenty years ago but the capital spending is and i think it probably came out of the same time when we were cutting spending in all of our departments because of budgetary pressures so it's not surprising to me that we haven't had enough money for capital spending we also didn't have enough money for a lot of the things we wanted to do and so we have in the recent past and probably in the future need to address the resources we have  for the operating budget and i think that we need to massively to do that with the capital as well but it's not i don't think capital is the only thing that has been underfunded for a lot of years oh i agree with that when we have all of that yeah so we're left with really the the first highlighted paragraph it could use a little bit about a i have to entertain suggestions for that right and i don't think i mean i think it's fair to say if i'm reading this the sentiment in this group it's fair to say that the c p a program is part of that discussion so i don't think we need to eliminate it but it died i think we need to emphasize that it is only well what are our sources of capital spending right now we have the cash very well that with the same with we get money from the state but that's really your mark for the roads and that's not going to change we have two thousand and fifteen over right spending some of which was here marked were debt service and i'm not sure exactly what the accounting is for that some of and that was not and will base is the the other piece was denser we often use a one time you know funds for capital projects like the sale of the property or the parking lot that kind of thing there are those kinds of things that go to  is we're missing an obvious one we have one hundred sixteen billion dollars annual budget now it may require some painful choices not to give increases in certain operating things but i think that's part of the tradeoff is adequately funding your capital within your annual operating budget and it's not necessarily finding all ways to fund that don't touch the operating budget right it's finding the right balance within the our budget and that may not be the only solution but that's an important component well in that spirit thought that's been on my mind for some time is regarding the c p a is that it is money that's raised by taxation but it's entirely outside of the operating budget and it has kind of its own existence and the primary justification for that when it was originated was the substantial state match that said well you give up a lot of flexibility but in return you get such a bonus from doing so that that would be a reasonable tradeoff and i certainly was concerned to me is the fact that when the state matches diminished so much i think this is likely to further diminish you suddenly have a situation where you have money raised by taxation which is outside of the operating budget and it's going to dwarf our regular capital budget the way things are going and that struck me as a sub optimal state of affairs so in my own mind i would like to think of this and this is just me i would like to think of the c p a now as just another component of our this i don't mean to it seems like we're back where we started understanding that i missed the first seven minutes of the meeting but it so isn't your point which is very interesting and important isn't that sort of the subject of the dialogue that we're going to have like that even as i mean i'm frankly opposed to having i mean all these projects seem worthwhile that we do in c p a but i think it's like it's a little bit the phrase keeps coming this is a little bit overkill but it keeps i keep thinking about like putting lipstick on a pig like we spend money on things that are nice to have and but we're like kind of the got sir kind of like in bad shape right so there probably are people that see it the same way but this seems like the subject of the conversation that we're going to have not i agree here and even though we haven't discussed it a whole lot as a group i think we're still considerably ahead of where the average president really have this kind of discussion amongst ourselves and with the town more broadly and then see if anybody cares basically and so i'm just looking for sitting here through parts of the capital budget committee that have been done for the last three years and i'm sure i think a lot of them are positive from two thousand and fourteen and really it's in the record about the community preservation act and interplay with the capital budget so it is a ongoing discussion and i think town treasurer and kind of ministry to were all invited just to see collectively what people thought was a good structure for trying to address this question  the ultimate committee should look like because i think it there's a lot of expertise that's distributed and it might be good to have you cross the abberation is always a good idea l at the beginning of this meeting that it's been very valuable the practical constraint is that the report needs to be sent to the town clerk tomorrow morning and you drag it to those in the idea that you're going to that you have one additional person read it or maybe to tell you whatever i do i will draft it maybe alan because she's like kind of better than that because first we have to do that tonight we have to vote in the report before we adjourn tonight and it will be voted subject to the revision of the sentence when i get home after this meeting i will draft the sentence and i will i think i can email it to all of you and all right to do we need to move approval of the report just subject to the revisions that we've discussed or any additional as any man would say any other thoughts that occurred and use of a minor nature report which said i think is actually extremely good so it's high adams you're right adam you said before that you wish there was a way to make this report more user friendly if i gave that some thought unfortunately i don't have an answer because you can see we come right down to the wire just the finished the report itself and then tuesday to somehow do a further adam if i missed this in the press who were the four candidates for school committee do you remember this guy joe norton who ran and did not win and short of the people in the but if you want to we're going to be interviewing them they're going to be giving a brief opening statement that we're going to be asking them questions like we did for interviewing trying to mistreat or the labor through manager of the same set of questions they answer the questions we hear from the retirement board i think the representative is going to be cloyd carman on the two motions for june town meeting which i believe are the same as two of the motions we heard approval or recommendation and i mean fish and we also need to do a q three review which has been put off for various reasons so at this point we will have data from the school department and from the town side just review the q three financial situation just to get that q three q can we get those q three numbers in advance of the meeting so that we have a chance to look at them and think about to talk about how we want this and how we want a dialogue about getting the benefit of her presence you know about the sort of capital idea that we're all just talking about talk about maybe what what should be a process for us sure i will think she's here rather than just having her talk about like how awful those fire station is can be expanded and talked a little bit  will advice here that we'd like to include that and because she's made it you know and maria's been very effective as chairing the richer capital project we're going through but she's made it clear that the committee is winding down so i think she'd be very interested in finding a way to keep it going