number of times and whether we have any additional questions to you on that at all we've talked about this we've presented no twice think you presented it we had a working session where we presented the idea to the board of selectmen to the joint session and we had to joint session when we presented the budget over to me so the work for me has heard it as well as the school committee so and i think one of the things that jessica can talk about if you like is while this is a lot of the town and the retirees because they will share in the lower cost and it will reduce our liability there is a significant amount of education and upfront work that is required from the h r department to implement this program we will be issuing a separate card i believe from t the retirees there will be questions there will be some kicking the tires that they will have to do initially so i think our goal is to implement that next for next january which is a good day to do it because that's when the rates change and i think senator kerry david that is january of eighteen how does it and chip of course so i just i think with the viewing public we should explain ok sure kind of an pease stands for employer group labor plan yeah i mean essentially the medical coverage of the plan will not change for retirees has to do with how the scription coverage is handled so sensually it's farming out a prescription coverage for another carrier implementing this program right now what we do what the town does is we are in a reimbursement basis for the medicare part d program of our drug plan for our retirees this basically in essence  converts this to a impact on the premium or the cost to the retiree in the town instead of doing the reimbursement so there will be a lower cost to the town in the employees perhaps you  not only include the accounting component but also the budget component we also in fiscal eighteen will have to switch to the new gadsby seventy five which treats the liability differently than it is currently treated from an accounting standpoint on our balance sheet in the process of developing our p to accomplish those things we did a timeline and one of the things that you're aware of is that the belmont light department is on a calendar year basis as opposed to a fiscal year basis that ends on june thirtieth so there their fiscal year ends on december thirty first while it has an impact because because their statements are da december thirty first two thousand and sixteen they need to have an updated opeth number included on their statements and we are required to file their statements by april twenty  realize that meeting that april twenty third if deadline for the belmont light financial statement component was not realistic so what we are going to do and we did have conversations with the working gro p just to make sure that we were all in the same page what we plan on doing is issuing a or developing a current opeth liability report for one year to allow us  to use that for the belmont light statements and to be used for our statements but then immediately thereafter do our two year opec actuarial study with the components that we want to include with regard to the budget component and do an r f p that will include the gas to be seventy five requirements so we're sort of doing this in two steps were going to update our open actuarial study so that we have updated numbers that are  fresh which were required to do because we're beyond our two year window for the study that was done last time and then reissue an r f p and take the time to select the right firm with the right requirements and they are pete to achieve what we agreed that we wanted to achieve and then have a two year actuarial done for fiscal eighteen basically for the town and we can use f a like department so we do it in a two step basis so that's where we're at so we're eighteen budget or ninety budget i would say non because we don't have the data to determine what the actual same answer might be presumably right so that the savings to the town savings to the retirees total savings at least nine percent we're looking at some claims experience right because there's a lag there and you made a comment toward committee hopefully no more than something like you know more than nine we've had the other way we've had favorable claims experience for the first six months of this fiscal year based upon a spike in our claims at the end of last fiscal year that was unanticipated but was an anomaly in terms of the number of cases and the severity of the cases that has now mitigated for the first six months in terms of our claims however we have had a january claim experience that is significantly different than the previous six months we've asked  harvard to take a look to see if those are temporary spikes are those are indicative of long term or lot medium term claims based upon a large number and then in the seriousness of those claims  percent to cover that you know we keep a certain balance if it isn't for self insurance so there's a certain balance we keep in that fund to ensure that we need our obligations and we also have a stopgap insurance so i guess understanding why do we need a nine percent increase assessed to us to approximate what our monthly claims will be in an ideal world the level monthly payment we make to harvard will be a zero impact basically means that that will those are the value of the claims that we receive for that particular month and if they've done their projections correctly it will be approx me those dollars on a monthly basis obviously nothing's perfect so what we do want to quarterly basis is we settle up and so some months where we pay the level monthly we pay a little too much some money to pay a little too little a little and then at the end of the quarter we balance out and sometimes you get a refund check and sometimes we have to pay a little bit more from the trust i guess that is there is there a certain level  that we're that harvard or whoever is recommending that we keep within that trust fund yes so so we there's a balance in there i don't know what the bounce is eight point eight point seven as of july definitely so you know we didn't continue to fund it some point time that would you know the ironically this is simplicity point of view we pay of all of our cleated have nothing left in itself so one of the challenges we're facing in this current fiscal year is this as i no had an anomaly at the end of last fiscal year with regard to our claims which meant we are pain more in what we projected in our level monthly payment than what we budgeted for as i said for the first six months we were below what we were paying for a level monthly and that's what you base the budget on which is that revised level monthly based upon the first six months experience of this fiscal year to sort of make up what we did anticipate as part of the seventeen budget and that was a nine percent increase to basically catch us up and to basically put us on an even keel and everything was going well until we saw the january claims and that had a big spike so we need to do some more investigation about  what is causing that and it could be some one time issues or it could be said systemic of some larger claims and numerous claims like we experienced at the end the last fiscal year so while the nine percent made sense based upon our experience for the first six months based upon a revised level monthly that was established after we adopted the budget we're going to have to revisit that because it's different than what we were anticipating for the first six months and it's it's a higher issue as opposed to a lower issue in which they have issues or legal moves while we do that in concert with harvard so what they do is they take a look at your claim that's experience we take a look at your claims experience and basically as i said the level monthly more is nothing more than an estimate on a monthly basis of what they think our claims cost will be and some months it's higher some months it's lower and but the ideal world is to have it at at that number so that you can budget and plan for our reinsurance cost and estimate of our claims cost and basically that translates into a working rate for individual and family plans which is the amount of money we need to raise to cover our budgeted cost estimated so a self insured what's the balance in the trust fund how do you typically look at it so much so michael works for harvard so he's there basically actuary from harvard social who is help this and frankly you know we have incurred but not the recorded number of about a million sex so there is some we informally of use that six million dollar number as sort of the benchmark is sort of the floor right banged up with and i mean give or take that's sort of been the informal number clearly we will eat into our health claims trust balance because of the experience we incurred at the end of last fiscal year that's now translated into this current fiscal year but not to the extent that we  people would be jessica myself ellis and on occasion the treasurer and then harvard and sue sure look ok so it's a group of people then and then for two thousand and seventeen the budget has been approved by town meeting last year we had our behind on two thousand and seventeen in terms of the level of payments that were made we were below what the level payments were established but the revised lower amount was still higher than what we budgeted receive a refund checks from harvard because we are paying them more while but that's part of the mix and then we also get reinsurance payments so we were hoping to mitigate eating into our health claims trust fund for fiscal seventeen which we are on track to do until we saw the january claims so that's why we have to be a little bit cautious about february and march and may may make an adjustment so that's why we use the nine percent because what we budgeted versus what our actual claims experience was about a nine percent increase and we wanted basically bring that into line to what we needed to spend based upon our current claims explain two trips less than what we were paying for eleven months and the nine percent that you keep talking about is there's no change to the nine percent nine percent or the only change in the nine percent will be as if every worry claims are significantly higher than what we saw for the first six months which again that may mean we make have to come experience so just we get a better understanding of how this is this working rate that dave referred to is the term and just as part of the budget process and i know there we it when when the term winter self insurance model is on the w not that we're suggesting we do that but i remember the time that we were when we were adopting and going to a self insurance model which i think ultimately save this money within our budget perhaps you know there was a concern raise that ok so this is going to be implemented january of next year are you going to start the process of educating the retirees on yes in a sense say they'll be a male or will probably have several information sessions where retirees can come in and meet with us look at a presentation ask questions and the timing is good as a lot of the retirees now need to come back from florida in march or april so targeting to do this over the summer in terms of the education piece and getting it wrong the form of speaking out and  you mentioned that this is for the medicare retirees yes and what percentage of our retirees are not on medicare and what happens to them there's no change to the retirees that are between fifty five and sixty five or those retirees over sixty scuse me are on the medicare ok glad you follow up with that and the primary driver of that is the number of elections that are planned in a year or so last year and two thousand and sixteen a calendar sixteen we actually ran six elections although in fiscal sixteen we only ran fo they were some pretty big for the presidential elections of the primary as well as the final action and then we had a special election for minuteman last year so we always do carry an extra election plan so  e teen which runs support starting in july we only expect the april annual town election and then we carry an extra one should you gentlemen decide to do it or a special comes  lot more activity going on we're going to eight sessions a set of six that's pretty much the big explanation as to what's going on in the town clerk's budget sixteen to twenty five thousand or twenty six thousand including that of course is the six thousand people who came to to vote early so even if you take that off where up by about four thousand people and that doesn't include the phone visits that you get that's right we have we don't we don't have the capacity to count our phone calls but our emails are up from thirty two thousand last year or two years ago to sixty five thousand so those numbers per day just so you're kind of you get the relation that means that a that puts on us quite honestly is that if you get more and more people and some people consider those interest interruptions we consider them interactions however they have to be solved plus all of their other needs which is a lot of them are looking for data and under public records  public right records records access officer right what impact that factored into the eighteen but if you see an increase should we need there you have four point five if you operate that way for a number of years yes you know that you use internal use we have to give you leaned on some volunteers and also in truth through the summer months as well writing we have two or three hundred hours of students from be able to come or seniors who come here this year we haven't had that many but we're purchasing a system to help us kind of track and coordinate all those requests across departments timing is critical to the public workers law and the law allows for true free hours of research and for every single requests that public access officer and she's the funnel and she keeps on the straight in the narrow but then in addition to that the individual gather gather information is actually done by the departments so that it's not only the clerk who acts as the funnel it's actually the individual department heads who are required to assemble the information so not only is it the clerk it's previous of through the whole organization of time and effort and the other part of the pressure that people don't i so appreciate but we we in the town  information is guy no you responsible to them provide that to remember his requests that are sometimes for example the police will respond directly to lot of departments will respond directly but they keep us in the loop because i'm required to keep records of all that so for this fiscal year we're you know right no doubt because we are down on election and we hope that we'll be able to to manage that with the new software and i might be coming back next year and saying things would change but i'd rather write it out see how we do it they are incredibly talented downstairs but it's also pushing from paper records now to technology in a very big way so their skills are also advancing for all of them so you fully staffed and know that there was one question about request for a public record whether we've designated as the public records office or not is that letter that's correct right and somebody could ask family for something to you know have the same shirt exams and then as i understood think our process is to have that put in writing filed with the clerk distributed to the department so that there's an audit trail so i think it doesn't have to be in right it's a it had to be it does not have to be in writing so many departments are incredibly generous with their information and the customer kind of the counters that we have on the town parks office for example we don't record every single thing that someone comes in to ask but just we take a really really long time when it's already at our fingertips you make a photocopy give it to them if someone has asked us for something that  comprises more than a can you just go over there make a copy and hand it to me or send me an e mail or respond to an e mail and we are trying to get back into that crash so we understand the volume of those numbers of requests but it's still considered a public records employees have a responsibility to live within the public records law and that means to comply with their requests as well as to handle documents the right way that's right you know so it's not just there there is the point where the other thing is i've you know i'm just going to mention this town hall is a historically preserved building yes yes and you would like to have but i know she has offered to have us that they're on there for a day to see how all of this works you know with all these people because you know that i'm going to but it would it would be useful to have a sign out front you know and on the front steps that says you know if you're pulling a permit it's over here because some of the data that she's talking about to get people that come in and asked them and they have to drop what they're doing and say no you can also get more information posted save you have the ability permit it's really over things you know you can't you can't sort it bring that up is that it's my understanding that you can question if i'm wrong but that if you're above the midpoint for your position the only thing that you can do is get a call is is that correct in  you are if you are discussing matters that this board meeting should be discussing in executive session as relates to executive collective bargaining and i'm very uncomfortable with doing that we're asking ellen a question that she's not in a position to answer it's really an h director question and so i understand your point jim we've raised before they appreciate it i'm very happy to discuss it but i think we need to discuss these kinds of things executive session because you're letting things out they you you think that we should change things from the midpoint now it's a collective bargaining point why would you want to do that in public they to discuss that in as a group executive session and then make decisions around that's my point of view  i'm happy to discuss it in executive session i think it's public information on on how the salaries are minister for nonunion union employees and i think unless we address this this  get i just want to say thank you for all your hard work you know i've always said in many ways your department is the first face of the town because that's where that's the first store people enter so so thank you for making do with the resources you have and  the town we we have five major programs that were involved departments involved with desktop services which comprises all the  laptops tablets printers etc in the service all those we provide the help desk for all the departments in town by the way speaking about that are our customer is it's our customers all the departments in town where we are uniquely set up that we we provide the services for all the departments white library light fire light police library schools town we all work together we're all collaborate we all we are aware of what everybody is doing and everything that we do affects so that even though there are some separate networks there are things that work across a network and we're all on the same fiber network and there's a network services group which is comprised of myself and two people from the  high school and we maintain the fiber optic network and the network services for all the departments in  town this year we've done a number of things we've had a couple of challenges we lost our help desk us support technician and made year we have a new one in place is been there for about eight months now  however it kind of put a squash on a lot of those who are working on so we are currently involved in a number of projects will steam ahead to complete by the end of june some of those  are taking the fire records management system to the cloud also our fire records the fire rockets managing fire how many other departments are we fully backed up in the cloud for all th my fact we just performed a test a day before yesterday where we actually we call it spinning up our servers you know backup systems and connected to them so that if we dispatch calls the command they get sent down to this system we're replacing that with a hosted system ok and so that's what we're in the middle of working on now also they have a staffing system that we are going to take that that's in house right now we're going to take that to a host environment also that's that will be for fiscal they'll start zero where it's really backed up in the cloud yes cross the power down couldn't schools schools backed up and cl of anybody some we we also have to be careful with that because we make sure that our backups are in geographically different places because i guess the and you know the other day if anybody was aware that a that you think of the old telephone switching panels that they used to have so in a computer is asking for something some some way it's got to get connected to the right computer or to the internet or is where all right so that's what these main hub switches do their electronic switches and they direct all the traffic all of the systems in town go through those three main hub switch they are set up redundant so that if one went down the traffic could be switched over to the other however since we have a library one main hub is when that building is going to be rebuilt to move so forth we have to relocate that hope we have in our capital budget and i've had it in my capital budget for at least six years or to start a three phase process that will take care of the library anything we do with the high school and anything we do with this building across the street because it is it is so that the hubs david is intentional that in there in three separate locations that is well it wasn't what's the plan it well ok but it is that intentional and then when it's intentional or when the fiber network was first installed which was back twenty years ago y know what's happened is we have used the design that was at the time and added to it and so forth but now we're at the point where we we want to consolidate it and to do that we have to first assess what we've to map it all out we know what the end points are but we have no idea what conduit and what poles were off so we've got to get that all together so that's the first phase is mapping at the sassing it and testing all the fiber we have to make sure that  t we have is good and what we and we know what what's good and what's bad the next step is engineering and and planning services that's the next phase and that's where we sit down say ok here's what we've got now let's decide how we are what we can do with four fifty carpet how we can move that how we can move those connections where would move them what we do with the library in the school high school and then the third phase and final phase of the actual construction so that's the the network is for we're down to find it's up to supporting these types of initiatives because i think those are two buildings that need to be those hubs need to be removed from so we've included in the budget the switchgear which is a thirty thousand dollar is going to be one location don't know where that can be when we're not sure until after we get it all figured out what we've got and when we get into the design services of maybe move to one maybe we still keep three but right move them around i'll do the other thing in my operating budget as part of this network and also there's another capital budget request to the capital we have when we go back to the capital budget the light department has a switch that feeds the fire station to pella fire station  the burbank middle school the highway and water and that switch is got to be replaced and upgraded so that it'll be in increase in speed ten times what it is now because the systems that will go into the cloud with the fire department is well won't work with the switch gear as it is now so that's that's in capital to replace that section with a higher speed operating budget for twelve years we've had the same funding for our old electronic switch gear and it's come to the point where we can't we can't do it with the money we have anymore so for the first time in i f network this is a way to look at the network now it's a utility like water and you know and electric all the functions in the town are now electronic there are no more ledger books know what do we do what are we doing from a town perspective to protect against that so there's there's two things that we do first of all intrusion detection trying to keep somebody out of your network the new paradigm is secure your data and people are going to get him into the network that is so what we do is we build walls around our personal information most of our stuff is public information what we've just been putting in place i'm working on now that detects when someone other then one of the authorities one of the people who have the authority to be you know we're you know staff and week of november we had somebody attempting to connect to our server one of our servers in our network from africa for that entire week i was just wasn't the russians and it wasn't the place now analyze this data and in particular the server they try to they tried a number of different house to use to get into the server all of those accounts are that don't you can't get in and if i'm sitting in my car and i have a password and light like i could probably get in from the parking lot see that's our intrusion detection will prevent you from getting in unless you have a valid account well past but if you somehow got a valid account for somebody and you did get in it would it would detect our systems would detect where you're going because what it does is does a behavioral analytics and analytics on the on everybody's user account so it sees what they normally access as a particular thing and then they see all of a sudden it's assoc accessing something over here and we have built in to shut that account down as soon as it sees it doing something that is really on the norm so that's encrypted to get back to files so we actually got hit with it a year ago yeah so why for now when that happened a year ago at the time what we did was we shut down the systems and because of our backups we were able to restore everything it took us several hours to do that but we were fine we didn't have the pain ransom and then we purge everything off network the system we have now in place it sees that  activity and shuts everything off instantly and of course the first deter are the first line of defense education and we also have that yes so that's a new security awareness system that we just purchased and that is i'm working on them not my staff but we work with them i want to work with them i guess you have five at five am your in your department with her and lynch if you have your budget does not include do you allocate your costs to the life department and water and network and basically have divorced themselves from the town site with regard to the costing in the budget for the water and sewer there is an indirect cost lying there basically reimburses the town for the portion of services that water and sewer enterprise receive from town budgets and that's about one hundred sixty thousand dollars that's included as a revenue source to the budget from the enterprise funds to cover the cost of the in kind services provided by town departments to support the interview ok so you've got your expenses are offset by a portion of them yes sure and then what is this number here is that the net numbers know that graph that is the gross number and let's go back to light for a minute divorce is such a strong word can somebody get on the network from the light department without i mean do they have cordle's and they cannot get on a network this two separate networks ok and then is is their compensation from the light good right the board needs more support for us no seriously though because i think a lot of the things you talked about looking at the current structure are moving now testing the fiber  network you've backed up to the club of the continuing to address ever increasing cyber security threats cyber threats that will experience as a community and others well as well i mean is there i mean it's not in the eighteen budget but if there's  well again the fiscal eighteen budget is balanced based upon available resources again i think you could and as part of the financial task force process clearly our departments do a lot with the same even though they're asked to do more every day the reality is we try to do in this case to share his budget prioritize the work switchgear replacement it been able to find the resources to cover that priority so i think i think what we try to do is on a yearly year based upon available budgets try to prioritize areas and this is one of the areas that we prioritize in the a team budget and down the road if there's resources process these a team works day and night and saturdays all the time that if we had additional resources maybe designated into the t eight to support all of the departments from an administrative point of view nothing wrong with that so we have one full time equivalent that david can access and other the promise can access as well you fall it's like a pull individual i mean what you're describing is not someone that necessarily has needs to have i experience it's more administrative support to do some ordering and you you're using some of your technical resources to do that really not the best and highest use of their time so having a one full time equivalent perhaps is housed within the t eight office that you and other departments can access for some sort of float or absolutely a floater there's a well that's an old school friend yeah that's how much what a fifteen hour person cost is it thirty bucks an hour well i would think do more with less without question every year i've sat here we've done that the increase in issues that you have to address on issues that d p w have to stress community development police fire and it's not going away resources continue to be strained our population is expanding or schoolroom it's are running mr chair if and say this because then you may use that time but the assessor chair had a conflict this morning unavoidable so they will be referred to march tenth so the assessor lets you get because they would ok please alrighty so budget documents obviously before you there is virtually no change in the amount of dollars that are seeking for my line items the one exception being the background check one item that is increasing by four thousand dollars which is in anticipation of the various hirings that we'll be doing in the fire department over fiscal eat other than that all the other line items were consistent in terms of our accomplishments for fiscal seventeen we made a couple of changes with some of our vendors we contracted with a new provider for our section one twenty five flex spending program which was a zero cost to the town which did increase participation in this plan which is a terrific plan for those at home who might not be aware of what a section one twenty five plan is it's basically flexible spending where you can put money pretax into accounts for either medical expenses or dependent care expenses the fee per month for that before were six dollars and twenty five cents the new provider is offering that plan affordable which is seventy five cents per month that feed per month is paid by the employee one hundred percent for the program we also added an additional four fifty seven deferred compensation plan this year through i c m a r c again this is at no cost to the town but it gives another choice to town  employees and school teacher employees for a vehicle for deferred compensation this is a subsidy the public sectors of florida for one k plan continued to have regular meetings at the safety committee we beefed up our training program the share with the big help of the h r dr morse fried chickens he basically took the lead on our training program we've been trying to do things monthly for employees both for work related trainings as well as various wellness initiatives we collaborate extensively this past year with the retirement board and the staff of the retirement office to help the new stuff down there get it running answer questions for you've set up a much better process for new hires coming in exit interviews with people leaving and retiring to work collaboratively thought office and we've been working on collective bargaining we wrapped up all of the contracts that were expiring and now we've  able to do over the last few years is able to strategically and incrementally hire the h r generalist position which is allowed jessica to focus on high level priority areas and then basically allow brian to focus in on day to day operations which has been right approach course of action what you also will see in the next several weeks is just has gone through and revised  personnel policies so you'll start receiving some policies for adoption that have been revised and that are contained in our handbook do you work for the light department at all on some things department should provide use utilites absolutely you know so that's something you know that hasn't taken place and i think you know unfortunately it's an expensive already incurring we've set up a training session and figure individuals that need to have sexual harassment training that you're doing that we could they could access but we certainly don't want to duplicate expenses when when do we go over the life department but it's not in this book you know it's not yet and they're on a calendar year you know i understand that when when  look at it last year i don't think we go through it the same way that we're going through in this case jim we make an interesting point we are we continue to get financial updates from the like the partner in this presentation this me to this board but there's never a discussion that number and that's why i think i think we're mindful that mr chair and i think if you look at the departmental budgets we've made incremental improvements in that so for example in a chart we have a journalist who basically  marrying the duties in some ways what jessica does so that there's a back if it's a two prong attack it's number one if in fact the department we protect department head leaves how do we backfill temporarily to keep the functions of their part and we forward so the general is basically could do that but he's also absorbing the day to day policy issues of h r so that there is a backup to keep the ship floating but also potentially succession person the same thing is true in the t accountants office that we've been able to do over the last couple years about providing a backup and a succession plan potential same thing in the treasurer's office for it is very mindful that and has planning taking place for that so i think we've made some improvements in some of our departments to do that public works obviously has a strong bet stormed a bench now that i think protects us in some ways in the short term if in fact we have vacancies the facilities department has backup so i think we've so all the try to address that so that if in fact we have vacancies at the very least we have a continuation of services but we also have the potential of folks on board who could potentially step in town administrative office and the like as an example he leave the lesser retire i mean i'm a big proponent of cross training within departments that is days out a lot of something to think about whether you need more people to do that for the up to continue sort of build on what we've done already or the other thing that  we reinstituted it with the pilot program the share jessica will do training in the spring with our department heads and our managers and our employees about how to do an evaluation so that we can fully implemented in this upcoming fiscal year if i may i want to know about the job position where do you stand on that we've talked about that more than you know not at the negotiating level obviously i just want to know first of all you know just fifty percent  the people who work for the town do they have current job descriptions is it seventy percent thirty percent what what number it was definitely much greater a year and a half ago before i started in terms of who didn't have updated job descriptions  right everybody does have a job description and some are as old as eighteen or twenty years out of date i believe the practice before was to simply update them as people left but when you have obviously long term an which you know i think not really that i think that should be done annually you know the people we are in the process of going through and updating some departments have been a little more active in reaching out to me to work to get their staffs descriptions updated the goal is are now and are not you personally but i think you are probably at about fifty to sixty percent and take another year but that's the goal i think is to get it done within the next year or  so you know again there's been very demands on our time for special one of projects things like you know the reporting things like opeth information gathering things like that but you know that is the intent is to get everybody you know with a current job description know also as we have vacancies that occur our practice is to re evaluate the job description so through a national machel progression we've already looked at all our vacancies and we re constitute a new revisit to the job description so i think we're we've made significant progress in doing that obviously if we have a job description for an employee who's hired several years ago those are the ones we've got to pick off ok well i have some suggestions i'll talk to i'm going to wait until monday i'll talk to  jessica about it falls out ok ok ok i have one other question do we have an org chart of the town departments and they report in your budget book what page you feel look at the narrative is it the budget or guard or is  it the functional or well this to work part in the summary section there's an overall structure organization or chart and then in the individual narratives there is an or chart for each department ok and where's the overall  section two page twenty two then i see this and now i'm wondering how many of these positions above the positions that report to you david have contracts none none except for the police chief so you but you had a kind of i have a contract the police chief has a country and that's it there's also peters oh i'm sorry the library did by statute didn't implement the contract so there's only three contacts and then how do we provide to to mark's question how do we provide for succession in those contracts is there like a rule of thumb that you use in your day have a term associated with the contract so for example at the police chief the term his contract was coming due and the board was presented a revised contract for an extension for another three year term with regard to the library director's contract that's with the library board of trustees and with regard to who's the other one and myself obviously the board w negotiating a contract with the new time in this very limit in terms of archer when you meet providing for somebody leaving for unexpected reasons what's the cause nothing in the contract that states that that was the point of having a succession plan as i we're trying to finish up at eleven thirty right sixty nine on the right hand side we should talk to you about the need to have board of selectmen parking spots out there might be half it will be have to entertain that and i think they're out there is somebody else ace is over here somebody else uses them all we know that we sell and somebody who has not had his placard in his window has received a ticket several of them actually to be on you have got which i paid by the way like two or three placards oh and then paid and by the way those one i do have one but week by the way those of you who serve on the belmont woman's club i'm sure they will allow you to park in their parking facility so you have to use the treasure liaison with the underwood pool building committee to close that project out and that included our office being responsible for all the f f an e and technology and security procurement we do you know small things and that we had to build out three other classrooms at the high school m and we started to refurbish the town hall driveway granite pavers that you see there we did an awful lot of work as secretary and knocked on to the belmont high school building committee which included  developing creating a man to make us and capital plan work with the principal at the high school to add security card access to three of the doors there we have maybe one of the biggest things we've done is we have successful successfully implemented the a somewhat lesser extent i want to make sure i give credit where credit is due part of the successful implementation of that budget is we were able to put some scrutiny and some eyes on this and i want to commend cindy cindy was looking through the budget and noticed that we were paying for outdated it's nobody has a phone while and you know we have to pay to have the payphone there was that savings time about three thousand dollars a year you know six thousand between the two and that's in the cell phones that we're not getting is about a half a dozen we eliminated that's about another thr there were back up cell phones to certain school staff and school departments that were there for emergency reasons mostly those we don't need those because we now have a walkie talkie system at high school so doesn't have a service plan meaning you don't pay monthly to use the walkie talkies like you do for the cell phones correct so we've we've any questions on the accomplishments as well of going to the positions that a budget in our general fund budget which is the nine point eight and then overall gerry manages with the custodians and the maintenance people close to thirty people so where is that thing captured the  the position is that he already for edge forty three shows  trying to work on as the facilities board with the superintendent myself is again as we noted to you when we got approved for the belmont high school project that there were going to be resources that were going to be required to be  dedicated from the town of ministries office that phillis is filled and jerry as the member of the building committee i think one of the things that we're trying to do currently is take a look to see if we can get some additional systems on a temporary basis as a facilities and then basically our latest addition which is scott crank who does the external management of contracts so i think the need that jerry has identified is because we've been fortunate to ask for and receive funding for a number of capital projects we're trying to find a way to basically take the lower offer jerry's play terms of capital projects management so we're actively trying we've asked eric to see if we can get some assistance to help him do that again  we're trying to come up with a plan that is give some assistance can be sustainable and as a pilot to see if we can then come up with a more permanent plan in next year's budget so we recognize that there's a lot yes really so so at the point in terms of the consolidation last year we did the consolidation of the non salary components to the combined facilities as part of a budget which is the two point five million dollars that you noted that clearly has been a challenge to implement and again is work we have held off on the transitioning of other positions to the facilities department budget in order for us to absorb what we took on last year and to see what it means if we absorb them and turn especially for the maintenance people  custodians i think the superintendent myself have had a conversation about keeping the integrity of the custodian is within the school budget they were tied to principals so that is going to require further conversation so i think we're trying to do this in a dish is way so that we just don't combine and not be able to support it effectively so we did a big chunk last year we've got the h v a c budget which is contained in this budget technician we have talked about several weeks about including and then during the year the conversation about what is the next chunk which i suspect would be the maintenance component to move over to the combined facilities and then the last would well the next one would probably be the library and then basically the custodial require more conversation because i think there's a further philosophical discussion about the custodians and their relationship to the schools so i think we know what we're going to continue to do this but i think we didn't appreciate the level of work and effort that taking on the two point five million dollars and on salary required so we don't want to bite off more than we can chew so we're going to and if i may ask a question is there any economies of scale or savings town and school side like that swimming pool you know for example in the high school so to avoid catastrophes like that and to hopefully to to realize some savings we did realize some savings in our first year we had been separately bidding elevator maintenance and h b c maintenance terms would be them separately so we combined them in the first year was here and we we saved probably twenty five and thirty thousand dollars on regular maintenance cost but off the bat that by a bender seen instead of dealing with four buildings i can deal with twelve buildings and that's obviously been repeated every year and i think the thing that to remember is that one of the things that didn't necessarily happen in other communities who did combine facilities we were able to negotiate with our to bargain units of made into custodians that basically they can be assigned to any school or town facility to do work that wasn't the case in other combined facilities that we were able to negotiate that quickly so basically jerry has the flexibility to assign people to different town and school building assignments if needed obviously it's mostly in the maintenance at this point since the custodians of flat out of the schools but so we experienced seen savings with all of our contracts there it's a combination to these yes actually experiencing saving some energy efficiency of measure of paying off but we had been we have been almost automatically putting a five percent increase on these had six plus months to manage that and we've we've reallocated into different items i'll be more realistic to what our cost actually are ok right so on a scale of one to ten or one to one hundred  i think in the past because of funding constraints the maintenance on the plant if you will both on the school side and the town side hasn't been what you would normally expect let's say you know looking back twenty years his people absolutely every department head coach but within our budget i think we're able to do a fair job and as david alluded to the capital budget committee has been generous with us in terms of giving us the funds to correct in a den if i address the deficiencies we are challenged with project management and that sense of having a staff time to implement all those capital budget projects but you know we're getting there and we're looking in small to new outsource that project we had it's too expensive we actually did what's called the house doctor o p m contract o p m is on his project manager house doctors to bring in a number of people to be on call we have a house doctor architectural contract we're actually making use of that at the fire station building although project but it's expensive there there are one hundred hundred twenty dollars an hour  i think that's not really going to be a sustainable process for us so this idea we're considering which would be a part time temporary position to be managing multiple projects on our behalf with someone who would be working directly for us and not a from that's coming in and a one by one basis  seven and a half to eight is a pretty good result i think i'm also interested in it sounds to me like it's consistent with how many roads you can repair a year there's only so much you can do the terms of number of project event is what do you think it would take in terms of how could you get it from what is an ideal state for it was that with his department terms of accomplishment do you ever see one of the ten is is ninety percent the goal and what would it cost us what would we have to do to get from seventy to ninety lives well one of the things that will need some discussion in the future is that currently the facilities probably doesn't have a home ministry to work out of the space over there we have a shop at the high school that's most of the schools and that's going to go away like about this before you have a new consolidated space where this stuff at open meetings so i don't i'm going to mention and this is heresy so i'm going to apologize for saying it ahead of time but there is a did they did it did anybody ever use the children's library in the school building as a child you know the one i'm talking about the school administration building behind us you know it was a library you know something to go pre dates me there there is spectacular space in that building that is being used for documents for each in it's it's like three stories high and it almost looks like the guggenheim museum because it had have you been there you know what i'm talking about there yeah yeah and i just wonder if there must be there must be a better use you know use for that space where we could see a radically store those documents you know in a you know a storage place someplace and then you know take a look at it and utilize it for other purposes while we're waiting for this d p w because it's magnificent space i mean it really is and it's being used for documents story i think if and when the library project ever moves forward there's going to be a need to be creative about where the library temporary located services so there will be a lot of options on the table that maybe one gallery maybe another the auditorium maybe another bentham library many be another so i think now that the library feasibility committee has determined that the trustees would like to keep the building in place and a new building if in fact that ever gets funded those kinds of things will have to be put on the table because we're going to have to find a way to reallocate those services are you responsible for the school administration building take a look at it  spaces available to us to the best of its capacity the only place that there is any options for anything is to like building behind us which is not in great shape but it is a dead storage right now and maybe it has a better use but the only place you can go anywhere find open seniors in time if it was me it was a bit it was a bit expensive or work and i think what we were challenged with that was maintaining it was somebody who could and i could update every day and put the new meetings on there but it would be you know where do you get a permit when you sign up for school and in project both of them are fairly close to completion they're both in sort of a punch list stage he has begun the process of inspecting each of the new signalized intersections working with public works in m l light to make sure that there's a seamless handoff of those systems back to the town one of the biggest things on both of these projects is to monitor vegetation that was planted for the previous year to make sure it's survive the winter and it thrives again  spring there warranties on vegetation and so we want to make sure that ultimately we get a good thriving treat shrub or whatever the case may be on that another engineering division accomplishment is if we continue to  gun the next phase of our investigation so we have done a sampling program our consultant stan tech is in the process of developing a discharge elimination plan which is the next required step and so we're in that phase right  now and so i would expect you know in the next probably four to six weeks we would begin the next phase of that investigation which is to implement the the plan in that plan basically says and i i know we did a presentation on this not to another issue obviously is the transfer station in the work the community development has done with the time in history to win the board of selectmen in getting that ownership issue strained out with the cam in the state legislature we're very close to having that happen  the engineering evaluation investigation get to the point where we design the capitalism expectation is that you know once we once we exhaust the delay that we gained from the ownership issue d p is going to  is that we need to stand post closure use before we determine how we cap it right and what we learned on friday is that perhaps we can cap it and then the term in use afterwards and then go back that's that's exactly what i think you know i think we were always operating under the assumption that in terms of what is most the fish and what is most cost effective it's best to know what that post closure you should be while you're capping that so i think what we learned on friday was that you can cap that site without a post closure use in mind but then you come back after the fact and come up with a post closure use there's going to have to be a reengage with g p and there's going to be some kind of a cost differential depending on what our consultant estimated that if we were talking about a building for example you could probably save somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars if you knew what that building was going to be while you were capping well that you were constructing the building while you  site for some kind of a stage of the lay down area and then how do we incorporate that into if we do something like that it would well i don't think the d p is going to allow us to defer the schedule of the cap because of the  based on the estimates that we have based on what we know in the industry for the cost of what it looked but cost to cap the site yes we do have the funding available based on any and all uses only only for cap and there's there's no four there are no funds use question we're only capping the site the funds are available to cap that site and meet the d p requirements for capping there are no funds available to do anything after that site is capped so if you want playing fields if you want to build and if you want they're they're actually taking the dirt away aren't they at cushing square the the dirt that had the so the can't have a nation right so they actually hauling the dirt away they are but if you can't wash the dirt very well but before they haul before they haul the dirt  it's a national anthem as mark just said and so that the biggest issue with the incinerators site is that you have a layer of ash that right now is essentially filtering any rainwater or  that that runs through that site and as it filters through that ash layer it ultimately gets into the groundwater table that ultimately gets into the brook systems in the streams that are on that site so how does this all happen that you have you talking about a cap or a or a bottom note we're talking sheds off so one of the expenses involved is not only that the because of the cost of the plastic material and any soils that are required but there's also a storm drain system of a drainage system that's required to capture the shutting of that runoff on top of that irritated by some particular element and that's the reason we've had some grace period because it is not necessarily the top of the list you know and then you say that the funding was available but i've been looking at the financial statements pretty extensively and i see a seven point two million dollar liability on current that's related to the site where where are the funds that you're talking about so well because i'd be stabilization fund has right now i believe somewhere around three and a half million dollars so if you look at the s the at the consultants estimates the cost to cap is just a little bit less than that three and a half that's available when you're talking about seven million dollars when you need to look at how that number is broken also there's some engineering that's already been done on the site that there's into suppression that there's going to be some ongoing maintenance requirements once the site is  d those that number has been has been captured as a lump sum but in fact if you read the detail it's it's a it's a thirty year period that they've captured there so the net present value of thirty years of experience with really i'm not sure that that because it yeah but i'm just saying a lot of that is estimated and a lot of that is based on best guesses on things that have been fully played out with the p f ok ok and remember we had to provide an estimate to demonstrate to on you know we had quite a busy year with the building permits we had over twelve hundred building permits issued in f y sixteen over a thousand plumbing and gas at over eight hundred wiring one of the things i want to stress about the inspection service is the vision is the  program i understand was a very successful program and if i could say based on the that the pressures that are put on my staff i was there was a fairly very successful program but we had oftentimes had cases where the installers of the systems were really putting pressure on my wiring expected to get up and do inspections the wiring specter we share with the town of belmont just like the plumbing and gas inspector and there were often times when we had to bring in support for the wiring inspector so that he had let me share them with water that's correct inspector and pay per inspection for that service so that we had the capacity to keep up with the solar inspections and so one of the lessons learned here is if there's ever a similar program in the future we need to sit down with the beaumont go solar people and we really need to talk about sort of you know rules rules of the game you know what are the expectations for inspections where the expectations for the timing of those inspections we just need to make sure that we're better prepared next time because there really was quite a demand put on the because of that program to the point i think a lot of those installations were pent up demand you know because because you couldn't do solar reasonably short for and then you know that things got changed and yeah there's been a lot of staff time spent on that as a result we added capacity to the planning division for this current fiscal year we added a staff planner that has worked out really well for us to have players in this current year budget that's correct and b i want to get right by adding the staff planner position one of the goals was to take pressure off of geoffrey wheeler who was the sort of the sole person dealing with planning board decisions in forcing the decisions on any conditions that are in those decisions you know there was an expectation by the public and certainly by the planning board that after going through this this this very meeting hearing process you generate an approval that has a set of conditions who's watching these conditions who's making sure that the project is being built the way the planning board permanently here with you and so the staff plan a position as an effort to sort of advocate pasadena required to do that the planning boy continues to to look at the zoning to identify places that need improvement this year coming up at town meeting that we have there will be a proposal to overhaul the signed by law in belmont ok and so once again the expectation is going to be the community development is going to be able to step up and do some better signage that you see for example when it's someone opens a business is not a private no no no no this is this is a sign and so as i said the expectation is that community development will meet the challenge of enforcing that same with the article but that's a lot of work yeah and so what i'm still working through and that staff planner has been on board since december sixth so we are talking three months so we're still working internally on how all these pieces fit together what the additional funding that you just reference mark what that allows us to do is it gives us the ability in it in a period of time to say ok let's take one of our everyday local building inspectors let's take them off the building inspection task for a week or maybe two weeks and have them focus on sign of was ok so i need coverage when i pull someone off like that so that money gives me the ability to hire someone you know the way the industry works it's a person special price but we can bring somebody in to pick up that slack as i take one of our full time personnel and slide them over to focus on it for i think when we constantly hear and which i kind of need for as as we continue to add new byelaws now a new sign perhaps and it's great to have the byelaws who enforce of them right and you know we don't have it like you certainly don't want to have a situation where you surely have to have to have some enforcement you know right not not over kill but someone for  point of view and you can understand whether you need more resources in that like zach right absolutely so i just you know planning division accomplishments obviously the work that the planning division has done with the community pap implementation advisory committee that w him to really evaluate the major axes that they've developed and whittle it down to some kind of a recommendation i also want to mention the demo delay by law this was a by a law that was approved by tom meeting there was a sunset provision on that by law and that sunset provision is this year and so planning board and planning staff working with the planning board they have revised the demo delay by law they've made some amendments and some tweaks to it but that will also be before a town meeting this spring  with that the interest of actually extending there for another five years you may recall that there was a c p a draft given to the historic district commission to hire someone to evaluate historic structures in belmont that work is complete that the final list that's been presented has one hundred eighty two properties on it the original less from a couple of years ago is one hundred forty nine so there's been a little bit of an increase but still when you consider that there's probably ten thousand or so properties in dominant one hundred eighty two that what do you call it a punch list yes remember they had problems with the sidewalks yes and i think that got taken care of because that was a state problem and whatever the are are we still watching the sidewalks we are in fact the the sidewalk that was done this fall one of the things that we looked at was sidewalks and so there were there were some locations where there has been cracking and so those locations were noted in the contract as to come back in the spring replaced everybody so you got it within the warranty period and all that stuff and we're not going to see any of that crumbling that we should not my understanding is that used the concrete that was specified in the contract ok ok so there was a quality issue there was a quality assurance issue with the first time the concrete was placed so they painted that yes they did yes they did i think you is that is active as of july first two thousand and seventeen in my capital budget that there's a five hundred thousand dollars capital item from the sewer enterprise fund that i use for sewer capital projects  thousand dollars of that money to sort of bridge this first year a lot of what's required is just reporting so a lot of it i feel we can do internally i have forty thousand dollars for a couple of reasons one in case we need a consultant to help us with some of the point is we don't want to be polluting downstream so not great right and so so might my mentor taisha some of this money will help us get into the charles river watershed which is sort of the westerly portion of belmont also with the problem with the program that we're currently working with the the latest round of sampling that we've done and we ended what i talked about earlier moving to that next phase a lot of that work is work that would be captured under that permit anyway and so we're doing a lot of things belmont has really for the last few several years has been doing things that are captured in this permit and my guess is there are a lot of communities that aren't as far ahead as we are so i guess if you want to find a silver lining instance some of the stuff that we've been dealing with with the e p a and our clean water issues the silver lining is that we are ahead in a lot of ways from a lot of other communities with this new permit that's coming down from the federal government with regard to the old permit if you find somebody that illegally for about do we pay for it we have like a one time thing which they'll help you out or do do the homeowners have to do it it depends on the nature of the of the problem so if it's a problem that is from the foundation you know ok because really the town public works has always only utilities to the foundation so if for example it's a sewer service from a property that is broken and is leeching into a storm drain we would go in and fix that ok if it's a case where somebody inside the property has put a toilet over a storm drain action then then we would put the burden on the property owner to fix how do you enforce that we have by laws ok we have exactly they they have this this driveway that's going up to the big house i've gotten a lot of questions about this and i know that that's not within the slope that we had you know agreed to have you seen that i have not been to that site in probably a couple of months now but bear in mind now you but the board of surveys approving slope and you know design criteria for the roadway not for private driveways ok so and i go have a if it's a private driveway that has  slow that's one of that we don't have a regulation against that and then we've talked to people you mention gas we've talked we've had people before us before on the gas leaks throughout the town yeah you you all get involved in that i don't really feel a public works really is i want to know how we can talk to know and then the enforcement and waverly place you know those three houses that were built there and they were concerned about the space of the twelve hundred square feet in the basement you know what happened there they went back to the planning board  and you know jim i don't recall if the planning board approved ultimately they did so they let every day let it remain ok so they were required they had to go back to the planning board because they were in violation of the planning  responsible for what a lot of it falls on public works some of it falls on the health department so it's always going to be an engineering function so that's been my biggest challenge right now is to sort of ok finding where those lines and when i want to thank you publicly for fixing the traffic signal