meeting i had a few non substantive changes that i sent along to would you say it's fair to say those are nonsense apps so if i could have a motion for approval as modified a kind of our core agenda is talk about the word articles that we talked about last week that we would talk about and vote on for both annual town meeting and special town meeting there are five articles in total there are articles four and  changed so we'll cover those two first and then we will talk about the special town meeting articles probably in the order of three to one which is modulars first and then what more time than we anticipated and we really need to have more time for the survey to be completed in time to work with the other stakeholders in town including the planning board on a replacement demolition period to appeal to come off that list and no one made the decision to appeal that case the historic district commission made the decision that that property was preferably preserved but the property owner made sufficient compelling evidence that the property had a significant radon gas problem they looked into many ways to mitigate that but there really was no other solution that they could see at that time the demolition so we decided not to enact the six month demolition delay in that situation the second property was one twenty two waverly street and that was the queen anne style house with a barn some of you may remember that property again the historic district commission made the decision that was preferably preserved we reached out to the property owner and the developer which with the hope that we could have time to investigate alternatives to demolition unfortunately the owner and the developer did not meet with eyes they denied take us up on our invitation and the six month period ran out in the building in the barn were meet this survey was to pick a building to be on the list call the new survey a new survey yes so the new survey well i mean some of the properties that are currently on the list may come off after their survey is completed and some properties may be added to the but really we need that survey to be completed before we can start to discussing demolition seventy percent done did you say i would say seventy percent with the survey yes yes yes you know i would i would put forth that we we are paying for this survey from c p a money that was appropriated by town meeting  and right now it would be a shame to let the demolition delay by law expire when we're seventy percent done with the survey would in effect you know in effect not be an efficient allocation of o ur funding so you know i would certainly support extending it for a year and having you work that out with the planning for think you need to hear so you'll have another town meeting to bring it exactly   the amendments that are being considered to address this we have a package of five zoning amendments as they hand out going around mention and they really fall into two big categories there are the rules there are not is for construction and then there's changes in the process so we have rules and we have process and these amendments addressed both just very quickly run the changes the rules changes so to speak and i will take them in probably in the order of impact in the order in which they appear here a flaw in presentation that we will have corrected by the time we get to town even the first years most certainly hiked where there was a there was previously no limitation on the height of the house none so that we had homes that absolutely towered over others in the neighborhood at the the second worst definition of gray this is a more technical but important change the existing by law thirdly there has been a problem as there was in the general residence district which town meeting dealt with last year on the placement of h b ac and other equipment in the general residence in the single sea area there is also a problem because there are no gas lines running into parts of it with people placing propane tanks in front of the  and gas tanks are kind of an accident right for houses that were built that don't have a gas line because they couldn't get a permit to go to the streets of gas tank presumably it would be a temporary feature  either of those five years down the road say well how about both and let me explain any renovation even if it does not make the even if it isn't demolition and rebuilding even ever smaller than a large addition or a new home on a non conforming lot because remember all of this applies only to non conforming lots then they will come to the planning board for the special permit and the planning board would certainly require all of these conditions but yes there would be a particular element of subjectivity as to whether this is consistent with the character of the neighbor as there has been in the general residence special permit hearings which is one of the definitions of special permit in the bottle i believe it's the planning board has discussed and  guidelines so that an applicant when they're coming forward will have a sense of what the plan and what can be looking for what is the preferred approach it's trying to  that two point one is i noticed that you took the great show not to raise more than twelve inches is used to say altered you can use to to raise and this is the definition for the holes only one is right it's not just rhetoric i mean the question i've seen these cases where people have a house with a little teeny basement windows and they dig down to create bedrooms so they can have large enough windows downstairs and so while they haven't gone up they've added significant floor area bedrooms cars and people by staying within the footprint by lowering the grade and i've also seen them do the opposite where they actually raise the greater than we can add another story on the top of the building because now suddenly the ground got higher magically but it seemed to be altered was probably better because there i could i and i agree with you that the raise does but the bigger problem but i could see someone playing around with  was meant and certainly to apply to the town as a whole it was shown in the general residence district that there are several examples that people can point to that had they been able to to reduce the grade by a foot or two would have you apply it to the town as a whole i think the altered is actually better to cover altered covers the raised in the lower you get in both you could say raised or lowered if you were concerned but but it doesn't it doesn't allow you to go more than  house but the idea being that you could lower the great thereby reducing the height reducing the sense of class and the scale but could add living space for the person technically isn't any right now versus a large enough window where you could actually have a bedroom legally so it has a different living space as a different background i'm not arguing just i'm just pointing out i think the altered is broader is if the the is this clearly the problem if you add the lowered it doesn't assign to hurt anybody and you ma capture a few scofflaws somewhere i just throw it out there is more flexible the second point that i had was maybe this is i don't even know if this is one of the parts that you changed i didn't compare it to the current zoning but down i guess is page seven of the actual the warrant but the last of how big a building you can put on the size of a law which is kind of one of the problems that we're concerned with but if that's not it i mean that might be a concept to think about for the residents distress in general but to add this or other dimensional to requirements unless you listed every single one this sort of like a catch all the end is kind of general legal language just to make sure no one's messing with something you forgot about or we create a new one and then you don't go back and address the section to add it back in later so i mean other than that i think this thing is really good at this past five that were noted i looked at those as well and this was a result of all that research in that five year piece was something that is a new twist on because what communities are finding is that people are phasing we do have a very good idea of the houses that are concerned with this issue we have a very good idea of how many are over thirty four feet and it is pretty much a hundred percent of the houses of the new houses not you know the chance for the question of conformity with the immediate neighborhood i think there are streets where  victorians and of those structures that are from there you know mentally eighteen hundreds in the cottage street area those those may be greater than the four hundred thirty four feet but we have yet to see those houses being torn down at the rate or at because the victorians that were built were built as part of a more affluent way of home building in the area and sell the lots were large it's the post war houses that are small houses and small lots where this is really ha where it's not being torn down but there's a very significant addition being put up and with all of this supposed the houses in the immediate neighborhood of that house were forty feet tall as the pick a number of with this prevent this house from being remodeled such a way that it would resemble its neighbors yes if that case actually exist hypotheticals are really difficult because are you talking about a dorm or are you talking about in addition there are so many variables to it it could be he could be a special permit scenario it could f a thirty four foot limit is really a constraint that would be applicable maybe in some streets and not others is there an appeal process or a variance process so somebody can go about thirty four feet of the in addition if you meet all the first four you don't exceed the heights and so forth you're not raising the grade and so forth that even within those that if you happen to be having thirty percent and again one of the as you anticipated them because it's a planning board not the war committee south the fiscal and economic impacts are part of what we look at but by no means the the net revenue the net fiscal impact of this is almost certainly negative so the fact that we're constraining the size of the houses that's just part of the net revenue this will lower our tax tax collections a lot during raise are just what i'm saying there are two points the if one looks at the end of the day the fact that houses are somewhat smaller will mean the there's the cost of the services required by those likely to move into those houses will be reduced but more then the gross tax revenue from the house is second to the extent that in this we have looked carefully one of the things this does and this is something that jeff and the others have looked at when you make when you when you force a smaller house you force more creative architect so one of things we had more creative design so one of the things we did in the general residence district and we have don't have enough cases yet for this to be statistically significant in any sense just from looking at the selling price per square foot after the planning board you take in the big houses and you said ok cut here cut there it's too big make it twenty four not twenty five feet is the per square foot selling price which is what drives the assessment at least in the initial years was considerably higher than the large houses so there was actually a net gain on that in the individual units even without taking into account the neighborhood effect than anybody ever anticipated them to be it's it's it is that notion that you're you know you just because the it does require more creativity  love the planning board and they can't wait they're looking for additional projects to do because they feel that the process has been incredibly helpful to them and has been since others they have far surpassed what the ever thought they would make  well that's what i'm saying sorry i just want to have and correct me live and jeffrey i think also an argument can be made that you know to the extent that these new houses are in conformity with the character of the neighborhood it helps preserve the values of the calls you know if you're a smaller home and you have a towering home next door to you that's blocking your sunlight and you know looking into your windows you know that that could be an impediment have a hand for you to say whatever you like but in terms of the need for the margins and why we are we are so to introduce myself thank you very much for having me here i'm just failing superintendent of schools and i am in favor of small houses in less of work to produce action plans and so when i arrived we took a leadership team together and we asked what i think should be addressed first and the the prioritized issue was was class size and in rome and in dealing with that increase and all of that we're seeing over time we were able to utilize some space within the district in the current year that we're in we have utilized space at the generally very differently by within the footprint utilize space at the bottom of this year i was in the footprint and at the high school we had to actually go out into the module or spaces that were existing behind the high school but not utilize for classroom space at that time and we dedicated resources and in out for those classrooms with the capacity to have three spaces out there for the high school to use during this fall we put together a space task force that was made up of our teachers administrators capital committee school committee principals successor to start to talk about two objectives one was to determine what the size the scope and size of the current needs were of the district for next year and the second was to discuss the long range needs of the district as we move forward and look down the road this was prior to the acceptance of being involved with the s b a that didn't come until january of this current calendar year  the work of the task force was to take care of the short term goals first which came up with the summary of wanting to expand our elementary footprint at the burbank we could reallocate some space within the existing building and take over a computer class and reorganize that space into the library utilize an old science class that was occupied by our after school program and make those two classrooms basis to prepare for any additional and romans increases for next school year at the high school we were looking to occupy the remaining modulus faces behind the high school that are currently occupied by the food pantry and foundation  and forwarded some of the information to you the most recent being the january five presentation that actually had two tables that outlined the original use of space at the high school in the current use of space at the high school and the original use of space  at the middle school and the current use of some of that space at the middle school and because the middle schools seem to have the the the most impact on what we need to do as in in relation to purchasing or leasing a pictur space it's interesting for the public to learn once again that you know small community rooms in our classrooms this is the small room right behind us which is about a you know twelve by eight room has nine hundred students in it during the day five five days a week  there's actually a storage space in a science preparer that use for occupational therapy and physical therapy services there's a custodian storage area that's now an office so there are plenty of spaces that are used that are not really as educationally friendly as we'd like them to be and we're hoping to be able to expand the footprint of the cherry by six classroom spaces by the use of modular space and purchase into at least those and i think some of the questions that were delivered by the warren community can actually answer one by one and we can have an open conversation but we're hoping to be able to work within our footprint at the high school and the elementary level a very little cost but the major cost for us at the middle school level would be to protect your six classroom spaces and we have worked with an engineering firm that we have done so over the last few years and they have identified the tennis courts as the space that would best be suited for that we've met with the fire officials the police officials the plan the board folks the not planning the you need to build in folks to make sure that all this is aligned with all the different expectations from those agencies so we have now come to the point where we're seeking funding in the respect we would like to see these in place for next year i think  that cannot be separated is the department looking at itself locking itself into inflexible solutions i think the question above it was can they be separated and used independently i talked to gerry boyle today i thought the answer was yes to that but the answer they're being assembled and they will be one structure once they get here they'll come in pieces but it will be assembled as one unit of six classrooms two bathrooms an i t closet in a stairwell that will go up on one side in a stairwell in a ramp that will go up on the other side i don't feel very locked in because i feel the needs is so severe at the middle school that if i could have another six right behind it i would probably be asking you for another six if we had the money and we had the actual space can't just figure out you know where we're going to be able to remember the high school when we engage and currently are engaged in the building program we're hoping to maybe solve a middle or elementary problem with that committee potentially maybe maybe not it depends on how it works and we'll see how that goes but right now the middle schools the biggest driver of need that we have so i don't think we're locking ourselves in i think we're going to be in need of this space for some time the question below that on page two asks where are all the different potential uses of the classrooms beyond the traditional use of a classroom we have created six spaces one of which has a sink and the reason why that's important in middle school you have team classes which means science math social studies l a so we could put a team out there and have a modified science experience because they do have a sync to be able to access what they would need not ideal but you could do that you could have a lot of classes out there and have a sink with one art class if you needed to for cleanup and so forth you could have elective classes out there like world language or another type of class so we do have flexibility within the uses of what the cherry would use space for  the minister to team is currently thinking in meeting with staff about what the best decision would be for who will go out there in the fall and we're leaving it to them to figure out what that would look like there's a lot of logistic issues to go along with who goes out  there an example would be if a team went out there that would be great because it stay out there and they would kind of rotate from out to science and english together and only come in and out maybe twice once for lunch and once for electives the bad part is just saddling that experience with just those hundred students if you have world language out there as a second example you will have students going in and out of there at every period switching change which would mean a lot of logistical challenges to getting that age group of children in and out of the building into an adjacent building and then back so we are looking at the different pros and cons of those two types of examples and we'll decide that later in the spring or early in the fall it would be helpful to receive more information about the cost of the various off the top of my head that it's a three year breakdown with a cost benefit analysis after three years it's basically the same price so the purchase of it generally after three years we would be on the good side of the financial  ledger i believe it's one one million dollars of general cost to lease them for three years into about one million to buy them outright the other four hundred thousand is all the other pieces that go with setting them up and getting them on site second the search thirty six month lease total was one million three seventy five to sixty month total was one million seven to five in the purchase total was one million four four seven in change  so when we got a breakdown magically disappears the six rooms at the general would be one million four hundred forty seven thousand but basically the marginal subtotal by itself was nine hundred sixty seven thousand about a million dollars we virtually so we feel very comfortable it's more cost effective to purchase all right and to lease and we do believe there's an aftermarket in the case that we don't need to make to be able to resell these if if that would be the case in the future i would assume the storage room would not be used anymore and some smaller spaces that would be not good uses for teaching and learning spaces would be eliminated and would be six to the good the much richer the last question is are all six years yes i'm very confident we have the need for the next six to eight years barring any shift in what we do in the town to address the overall k to twelve and roll with issue and space issue i do believe all six are required we could probably use a few more but trying to be conservative in how we expend the taxpayers dollars and like we're trying to be responsible at the elementary level by reallocating space within buildings we're trying to do low cost solutions to see if we can reach that point where we feel like our role is finally hit that new watermark of what the new normal is going to see if it starts to go down a little bit so right now we feel it's a moderate stop while we try to take on the high school building project and look at that the overall  need to the district that may be remedied by the high school project moving forward and that's the last question there was another question that may be better for david actually surrounded the choice that was  free cash if in fact we are in the market through march of thousands of the elementary level then take a look at maybe potentially bond in those on a short term basis five years or so which is somewhat similar to what we did  beaumont center project which was a combination of using free cash and borrowing so i think the first phase would be again based on our free cash balance to take them from free cash and then really evaluate where we are  cash balance if in fact we need to purchase six more for the elementary level future years this is obviously brand new space for us and we think that we could use them for at least ten years just say i understand you flexible i also believe that you know because i've looked at some of the numbers that it's extraordinarily unlikely that you know going to need them for a while for great period of time so that i don't i i had wondered it doesn't appear to me just looking at the numbers that i have that it's possible that in two years you only need four because it's generally going to have the need for a while but from the idea on the other hand i like i like flexible solutions like solutions that could allow the department to be as nimble as possible responding to any changes did you cost what the difference would be in getting some other configuration of six classrooms that would allow more flexibility is that is that cost prohibitive is that just simply more expensive in the long run if i'm making myself clear yeah no i understand we always enjoy flexibility in anything that we do because we would like to be able to we don't always know what the future holds ironically the we started to talk about for at the beginning when we looked at the actual square footage of the space that we were trying to use and said six would be perfect fit they were actually a perfect fit for the tennis courts it's a it's amazing they're going to fit right within the limits of that and i was happy to get si because i was i was needing the more space we did not price out units of two two and two because they have to connect them and when i spoke to gerry boyle today he said they'll come in units but the walls that they will have in the interior would would not be allowed to separate so i think if we did different quote i think people imagine trailers you could have six trailers next to each other like they used to be when you go to a construction site you actually see a trailer and that's really not what these are already more they are modular spaces that have  so needed that the six will be used for a long time and i don't think there will need that flexibility moving down the road so i don't have any numbers on that that type of prices would drop would you call it a prefab building  it does a little damage to its tennis courts as possible and we believe it will be absolutely like a very useful small space that will be there for a while so it sounds like the this fencing that goes around the tennis court is expected to remain correct the other discussion of the proceeds from the fall road property to fund the government high school project the one point seven five million from that sale i'm not entirely sure who is best to speak to this is david is it you or is it john time capital injection into the budget and so it just made sense that we take this you know these funds that these onetime funds that come out of the sale of capital asset and use them for the peace ability study design and preliminary stages of our next most major capital project in town which is which is the belmont high school  there are other there are certainly other sources kendall fund which i think to many of us have heard about is certainly one source that we talked about but i think the feeling was you know there's approximately three three point three million dollars in the candle fon and i think you know in our discussions with the town administrator the town treasurer you know and others there was a feeling that we had several other capital projects that are that are coming down the line  you know i mean i can list them possibly possibly a library a police station d p w and so on and so we felt that it would be better to preserve those funds to have them available for some future capital projects particularly since you know we did have an injection that we otherwise would not have through the sale of what paul wrote probably if we did not have the wood for road sale we would be tapping into the candle funds but we didn't see a need to do that at this point so so the idea would be to reserve those funds for other capital projects that will come on down in the future down the line and take the wood for road money and appropriated to the to the high school we will likely need more money in the future you know because you know soft costs are approximately ten percent you know of the project plans architectural legal environmental testing etc but certainly that should be enough funds to get the belmont high school building committee through the initial feasibility phase through the hundred through the through the two hundred twenty days set by the m s p a for us to do our feasibility work any questions really that's about it you know i mean we are expecting additional funds from cushing fellow which you know and i will have some good news to report later on on cushing village but that's not free cash now that's not believe so but bottom line is i think it's a good nexus of selling a capital asset one time funds to basically have for a one time capital need and again at the end of the day that will be one million operating funds yeah and then do we have an idea of what what the what this amount of construction funding will require a good town in other words you're the one point seven million against how much do you think i mean based on wellington to be some other capital project the other being told project cost or you know how much of the feasibility study is that different things you're talking about this funding for the building committee is it three million is it five it's out to be thirty to forty percent reimbursement so then i think to get to the from my perspective the question you're getting at and this is a large project and maybe the largest project maybe large project in history the town and at some point we may very well get to a place where we're going to ask the taxpayers to do a dentist solution to pay for it that's going to be a big number before that happens there's going to a certain amount of money that is spent and i think the question you're getting at is a rough order of magnitude how much money would you expect that we will spend before we get to the point where we ask the taxpayers for the large number is that kind of what you're getting at but there's a lot of you to get to feasibility schematic design so  we said how much money should we put aside for this initial amount for this initial usability study figure they said between five and six hundred thousand dollars and about one point five one point seven well that's a big range how do you decide where you fit well do you have any great configurations you might look at you know exactly what you want to just be nine to twelve are you going to renovate are you going to look at other things like build new tougher to beat the examples that david gave as soon as we let them know that we wanted to do soil testing that we wanted to explore configurations they said the what things you add to that list of options that you might want to think about or have explored that money would go up because that's basically paid for the architect to explore all those options so she said you'd be on the higher end of that five or six hundred thousand to that one point five so that was a few years ago that that number was created so we're assuming one point seven would get us there so at the end of this process that you want us with the project so i in one second so it should should one then read into that that if ten meaning votes the one point seven five million that would represent some significant portion or all of the money that would be needed prior to town the town actually community sign so basically get the funding appropriated for this component the next phase is to hire consultants and to get the project up that's volatile too so you need to get the money appropriated within the first two hundred seventy days ok ok so manager i don't think that will be extended to a project i don't think will be money left over between those processes i think we will be able to and presumably if there were money left over it would just simply defray the project is there any further discussion for you and you can feel free to share we'll i can work with bob and educate us and i'm not expecting just to be clear i'm not expecting that we will necessarily vote on this topic tonight so i think this is kind of trying to lay the groundwork  the sixteen towns opted to leave we now have what i would call a geographically unique regional  we have lexington arlington and belmont kind of in the middle a series you skip over on linked in there's a series of what i call the two towns you have conquered act in stow vault in lancaster kind of all in a line heading west and then you have a node of two towns in the south need dover that's our ten town district so it's an it's a bit of a geographic oddity the building project in the spring boarding off of this discussion the feasibility study for the minuteman building project has been going on since two thousand and nine it really got started in earnest probably in two thousand and ten or two thousand and eleven for that entire time belmont has been had concerns say it that way reservations about the school size of the project just the size of the project the original enroll the study recommended a school of eleven hundred the existing school was built for about twelve under the existing the roman study recommended a school of eleven hundred crazy the school committee voted on eight hundred and the target in roman of eight hundred and there was pushback on that the m s b actually directed minutemen to think about two and will minson a woman of eight hundred and enroll in a four thirty five the four thirty five being targeted that got abandon along the way and eventually emerged a size of six twenty eight six twenty eight number did not come out of any strategic discussion by the school committee it was merely a proof proposed by the superintendent and adopted in the course of one meeting by the school committee we have always thought that that was too large the minutemen when we were in town a district of sixteen towns minuteman and roman has hovered for the in district enroll that adams just under four hundred it has hovered when you combine in district and out  district at about seven hundred plus or minus four movie a reasonable period of time this particular year total enrollment is down to six thirty five so six thirty five three hundred and these are approximate numbers don't hold me to them exactly i'm going to say roughly three eighty two of that number is member town enrollment with the sixteen towns so when we started in october just under four hundred was member town enroll member with sixteen member towns the six towns who are leaving accounted for fifty fifty one of those students so right now member town enrollment is three thirty plus the proposed project is for six hundred twenty eight students now despite our ajah and anxiety whether it's absolutely true or not we do have been writing when the m s b a approved the new building project for six twenty eight we do have in writing from the m s p that they would not entertain a school of less than six hundred or not that's true or not it is unknown and i don't think notable so here we are now looking at approving a hundred  forty five million dollars project of which forty forty five million in round numbers will be reimbursed by the m s p leaving the district with a net cost of one hundred million dollars and that's what we're being asked to approve right now well under a minute man's projections the cost to belmont would be about three hundred seventy two thousand dollars a year that would be our share of the debt service the last time i was here we talked a lot about how that number is derived and i'm happy to dive right back into that pool to the extent that people want suffice it to say that the first thing that needs to be known about that number is it is not fixed it is a number that changes every single year over the thirty year life of the bond and if you recall our discussion about the revised regional agreement capital costs are allocated by a three part formula the lion's share of that formula is in roman based so our allocation of that debt service will change over time largely as a function of how belmont's utilization of minuteman changes relative to the utilization by the remaining nine towns that three hundred seventy two thousand dollars is also predicated on an assumption that minuteman has made about collecting a capital facility fee from nonmember students dessie has actually approved in concept the ability to charge nonmember students and if you recall our discussion basically the capital facility fee would be the average per student share of the total debt service which is an eighty four hundred student correct it's around eighty four hundred a student correct so it's a substantial sum the money minuteman m minutemen makes a number of assumptions they assume dramatic increases in member town enrollment which as we talked about last time is less relevant than might think but they assume that the balance of every one of those member those six hundred twenty eight seats that are not filled by a member town student are filled by a nonmember student who's town is happily paying eighty to one hundred dollars a head the projections that minuteman has is that the enroll meant and this is the projection for enrollment growth even prior to the school being built will grow from that three hundred thirty ish number now to five hundred forty eight that's almost a forty percent growth in rome and over a three or four year period that is contrary to all reasonable long term trends about what is happening in ro but the three seventy two is then based on one hundred seventy nine member students paying eighty four hundred dollars and therefore nonmember communities would contribute about a million four million five of the total debt service if that capital facility fee drops to zero and all the other assumptions stay the same belmont share of the debt service would go from three seventy two to four ninety five about a third another thirty three percent increase right now we sent twenty six students the minute man to put that in perspective if you don't collect that capital facility fee and if our percentage of the minuteman in roman stays steady whether the number goes up or down it matters what our percentage relative to the communities of the meeting but if we stay there we're paying close to twenty thousand dollars per student for the capital associated with this building project so it's a very very steep  doubt it i don't remember exactly it's in it's in that range so a very substantial cost yes back in the fall when we had to approve going forward with the s design i came out and recommended that we do go forward the project and my recommendation at that point time was based on two things thought if we fought for a larger smaller school even if we were successful with the m s p we might be able to would mean a twelve to fifteen percent reduction in cost and i can do the back of the envelope of how i view him came up with that number but my concern was a if it takes us three years or so take get to that same point where we are now you're going to have cost inflation and if you just use three percent as a number i think construction costs will go true inflation is less than i think construction costs at least from what i'm seeing from my job are actually running at a faster than that but if you just use that you're going to give nine percent of that twelve to fifteen percent savings just for the passage of time the other thing is minute man has been grandfathered at a higher m s p a reimbursement rate than we would otherwise be entitled to minimum has been saying over and over that that's nine percent i don't know whether truly is nine percent but if used use that assumption you could end up and this is where i was in the fall and building a smaller school for a higher cost and that didn't seem to make a lot of sense i didn't think that was in our best interest of right now with fifty odd not member student students from nonmember communities walking out the door the delta is a lot larger you can probably save it again using my simplistic math twenty percent on construction costs if you build a smaller school maybe that equation has changed the dilemma that i'm grappling with is it's a couple of things first off three of the ten communities have already approved this in their town meetings all minuteman sent out this bond issue every community in the district has sixty days within which to act upon that failure to act or failure to vote it down authorizes the debt to be borrowed so if you're against the project you have to affirmative district they're still entitled to vote but those six have said they will not call talent meeting to weigh in on the issue they'll just be silent about it and that will be a deemed approval if you will they are not obligated on the go and vote the three communities that have approved so far are act in concord and lancaster lancaster approved it can tinge in upon a dead exclusion being passed in their town so they actually have to have a dead exclusion in their town before the end of that sixty day window   the dilemma is i still think it's the wrong size school it just is too large for what our community sent but i'm not sure if the there are a number of communities at least to the extent that their school committee reps are representative of the sentiment in the community who didn't like the size of six twenty eight they thought that was too small those communities might just say you know what faced with a choice of a smaller school or an existing school that can serve twelve hundred that's all i'll take the old big school so we're not sure we're going to get we're not going to be sure that we're going to be able to rally other communities to share our vision we are certainly if not we're certainly one of the only communities that keeps rattling the saber that the school is too big not most other communities don't seem to have a problem i think this is going to sail through and in all communities with the possible exception of are linked arlington i think will will grapple dover and needham are going ho bolton are amongst the in terms of percentage of their students amongst the highest center communities i don't see opposition to this project so if we vote this down we may be to use david's but phrase the skunk at the lawn party but i'm not sure people are going to rally around belmont and say you guys are right you've seen the light they may just say you're crazy and you've screwed the pooch for the rest of us and so there is a lot of uncertainty about that kind of get outta line and get back in with them s b a sounds theoretically fine from our perspective but i'm not sure that that's necessarily an executable strategy we could also vote if it came to a public election we could vote no within our community and if we felt strongly enough vote to leave the district potentially send our kids back to minuteman but the the path there and the alternative isn't necessary or clear either people have talked about gee maybe this is a and impetus to reconstitute the district well to reconstitute district we not only need to think about what works for belmont all ten communities have to have a  strategy or an endgame that works for them and that will be a very very difficult process to pull off so what i'm grappling with is whether or not for different i've come down after attending a lot more meetings and giving us a lot more slop and looked in a lot more of the background of assumptions and so forth that i am absolutely saying we should vote no on this death at this town meeting and for the people in the audience they want to school of six hundred and twenty eight students for three hundred thirty one members and that's fifty two percent it's twice as large as the membership district it needs to be now if you look at the money as i said earlier we are one committee so let's follow money and if we vote yes we absolutely can round numbers one forty four million forty four a most be it we are signing on for i share which is eight to ten percent historically a one hundred million dollars nap saluki the next thirty years and the money is what i think we should be focusing on if we vote no and i think it is a political scare you tactic with no backup they have a spreadsheet it says all and we have to repair it and they figure is one hundred five million dollars of it's greatly overstated i get that a minute but if we vote no and that is the absolute worst lexington in the congress of the world that have won twenty eight it go through them in the needham that have it go through all the dover that sense three people there in a different situation and don't don't want just doesn't have enough money you should have been at the capital budget committee in two weeks when we're talking about which of two bullets were going to replace i mean we have a lot more fiscal constraints than some of these other towns that want this shiny new school but i go through it and i say if we vote yes what they are either going to try to send them to another school they're going to persuade them not to go to work of all casual school they're going to join other collaboratives and they're just or next they will challenge it legally in the rumor you spreading that they're going to challenge it and they may have a decent case you generally can ask the tenant to pay the mortgage and they don't get the emmys ation benefit and so forth so that that's an unknown all of their projections which shows that the costs that are on the with nonmember students assumptions that i think i explore remotely unlikely to take d s he may decide to eliminate or reduce the reimbursement that's that's a huge risk i  just indicated the the eight percent growth per year that they're basing it on fundamentally the problem with this school that was built for twelve hundred students member now is three hundred member towns is the demographics it's it's procedure and this is a huge risk and i think this shows why be in part why the moments that clearly they used to have an exploratory problem program when ninth graders could go to try out the vocational school and now they have minimum so what that means is by the time the tenth grade comes along the student either has found the love of his or her life always on the basketball team and they don't go and it's really impacting and insult their assumptions of their own roman i think are extremely unsupported if you really want to talk about worst case analysis if you have a bill a school in this ten towns that are on the full faith and credit on the hundred forty four million district might be down to eight or seven town so that the downside risk i think is enormous for voting for this project the upside if you vote yes first of all i think a lot less than one hundred million dollars can be spent and restore that's cool so that it is adequate you know there's a lot of people well my father would you say don't mix for a lot mr less than one hundred million dollars that school could be put into being perfectly serviceable and perfectly adequate if that's the which have to happen if we voted down and bear in mind this is for twenty six students should belong and you get to keep your eye on the other four thousand students at home one in the needs we have here in bill so that so the upside of voting it down is we don't have to spend one hundred million dollars are we absolutely going to spend it and have to defeated the ten towns now with a much better more flexible agreement are going to sit around and have an ad hoc task force to say we're we go from here take a look at renovating it take a hard look at going over to watertown who has a real problem with sixty six students and saying look at we may not do anything and reconstitute just does some upsides of voting this down the the hundred million dollars is there if we vote yes no matter what happens yes we get a nice shiny now and if all of these things happen where we don't get the reimbursement from the you know member towns were up about forty thousand dollars is still forty thousand dollars still we can buy a motto to and me there's got to be other alternatives if party you know i just think you're right but the these other towns that don't have the financial problems that we have you know to us i think it's a bad mistake and i'm going to be voting against so my process question is if arlington votes no and only takes one town to reject is that what happens a tell me do we not even vote it all because it becomes moot do we wish we would recommend that we vote yes for a couple reasons i have  general vote of the general populace which is an option i have been saying that before minuteman makes the decision about that we ought to know what was the result of the town meetings seven towns turn it down we did one town turned it down so i think it there's information content in knowing how all ten communities go at it and without getting into the specifics a minute man has actually come around to that viewpoint as well so i think we should us whether you've got an up or down vote in all your community now everybody was assuming oh well there were original drop dead date was june there just so they will easily extended the meeting last night that became not clear at all and apparently it isn't m s b a regulation if you don't get your funding in a hundred twenty days you go back to emma's be a with a plan which first explains why not and second of all how you want to fix it so that absolutely we should go through with  you and then we'll go to it is your comment like really salient only small does that include the district wide vote to know what i think minuteman has said is there's no way even if we decided now the hell with town meeting we're just going to have a public vote there's no practical way to have that vote by may twenty sixth so just take it off the table continue doing the part of the town meeting approach which the select and and town officials have been saying is the preferred initial path anyway minuteman was for a while posturing that the first town to vote no they will trigger then the it off the well not really but anyway i want to ask about a little in number you said there was a letter from the state in writing saying that they would not approve a school of fewer than six hundred and  have two questions now my first question is can you tell us roughly did they give reasons for that and what were they and then the second question is but you were talking about the state of the building and what it might or might not cost to put it into shape it's an old building it was built originally for twelve hundred students that is clearly outsized for market and if you it's it's i assume too big i don't know what the size of the footprint of the new school is relative to that but i mean obviously these things grow over time but i'm just wondering about jack your point of view from being a school committee member the program i assume there's some downside to staying in the old building and and that the cost in your view of making it adequate as bob said i mean not just fixing the roof but making it work for the program on an ongoing basis as opposed to building a new school do you think it's reasonable to say that it would actually be less than hundred million it would be more than that if you have any sense of what the plan would be if they had to stay in this building so let me answer your questions in order first i don't recall exactly what the m s b a said in their letter by the argument for not having a school of smaller than six hundred is the economies of scale and the menu of programs most of the vocational schools in the state are over a thousand so having something at six hundred is even small by the state standards however that's said and to get into part two hey if your question about programatic i was  twenty eight school size minuteman is consolidating a few programs and adding only two more one is advanced manufacturing which is similar to but not exactly like the existing welding program and one is multimedia engineering which is kind of you know back stage you know audio visual kind of stuff to me that's a pet project of the superintendent and not one that our communities were clamoring for when i was part of that educational program taskforce and we were looking at a school for thirty five we had to eliminate a handful of popular programs automotive was one that i remember so a school of for fifty ish yourself would probably require a hard choice or two about eliminating some popular programs the school of about five hundred or so i think has virtually no impact minuteman over my objections has preserved horticulture a program that is has for at least the two years of data we looked at served six member towns students and thirty nine member students that's preserved under six twenty eight so i think the there is the flexibility to have a smaller school without drank hony and reductions in the program offering when you get what about the current physical plant and so so when you get to the physical plant all of those programs are essentially being maybe but not all and many of the trade grams those vocational programs particularly all of the what i'll call the skilled trades or the blue collar trades are in one open and those of you who may remember a few years ago we had to have a special town meeting in approving authorization because the town of lexington said that that configuration wasn't didn't meet fire and life safety comes while we we've created fire walls and stuff now but it's still an open bullpen she's i don't know five six times the size of where so many men could accommodate the existing programs in there the challenge i think on the renovation i absolutely agree that the hundred million dollars is not a realistic number i am pressing minuteman to break down that hundred million dollars in a way that we can understand it don't tell us what it is for carpentry in plumbing or whatever tell us this is the repairs that have to be fixed and and the issue that we've talked about before is when you hit about call it thirty percent of the assessed building that not property value the physical building value if you know over a it differs  color over a three to five year period if you do work that exceeds thirty percent of the assessed building value you immediately trigger the requirement to bring the entire building up to current life safety codes and current accessibility codes so that means going in and for interior stairways replacing railings and you know there's just all sorts of stuff in there what i don't know and i don't have a good feel is where how much of that hundred million is assuming that that avalanche hits and how much of that hundred million is well the windows are old and so we're going to replace all the windows i have a feeling that that hundred million was created as a straw man argument to support the new building project you know i don't mean to be cynical but i do believe that and so i'm trying  yet and i do not yet have how much of that is truly critical how much of that could you finesse over time to avoid triggering that life safety and at the end of the day you know you're still going to have a building with forty plus year old election belmont has leased and has an option but i've been thinking that in this maybe for a late discussion i don't know we've just been talking about now just reconstituting the district or on moving ahead we still have that we have that possibility because the new agreement one thing and yet if we vote you know if we vote no if we vote no which makes me think ok maybe want to vote no to have that option but that raises a whole other issue that jenny frustration i think a couple of years ago which is do we have a plan b yes and right back to minimum the next year as a nonmember district or are you thinking that is that is what we would do to get i'm just curious i mean that is you know it's you know it's off for this meeting but i'm hoping someone is looking at the students we haven't rolled thinking about you know so this is how can we provide for them so to me this is actually an important question which i've now raised a couple different times and i'll actually ask susan if you would because i've talked to john trail and specifically about this but i think this actually ask you to specifically follow up which is we need to have an opinion from the school administration as to whether or not we actually have a viable option if there is no plan b that actually is a different thing than if we actually have a plan b for the students so i as i said as i communicated in an e mail i know that question is going to get asked on the floor of town meeting i can be sure of it because if it's not asked i will ask it and so the question is let's try to see if you know the answer beforehand so that we can actually have that factoring into our decision i understand that there can't be a perfect answer necessarily but we should have at least our best estimate as a school department what the answer that question is you know would add simply that plan b doesn't have to be the same plan for every student i mean you know if you did the bell a public school system doesn't have to take over the education of all these programs but are there things we can do above so that you know obviously one other thing is we turned conversations multifaceted and frankly they're not going to be known in time so let's let me give you an example there are a certain number of of technical school districts in the state there are certain number that are within a reasonable driving distance of this town there are certain number that actually are fully utilized there are certain number that where is it so they can except a single other person or if we could actually determine whether or not they potentially could accept martians even if we don't call them and ask we know we know for example the our kids and it's got six hundred in it so that there are things that can be done to put us in a better more educated position and we are today and so i'd to me i think this is a topic i think i think clearly if we withdrew from the district i believe that the students who are there currently would get to continue it so you really only talking about that freshman cohort and i guess that's a different conversation but i don't i don't necessarily think clearly minute maid is the most expedient option the other option fifty thousand dollars a person i'm not sure it's the most expedient actually what the fifty well it would be if your question is i'm saying if we if we vote yes for the school there's a chance that it cost us fifty thousand dollars last year but i think if we vote yes you know this is the you join with and who's going to take you so for example other folks schools are full up with member districts dues so you go on the waiting list but the conversations and the only reason i'm saying this mike is because some of the conversations have taken place in the past a lot of superintendents really don't want to have a conversation that they believe is undermining the many school districts with member districts so i don't that's why i think you want to have an absolute answer before tommy about if we withdraw from the district we've got eight slots in school district five ready to go i don't think it's going to be simple as that just as a follow up in i think this is an easy question if you here's what i understand happen voted no in a just white vote is taken and it passes we then have the option if we have a sixty day window i think we have an option to vote to leave the district if our residents voted no escape clause only applies if the residents vote no in a general election which right now needs m s b a's approval given the path that we're on the m s p is going to have to i want out still requires the approval of the failure to not deem it aloud of a majority of the towns and d s e approval if they say no we won't let you out we're not on the deck otherwise the hundred million renovation if you believe that one hundred million are both one hundred million to belmont but the timing of that those dollars is going to be dramatically different it's going to be five hundred thousand dollars a year two years a number for thirty years under the new building it's going to all come i believe on a pay as you go basis probably in a ten year window assuming other towns approve that so although the dollars in it again are similar the impact the financial impact to our community might be very very different under those two scenarios and i just want to make sure people for an additional cost out of the operating budget without actually incurring debt to do so comes out of the current other hundred million dollars going out how much of it is going on we're talking about how we done ok so we are now over time and i'm going to take a few more minutes if you don't mind so just a few things on process number one we're not on your free cash update right now if there's anyone who really feel strongly about update you'll recall last last week i get an update on cushing village and one of the things i said i had reported was we had negotiated a hundred fifty thousand dollars payment from the developer to the town to compensate us for auction payments through april and also for attorneys fees that we had incurred with the good news is thirty days into the due diligence period of toll brothers we just received one hundred fifty thousand dollars payment from the question both developer so read what you want into it but it's a good sign