welcome to the belmont journal your source for hyper local belmont news and community updates i'm mike crowley your host this week the deadline to register to vote for the april nd town wide election is fast approaching you have until eight pm on march th to vote you must be a town resident eighteen years old and a us citizen you can register to vote online and register to vote m a dot com or you can visit the town clerk's office at the town hall don't wait until the last minute we have some local sports highlights for you both the boys and girls varsity basketball teams are doing really well and have advanced to the finals jeremy must serve has edited some highlights of the recent games for you eleven eight percent compared to fiscal year two million one thousand and that's that's a high percentage and they said it's high because of the debt service that the town has now with the borrowing they need to do for the new high school the grade seven to twelve building that that's definitely one of the one of the reasons it's higher it's a big cost driver they are they said they were very careful in planning the budget because you know conscientious about this debts debt service and trying to watch had one in two thousand and fifteen but the truth of the matter is that was only supposed to last three years raines and it's actually they're stretching it another to where we got some pretty good mileage out of it so why don't we talk about the cost drivers on this on the ok budget the school school side of the budget is up about six percent and the reason for that john fail in our separate intendant says is because of the continued growing enroll mint expected to continue rising through tw so he is asking for some additional staff he's asking for guidance counselors for elementary schools and elementary schools he's asking for another high school assistant principal another high school teacher a middle school foreign language teacher and also a director to oversee the english language learner program because it's become so significant yes but in total we're looking at about three dollars positions yes he said he would have actually they would have actually asked for twenty if they could so they prioritize on the town side the cost driver is facilities facilities overseas all the town buildings the maintenance of all the town buildings so they're asking for another like six percent in that department just to help maintain the buildings they need money to do that and they also want to new position they want to hire a full time facilities coordinator to work closely with the facilities director so that this is an area where there's a perception i think that we've been deferring a little bit too much of our building maintenance patrice carbon our cabin as traitors trying to get on top of a form of of course there's an expense associated with that that's right and the other cost driver is health insurance premiums well those are up eight per eight percent this year compared to eleven percent last year you know slight improvement but you know are these kinds of increases sustainable over the long term i know people are asking questions about what can we do to manage those health insurance costs are so they're going to have to take a another look at the health insurance plan she said they're going to you know when it's time to negotiate union contracts and june two thousand and twenty when they're up they're going to look at you know ways they can maybe save money they're going to look at more grant opportunities they're hoping that with the cushing village development which is now called the bradford that will the town will get more revenue from that and then the future maybe if mclean is rezoned will get revenue from that and south pleasant street now that that's rezoned we can hopefully get revenue from that they really need to we need more reading we need the revenue we do all right well thank you so much joanna and you might and we'll talk again soon see well welcome to this week in the belmont tony and welcome back franklin tucker editor of the belmont on it how are you thank you very much for having me michel so let's talk about the why we're yes the library well the people who are advocating for for a new library is are going to have a st public meeting it's going to be a part open public forum on wednesday march th at seven pm at the library and with this this is the high school building i'm certain of the high school the library building committee that's that's right and they're architectural ok and the new york attacks that and what they're going to do is have a nice presentation about what the library will look like and it's the most complete form is we have right now this is not the final form of what you're not a final design meeting and what they'll do is the meeting will have they'll show the lace design of the new school of the new library they'll explore the site see where the parking lot is and where they can be gardening and things like that and also discuss sustainability interests such as  they they need to really start doing fund raising that's and that's because fund raising was a very important aspect of the entire process when the board of selectmen allowed approved a building committee they really the for the building committee and its fundraising arm to go out and seek large donations from any kind of source brothers personal whether its foundation all such as the belmont savings bank foundation i would guess and also million dollars and every year that they delay from let's say next year old we add almost a one million dollars to that so they'd like to get something permanent commitment either money wise from fundraisers and other  foundations soon so then they can go it's more likely not that they will come to the town and asking for the the remainder of the money let's say they they can knock down five million dollars that would be fantastic if they can do something like that so it's a twenty million dollars ask rather than a twenty five billion dollars ask the public you know do we have a sense of what their time frame is for for fund raising before before we we see them coming to the town or for potential  exclusion befalling a portion of yesterday they're looking at this is like i said as quickly as possible they don't want this to be delayed so they're looking at a very tight for a time frame and it's just now that they're it's just right now that it's it's two things getting their fundraising started but also getting the people excited about this because you know you're asking a lot for people especially in that area because there's not only a new high school it's just you know couple one hundred feet down the street but you're going to have a murderer that's right and how much parking that should have you know and we're still going through a traffic plan we don't know how that would affect it so it's they have a lot of obstacles in front of them but they're not in well so so they're they're about to get started with with well that they'll be displaying their design and and and and and starting to to involve the community in what this this this new library will look like when they'll they'll they'll start with doing some fund raising and you know in the not too distant future we we should see some progress on the decisions that would have to be made about ultimately won't portion the town may have to fall of that's right well we certainly will see a much more detailed outline at tel meeting when they do when they will make a presentation all right well thank you so much franklin who are running a wellness training program for the recreation department this spring i rewound i'm jane and this is your community counter for this week before we get into next week's events we have a couple guests with us today we have ken and jen they're both here today because they are hosting a series of workshops with community education in belmont if you don't know community education provides classes for mostly adults yeah in the community and you can see a whole list of what those are and  so the series that you are both hosting is a series on essential oils and healthy cleaning and things like that sort of yeah so we really focus on educating people about wellness so i spent a lot of time talking about how to remove toxins from your homes your bodies etc and with good things and so some of them are essential oils some of them are like you know we talk about nutrition and other things and different products ok in our life so we decided to create a series and it was cool that we're able to use the space again which is nice for us because it's free  like you know small business owners and it gives people an area to go that is like a good space for them but it gives us the ability to have multiple different series of things and that's what you started to do this spring yeah great so tell me a little bit about what your background is how did you get interested in these sorts of topics and you want to start i was actually looking for a way basically a couple things one just to keep my family a little bit healthier just another option and to commit introduced me to she was using central oils for us for some things in her life that you can talk about and i was very intrigued because i was hoping that i have a daughter who has severe asthma  ok and i just wanted to have something to help support that a little bit and i thought i'd give it a try and at the very least i thought well these can help and i you know i was hoping maybe they could give us some sleep all aspects impact all aspects of your of your health long story short is we studies in central oils in our house and it completely helped my daughter especially with  asthma flare ups ok and then moving forward it helped we found ways to help her sleep to support emotional support and then we you know you start digging deeper and then it's a snowball effect yes you know it's you know it is and you have to start gradually i think you know like everybody who starts off with any kind of wellness journey whether it's diet exercise whatever all of that is super important we don't just teach to one particular thing this is just one more aspect out into their life a little bit back to around before about me very severe asthmatic i've been i was hospitalized ten times when i was younger and within two years so that time i had my late teens i was really looking for other mode allergies so i've been relatively holistic over the last twenty years as well as using you know obviously eastern russian medicine cation together scuse me and so i just started really diving deeper into essential oils and some other products and removing chemicals from my life and it actually has with somebody else so that's part and so you've got a couple in march a couple in april and then a couple in may and they all center on different topics so people can kind of look at what might appeal to them and trying it out it's kind of an introduction into  healthier living and how to support your wellness and we take it into little pieces so that it makes it simplifies a little bit i would say yeah yeah and it's really just plant based products that are just simpler and so the classes are going to deeper dive into like what could potentially do and why maybe it could be affecting your sleep so giving alternatives to doing that as well as you know making sure people are hydrated and other little willfully that's the sometimes we like to share with the team yeah great and so yes so like you were saying the community whole program kind of opens a lot of doors for people who may not have a storefront for people to come in and teach these classes and and so it's a really great resource for people like you and other small businesses to kind of offer these sorts of things to the community you know that's really great and so people can go to the community education website to sign up again there's four different classes that you're sorry six different y you're going to be judging that people can check out and her four page thirty six of the book and just to remind everybody because it's super important for any community and you're signing up for it you do need to sign up because again they are we are using public buildings so they need to know who is in and out of the building so it's not something so even if it's you know you just sign up in that's there if you can't show up and it's one thing but you want to make sure it's there so they don't have there's liability behind that so it is important for us and is there a deadline for people to sign up like a certain number of days before the actual program takes place the st one is going to be we'll get into next week's mad science brings free stem entertainment to children ages five to twelve in their open house on wednesday parents can learn about programs and events hosted by mad science as children enjoy pizza and educational entertainment shows that run every fifteen to thirty minutes from five hundred and thirty two thousand seven hundred and thirty boston is a great city for food lovers here from boston globe food critic cara baskin on wednesday as part of the belmont woman's club speaker thirty the seminar features unique wines from family vineyards in the northeast italian bonito and freely wine regions r s v p by email or phone enjoy student performances and support the arts at powers music school two thousand one hundred perform a fun event on saturday all ages levels and instruments come together in a fun informal performance between one dollar to seven pm raffle tickets are also on sale benefiting powers financial aid scholarship program for one dollar each visit powers music dot org slash perform a thon for information on the event the foundation for belmont education's annual fundraiser is saturday march th purchase or tickets on the s b a website for the annual fundraiser to support the foundation and its many initiatives to benefit belmont public schools matthew gallagher's show research and development is next to go on display at the gallery of art and you can hear him give a talk and q and a on sunday about his work matthew work is about research in materiality physics and generative processes and the show features over thirty units paintings and sculptural pieces his show be on display at the gallery until april th you can learn more about it by visiting belmont gallery dot contemporary story about love relationships and independence set in gothenburg and stockholm purchase tickets and watch trailers for all upcoming films at belmont world film dollar org and that's all for next week if you like your event featured in journal community calendar he can send your event info to jane f l not media dot org record robotics belmont high school's st robotics team show showcase their new robot for this season that a free event open to the entire community on march st met simon elie was there and produced this segment for us oh  all aspects of education and so getting a team together that is going to be involved in engineering programming of all kinds and having them work together outside of school i think is a great way to build st end our show with a programming update for your belmont media center channel so be sure to watch that's all for now i'm mike crowley and speaking for everyone here at the belmont journal have a great week and we'll see you next time