twenty's everyone regarding gas the group here we have a presentation on that journey and then a number of license yourself my name is laura graham and i am a former school committee member precinct six town meeting member and i've also been working helping manage the food pantry since about  minutes and the board of selectmen and also the public were jency meeting that we had last wednesday there were about twenty five or thirty people there many of the people certainly were volunteers who help us there but there are also people who  have an interest in the food pantry and also making sure that we we are addressing the needs of our citizens there were four or five faith communities there with representatives going to the religious people some of the notes from it so i'm not going to go on and read the notes but i also wanted to update you that some of the options that we have been looking at are sharing space at least temporarily with watertown watertown does have two food pantr s and arlington has one or two is the patty did go last week and what to the watertown food pantry which sort of in a nice coincidence happens to be one of the people who helps run that profit would be a significant issue in terms of actually says getting the food to people there isn't a there's a place maybe we can store food but there's really not a place where we could prepare food in bags for people and that would be a real stopgap thing for possibilities of using some of the retail space methodist church you know bullet no place seems to have a space that we could actually store the food much less be able to distribute it to people pay some park church they're looking at seeing if there's a space that we could use again temporarily that space that we can be using using on a permanent basis temple beth ause said we could put a trailer on their parking lot but you know that's sort of the same i building we looked at waverley oaks community room which i know people say a lot of the people the residents there say that's not highly used but it is owned by the state and there is a mandate that there's a community room that's available a lot of the issues that we're dealing with are trying to find some place where we can get in with a key where we'd have a separate key to get in and to be able to do that off hours because it is all volunteer group we don't have people that are on hand at particular hours to be able to receive the food that we do have delivered so we're open now five times a week obviously for moving that could change but we're open the first and third saturday mornings from eight thirty to nine thirty for the clients and then we usually get there between seven thirty and quarter of eight to set up or open the second and fourth tuesday evenings and that come through our list is we only can let people come in twice a month they don't have to sign up for a particular time but we do check off when everybody comes in and make sure that people are only coming in twice a month and we do provide  assistance in the form of gift cards two or three times a year for holidays and that's often donations that we get financial donations that we get from the community so we feel very supported financially by the community but he is certainly we've had discussions from sort of both hats we did have a meeting with patty and mike starr who's one of on the board of directors of the food pantry and i met with john failon in early december certainly been talking about this and i know that a town meeting at the last presentation and in may that he did when he talked about space updates in his timeline was one of the issues was that the rooms that were using at the modulars were going to have to be  craft that would be temporary we've talked a lot we talked as needing but again i thought it was very well attended about changing the structure of the food pantry and having it come under some town department  of the issues is sustainability is that because all of our funding comes from donations and we've been you know amazingly grateful where so many people every year who do donate money  we need to have a place in the food pantry has moved as you know several times here over there we've been at the trailer units or a couple of times and access is a huge issue not to get into the finances or you  know if it had to pay rent is that sustainable model for the food pantry as well it could be one of the things that we talked about is is doing a fundraiser and we certainly have people here in town who are really good at that and that that would be something that is possible to do if we need to pay rent right now what we're looking at is it would be hard to have our current financial structure with paying and up two thousand dollars a month i have no idea what's a lot here and then we're not there we're not having the money to be able to get the food that we need for our clients and we have a growing population of people with needs i know that thank you it's really it's a concern for all of us  i'd like to see you have a permanent home ok and i'd like to see you have a nice storefront in one of our squares easily accessible by public transportation and so what i've done is i've reached to several large property owners in the community and when i say food pantry you know everybody's attention spikes and there is a strong need to help and a strong desire to help so i am waiting to hear from several people and and you know hopefully we can accomplish that objective sooner rather than later right i mean any any sort of  well certainly i mean and you know helps it took us several years to get the tax except i remember going to see thirty patty for years about but we certainly do promote that i think one of the things that we know that we need to do is the food pantry group  is to also promote the issue that it's a five a one c three to be able to keep up with our our facebook page my facebook page just went up to keep up with our web page and so we understand that that's our responsibility that indicated they may not have space indicate that they would want to help in some way for donation or through fundraising and so so so i think i think there's an awareness that it didn't exist a month ago and hopefully something will come together any comments on what we've been doing with downside you know i think we've been working to try to explore different other venues we've done our reach through our department heads through the same some of the same places th yeah you're in the right company across the street is there any reason why you can't go back there well i believe do believe that patty walked the space with john failon and with gerry boyle it's deteriorated to the point where it's really not a viable alternative if if money was put into it i mean one of the things we're looking at is ok if we could use that to change some they considering i think i just sent you an e mail about this or maybe i didn't i thought i thought i did what about the old library space in the school building because i know that they have documents stored there and that has its own and i wonder if we might be able to you know solution terms of permit space the short term is going to be the challenge right and we understand that we're going to have to be flexible and short term and are willing to  to look at things like i mean if we have to we could maybe be delivering food to some people but again it's it's in short term it would be fundamentally changing except  absolutely nancy sara's the belmont resident now for twenty seven years i believe live up on house road with my husband george and my mother in law who be one hundred this year so i need to make sure that i get sat in the paper i saw a hundred year old woman being celebrated this past week i was sure you had god bless her is correct and god bless us because it takes a lot of good for her effort to end a lot of smiling believe me but i want to thank you all for inviting me h tonight to talk a little bit about the women's club of course it's an affectionate topic for me i happen to love historical buildings and i love our town so i want to thank you for inviting me before i begin to talk a little bit about the history i think it's really important that i think the town of belmont first and foremost for the terrific c p a grant one hundred thousand dollars that we received last year that has been a tremendous really a tremendous boost for our not just our morale but clearly our bankroll because we've got so many renovations and things that need to be done that we just cannot afford on membership so that's tremendous we followed the town's procedures for the r f p process  sent out to several architects we did receive an r f p back from i don't know if you're familiar with gary wolf i think most people heard that name before gary has done a lot of historical structures within massachusetts and new england in general and he happens to be a huge winslow homer fan so that worked out beautifully he's very very talented if you have a chance to visit his website i think it's worth a few moments of your time but he's getting started now in the plan so when he'll be working with floyd and others in the town that's been on the whole for us sometimes to to enter and exit the building mark can attest to that but the good news is mark doesn't wear pumps and many of us you know and i can tell you that i'm more than one occasion i've gotten my  wonderful job leading this initiative and clearly with your expertise that we were able to accomplish great things and also welcoming now my new co president wendy murphy who i think all of you know is a notable town resident and involved in a lot of various high profile situations so  you know it already also in a chair i am surrounded by attorneys and fashion models but we won't talk too much about it tonight i promise gentlemen of all them that we have to do whatever it takes for the club and for the for the house for a little history the house is an early victorian italianate mansion it was built by the director under the direction of william flagg homer who was a wealthy boston housewares merchant who traveled all around the world finding the best and the newest etc so he was kind of ahead of his time he bought his son but this summer had a built as a wedding gift for his wife adeline wellington who i think a lot of people know the wellington history here in our town and i think it's important to mention that she she love the house and as you can imagine they spent many many evenings and pertaining before the civil war during the civil war and post civil war and they were known for their parties here right up right at the corner right across the street i think that's important  houses have a story you know all of our homes have a story and we're part of many of our hopes for it we don't know all the history here but i can tell you it's fascinating it really is fascinating house itself is primarily you know for his nephew for william flagg home his nephew winslow who became one of the most successful and well known american artists in the country and probably in the world but i think he's more affection we know here in the u s i want to just mention some of his scenes that he painted here he was very much inspired by belmont the beautiful land that we have and he painted the croquet scene right on the front lawn here of the house the girl on the swing and boys in the past year all of which are believed to have been painted or drawn right here across the street so i think it's really important one sketch that really fascinates me is all the war women making have a lot and i have to tell you when i joined the club i didn't know what i have a lock was but if you look at this paint of this picture it's held usually in our politics it is a bunch of women in a very very ornate dresses making civil war uniforms by hand and i think that's really important to to know is there's a lot of history here that we need to preserve i think it's very sadly enough there's several pictures particularly that he loved and she end up marrying someone else and if you see how he's painted her i mean it's just so it's emotional it's fascinating to me but and i'm not a not expert believe me that's not my area of expertise numbers in my thing so  fascinating but anyway the women's club has a beautician for a bunch of mature women playing cards are bridge at the big house that's no longer the case we've become a really great diverse group i'm looking at a couple of my members  members right now as mark mentioned he's our treasurer and we appreciate that in sam's been a member for a number of years and we've got a lot of younger young moms who are very much involved in the town and as you can see that the group is really and i happened to be looking up some dates knowing that i was coming to a meeting and a couple the parents actually went on to a trip advisor and made some comments about the house they had never realized it was right there up the street from their own home so i think it's important that we realize our house gets a lot more attention than we believe that we believe it does so then we kind of take the kids through the house as an interim for the children today are a fascinating they had a lot of great questions they were very very outgoing and i think the ladies really enjoyed it they were preparing strawberries and ice cream as the conclusion of their visit so the kids are fascinated and frankly so were we a few a few things i'd like to  share as well as we have to hold several fundraisers last year i think all of you know especially mr williams was great as family was there as well as sam and his family and mark and his family we had a very successful fashion show at oakley but as you can imagine fashion shows are an awful lot of work situation but a beautiful play and very well received in the town i think it was on a date in may that may twenty second when people are busy but we've really got some great things yesterday the twenty sixth we launched our summer's summer at winslow summer with winslow pardon me and it's called the belmont story and that started yesterday afternoon with three tours i just want to mention that one of the tours and i can't give you the details but a ninety year old woman visited and she happened to be a descendent of win homer really so that was fascinating she gave a little kind of little history of the family but i won't share that publicly but i think it's fascinating so you never really know clipping from the newspaper the belmont citizen twenty thirteen so she's been trying to find the time to get there of a sense i think that's pretty pretty interesting on july thirtieth would like to invite everyone to our literacy on the lawn it's our first annual literacy event we're partnering with the library we're going to be doing readings from beatrix potter force with weather so we're hoping that we can peak the interest of maybe our local contractors meeting with one tomorrow as a matter of fact i will mention his name just in case he decides to not help us but we're meeting with him just to see if he's willing to maybe do some you should look at that yeah i think so folks sit here and listen at home there is still up to me i mean i know you've done you and wendy of doing a membership drive and reaching out into the community and looking for more members to join the club we sho more investment so folks need to understand that is why i just hope that everyone will at least consider joining us on this journey falling a journey because it's certainly not a sprint it's fun to be a bit of a marathon but and you know if the men's club didn't purchase that home  seven to preserve that house so i affectionately call them our foremothers and it wasn't them and their well they had tremendous insight right you know and tenacity i don't think that was a popular thing for women to do in one nine hundred twenty seven and they really pulled it off so  we have to keep current with the alcohol beverage commission the main list the managers and the as a license but you have to approve the transfer of ownership so basically this is a sell a stock something that his partners are acquiring additional having me and obviously like to present this information to you say you can make the acceptance on behalf of the town as many of you know mr barron passed away in two thousand and fourteen and he was a huge huge  believer in recognizing the employees in the employee what the work that they do and he was he came to myself and people a number of years ago and really believed in this program and wanted to do something to help make it work and he contributed substantial amount of money and his son out of money is continuing that process and but what the idea that we continue that program and i i know each one of you were there and i appreciate that and but i if you remember the situation when we gave the award to the teenager his father sent me an e mail later that night thanking me and for us for the process he wasn't really aware of all the things that were mentioned there during that night but he wanted to let us know that he appreciated as a citizen that a lot of things go on  i just want to as far as the gun buyback situation we had the last leg of it actually on saturday some of the able to complete the regional effort and totally there were one hundred fifty  jamming resident is the fourth guy and we're here this evening just to ask for the time from mission for us to stage our fourth annual don sharpen the morial race in october and we've been doing it on the first sunday in october so williams and the town accountant in town treasure so the towns by laws require that an audit be carried out not less than once every three years but we've consistently undertaken an audit every year for several handful of towns and communities in the commonwealth with aaa rating which allows us to receive more favorable rates and lower borrowing costs the town was last rated in april of two thousand and sixteen and maintain rating so first i'll just talk about the town audit the town of belmont financial statements for the year ended june thirtieth two thousand and fifteen were audited by powers and sullivan l l c the town received an unmodified opinion on its financial statements the town's financial statement for this year for the year ended june thirtieth two thousand and fifteen also include the results of the belmont like harman for the year ended december thirty first two thousand and fourteen and were audited by other out auditors the town also received unmodified opinions on its reports on federal award programs in addition know material control weaknesses right jennifer the audits the auditors commended associates p c and are posted on the light department's website the light department also received unmodified opinion on it and the actual statements and also no material control weaknesses write down if i doing the audit as with the town the auditors commended the like hartman general and financial management for their cooperation and record so that summarizes my report on the most recent year i'm happy to answer any questions that the  think one the one that probably stuck out was the some of the delays in the retirement plan activities but they're being addressed and i think that you know the town is well on its way to i think resolving which is presented to us as part of the closing up of the audit as well as you know in any of our meetings and we have four meetings during the course of a year you can between the light department and the town's  auditors you know any matters of concern are discussed that have come up during the field work through that point in time and you know there may be further follow up just discussion activities so i'd say it's in those two pieces i'd say those activities are routine based on my experience and typically how it's been it's been gentlemanly questions i think we would be well get action on climate change we're concerned hugely concerned that we're running out of time to avert the worst of climate change impacts my personal motivation is that i want to be able to look my kids in the eye and say i did but i could carbon on steroids it's a really potent greenhouse gases anywhere up to eighty six times more heat trapping than carbon dioxide if you look at it on a shorter time frame  it also can make people sick if they makes asthma worse it has other health effects and it can kill trees it gets stuck in the soil and it will kill your street trees which is another negative thing for the environment and for climate include that piece about the gas leaks so we need to keep up the pressure and the legislature say that that the support from towns is vital so far thirty six towns h bills and many of them are neighbors but they're all over massachusetts and just to give some background on on the gas leaks issue rather than the safety of the hour long power point presentations  boiling down to three sort of shocking facts that most people here and it makes them it makes them enormously concerned the first is that the greater boston area has about ninety where i am right now and the third fact is that they create these leaks in three different levels and the first level is there they consider explosion risks so anything that's in an enclosed space or right next to a building they have to fix right away if you call and they come out and decide it's a great one they'll fix it right away great to leaks they say could become dangerous so they don't necessarily have to fix them but they have to watch them mohnish and then fix them with an i think six months lease do not have to be fixed however we have two leagues in belmont that are from nine hundred ninety six hundred three that are very three leagues and the shocking thing about the great three leagues is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the volume of the league it's really just how close is it t building and do they consider it an explosion risk so you can have you can have a super a matter which is a term that people have been using for art that can legally they're not required if they can sit there forever  have the audience understands yes the two bills which are in the way that bills do are sort of morphing into different attachments and amendments to other bills the first one says that this is the one that when i beds you can see the yellow paint that that's the gas color on our roads when they spray you can see where the pipes go the second one says that when a road is open for repair or for some other purpose if there's an expose owning its problems so i think i'm viewing the gas leaks as something that you know that we need to be concerned right and we're supporting the two bills i think we're sending a letter on the second bill and this is going to be because the first bills been sent to study but as you know i lived in manhattan for thirty five years if there was a gas leak in manhattan everybody and their brother came whether there were three that were in one twos or threes if if the if somebody there somebody smelled gas they fixed it in what in fact one of the risk is that they would close your building down while they checked every pipe fall all the way up so i think belmont in in some cases you know we have our water systems and good good shape we need to do some work on the sewage discharge which we're doing and then this is an issue but it's not something that that the town itself does and so the political pressure that you're proposing is really the only wa d to get action i also brad and maybe you can confirm that they are now they now have a robot that they yeah it's in it's in a pilot mode so that instead of digging up on both sides of the pipe and trenching it out they can actually put the robot in the pipe and so perhaps that will   does not have at the moment a good way of measuring the volume for some reason they can measure volume in new york but they say they can't imagine just working on ways to be able to identify the problem of the leaks right now they can just the volume we don't know the volume of the other issues that we could do is address is a town is that as we are repairing roads working closer with the utility to really encourage to gas leak repairs during road projects in the accompanying bill eight house bill twenty eight seventy one it act requiring gas leak repairs to and certain raw products would be a major step forward for the come up from a like many communities have struggle with leaky natural gas line for some time in addition to the obviously few risks that leak present many residents have voiced health and environmental concerns will lead gas unfortunately can often take a long period time for leaks that don't present we thank you for your attention to this matter and for the consideration you are giving this matter if you have any questions about our positions or if there is anything more that the body can do to show our support this legislation please don't hesitate to contact us like we can be reached so  monitor this but please let us know as a board mothers are front and other folks what's taking place please keep the lines of communication open on this or behind that is a public service announcement thing that national grid tells us that the still the best way for them would be a great and i'm sure absolutely thanks i think it's also possible that we could if we know where these leaks are unfortunately we don't know the volume but maybe we could ask glenn to add that to his criteria for the street repair because if  one of the follow through is it is you know in other words you have the paving problem but if you have a gas problem on the street and redoing the street attract their attention then maybe we can ask you can suggest a glimpse of you know i have this map licenses on substantive discussion i like to follow here but when we just run through them gentlemen we have a review and approve a change of manager application from from a country from the one he won with the street today we just had the point is that whenever there's a change of manager license to look at the you know just a checklist basically there's a checklist you have to provide the information to as that's required but again you approve the original license in the first place in terms of the tips on like this is a just a change of manager notification it's required by the state yes ok but then is there anything that you do with regard to this or yes once you prove it tonight then we for davy say that you are the licensee of you or you don't do any further checking or anything on our behalf there's no well you've already done that we've already done that as part of the initial approval of the annual approval of the liquor license you are you you approve these licenses inform me to sign right no i remember that clearly but what i'm saying is if the state requires are approved for a change of manager what do we do with regard to that i mean do we know who the new managers are really application of that's why i also say has the person cheney road placed tables and chairs on the public sidewalk this is not to serve alcohol the only correct this is just to place tables and chairs that is correct but it is further discussion we have to consider at some point whether it is right  soup factory located at three seventy four trippler road place tables and chairs in the public sidewalk is warm in here so we got other information from david on this that we got it from council so it's complicated why maybe you could just introduce yourself and just walk through with the  is opinion that it is not uncommon for licenses to be pledged as a way of receiving funds again understanding that if in fact the and to t that as i will quote from george the pledge still has value to the creditor because it prevents a license from selling the business and assign all the value to license as a way to defer to defeat the credit security interest in the  basically what george is saying is that what this does is a player would have the right to come before the board in fact it ended up requiring the assets that are being pledged and the board would have a decision ask for that license to be transferred to them permanently in the location yes the lawyer that's it they can't use a license in any other location you have the ultimate authority to decide transfers so the th we just don't see it in belmont because liquor licenses are fairly new phenomenon in belmont number two just as we approved a transfer of saw a change of ownership  license and a license ok if it's foreclosed upon if you default can't be moved to another location without our approval as well so that goes with that location at at the loading be the loading dock doesn't own the license there's no equity interest at all and then if you know if i were if it wasn't business as usual then i would wonder how you could plug something that you don letter from m s b major we thought about that as well ok we are have sent out and it's been posted in the local media about the town accepting applications for rob various committees and so that we are currently accepting applications for committee assignments and the due date for that is really july we're preparing our normal  roster for your review and then prado after july eleventh meeting where we started to meet when we can schedule work in session to go through them which has been a guy also want to do a strategy session as well we have talked about that so you might create more business in july but we can look at part of that board temporarily grant the town i'm in a straight or is the ability to do some signage across the street from a pool there's a parking area that doesn't have a side which means we cannot do any enforcement and clearly need the space for you and i got an e mail and that says so we need to sign it so we can enforce it but also to make sure that we can provide additional parking for in the little you can turn around area there but what we kind of would limit of time  i think that's what we're trying to figure out whether something a families go there in the morning stay there for five hours well i think with that i guess what we would try to do is figure out what is an adequate time limit so we can manage of more effective but right now we can't do  parking area i believe that there is a mix of folks who are using there for long term parking we're trying to turn over the spots so that as a driver of children to belmont high in the morning i can tell you there are commuters parking yea right yeah and i see them they park and then take a bus across the street so as you know we do the commuter parking program so this may have pushed folks for if we're going to sign it we need forces and that that is true so now that we don't there there is the contradiction of you know selling the bill passes for ten dollars and then you know than if you have a restriction across the street where yet we need to direct parking to the well used for patrons of the pool at the very least and then during the school year to make sure that they are used either by teachers or other folks as opposed to be tied up for folks who are parking their car all day and leaving so there's a balance there and where we've had internal discussion i think what you just said is coming up with a time frame that isn't too short but not too long to allow it to be utilized at least this summer by the pool patrons what how do you keep commuters from parking in the pool parking lot or signage there and the plot and how to treat me you know there's no there's no limit there so i guess what we're trying to do is be proactive so that we can make sure that the spaces are used for the patrons we see in the summer and we have some control over it but we don't sign it we don't have any and you know maybe you issue a  license to do that or do they just pull up there and park i believe they just pull up we have to do something about that too in almost every other venue i'm aware of there's there's a cost for doing that you know on aware of what they need they don't need every department from the town that they pay for and we do do corey checks i think that we have to do them for the base of their home where they have that so and they do i believe get inspected by the health department but in terms of a feed to park  specifically the chief of police contract and we reached an agreement but certain changes to the contract to the have a motion to approve the chief of police contract that would be effect