hello everybody i'm lisa fiore i am the current chairperson of the school committee i've been on the school committee about three and a half years and i'm a parent of two children in the district high school ninth grader as of today and a seventh grader and but yes but i'm but i'm i'm maybe maybe it's a different question but i'm part of the optimistic that that if we do that we have that si where they are they are that second one i'm ok i'm i was comfortable putting out there because because that's the way the current regulations written i realize that there is political risk to it and and it would've been nice to have seen some implementation rules from the from address you about how they were going to do it but but i am i am i mean i was starting with the assumption that that that th to follow through on the regulations that they just jack asked me how does that strike you work if you want to challenge that the way i do it is that you know in the nonmember so rather than put in the full no  asked of not but it came to me by your emails my you have a chart at the bottom of one of these the for the new thing that i sent you today it's on the top seven pages  and it well i've focused on i somehow like to follow the money is you show starting with directly belmont only sending fourteen students all the way up oh that's that's that's  that's on the capitol all the way up to sixty two students and as i see it on the assumptions that you've made your conclusion is with only fourteen students the difference between a member and a nonmember town is a nonmember student and so they will make they are less price sensitive then and because because because they will they will apply for with what learning experience you know is going to work best for him the regular local district schools that don't have special cost attached to them that are that are going to be picked up and the families and students are not necessarily that sensitive i said was seventeen thousand five hundred six so it actually dropped by six point two percent from sixteen to seventeen the department of education of sorry elementary secular education actually lowered by over a thousand dollars  operating cost from sixteen to seventeen and just to be clear that the ones cost is is just under three hundred thousand dollars were for twenty six students so we paid a little over thirty thousand dollars and they change the methodology for how that operating costs are sacks so if you have point in time why oh per student or per student when we don't really know how many students until october first when they are doing them but when they do the physically or seventeen budget they base it on october one fifteen in rome and for precisely the reason that you say and nobody knows what it will be going forward so they do it based on the last seconds on members and they were and we paid the capital cost it would be less than what we're presumably because there would be about the thousand dollars of capital cost as a script for nonmembers eighty five hundred if it's if it's are responsible for your own transportation so if you are sending three kids from grafton your transportation costs are a lot different than if you're sending sixty kids from watertown there that's town specific there's no way to thing and i think that's just fair for people to keep in mind is the way those costs reallocate is based on a four year rule from the last but so if you divide it by a point in time and your point in time in rome it is below your average hiring lower than the average any given moment to be higher or lower i just i think if we were if our four year average was twenty five and said forty this year i think people would say wait a second that number officially love because we're really send in forty and that's going to catch up with us i think the reverse is also true so i think that the disparity is overstated here because you're dividing by a point in time  didn't we would just withdraw when we had the chance i mean i think that we saw that there were some people at least thought that there were other things to be considered with regard to being a member town and having a say and wanting to change the district so that it made sense and all that sort of stuff and if  agreement which was a product of the committee that i was on and this whole project was dead in the water because towns were saying they would not ever vote for the death most it was amended agreements on all they get an agreement the selectmen each from all sixteen here originally agreement and one of the things that seven towns and system on which the right to get out and belmont was not part of all declared towns mark did not make that position at that time credit from the beginning he's been a team player and believed as i believe we should support vocational training this is just the wrong school we should do it right it's going to last fifty years let's not make a mistake or be part of a group to makes a mistake and he really thought that working from within particularly when i went in was signaling they were not going to vote for this that the district would be reconstituted it was a wake up call when the towns including until said that they would approve that fortunately we have this escape clause unlike most other mistakes you make in life you don't get a second chance we have a second chance to do it and do it right this time and if we vot no i think it's also important to say that these meetings which were held mainly by selectman but sometimes bob and jack were there when mark did raise more than once that perhaps we also should be a declaration town the other towns approval was more subjective than it is and they were they being the rest of the minuteman communities and the administration of minutely and particularly the needham and lexington people were very very clear that if belmont was a declaration town then the whole think it's going to fall apart and it wasn't until everybody went to town meeting in in may and june and you all got something that was sent by minute minute most of you were telling me the members you got something that was sent by minutely and it basically talked about jesse's approval of towns withdrawal and yes he read it and immediately corrected it and said oh no all we do is make sure that you're obeying your personal agreement and we don't make judgement calls about which town is leaving at that point minute me and was forced to send something to every town meeting member in the sixteen towns saying this information was wrong and the information is x but this was all after the agreement have been had been passed and we didn't know had we known in february that we weren't going to be the cause of the whole district dissolving or this agreement not happening and we strongly felt the agreement had to happen in order for a minute meehan to be covered rightly and that's why they call it so us being a declan town we truly believed in january in february kill everything and we made it clear at that time was when they waited voting comes in in those towns who bear a disproportionate share of the cost get to vote with that weight the sentiment about the building project  did couple their town meeting approval with that solution and i think i think it i mean i think the effort you with mark over the six years to really try to get a smaller and smaller school did pay take a look at four thirty five but i think what really sort of you know stuff the conversation was with was when i miss b s a that we're not going to prove anything smaller six hundred schools that that's i mean that's my sense once that happens want to withdraw i mean the difference in operating costs charges that it has absolutely nothing to do with the building i mean we have to vote on the building which is only the vehicle but whether or not to vote yes on the building apparently has not much to do with the building this isn't going to prove the eighty five hundred for the nonmember towns so if they set that rate at three thousand or five thousand there's another significant difference in what we would be paying we don't know where they're going to set it at but they do have a history of setting the tuition lower than our operating costs and of reducing the tuition very recently so i mean we don't know  i would take those that history is relevant given the right look i have i mean first first i just want to say that i share biopsy point of view that this is the second chance both i mean that that that i view this less as a vote on the building because the building is going to pass hundred twenty five percent of the of the foundation budget and that's in the regulation and in the same section of the regulation that says that the capital cost is going to be rich cost and so and so and so there's there's a consistency and it's and it's a black and white in terms of the regulations about those two approaches so i'm so i'm actually more comfortable about the capital cost piece and and getting to the getting you know dealing with this gap between the but as i said so so let me summarize what changed my mind since the spring i did not appreciate in the screen town meeting a should ban together and do whatever was possible to induce yes to implement fair capital charge caved to some kind of other pressure and put situation of something significantly less than a thousand dollars then i think it's outrageous and belmont acting in own best interest actually should withdraw from the other counties i'm sure would be most unhappy but i think if we did withdraw it actually may be the signal of the other also sends a very clear signal to the other towns that yes we will piggyback on you here for we intend to pay not never to ration and pay a lower capital charges that is crazy environment that p t s d creates and yes we will take advantage of that but i think we should make it clear that the right thing is actually a very different world where  at least to a fair capital charge to do the four eight or nine thousand dollars then i would support remaining in the district taking her chances on the enrollment recognizing there is some mark and iraq they had the bug guy just deputy commissioner who was in charge of setting this and he was asked directly where are you this was in june june twentieth to twenty where are you with setting this capital fee and it was the most doubletalk answer imaginable he said absolutely nothing other than he's consulting with all the affected parties so that's number one when you get to the august twenty fourth i filed a public information request upon d e s c to say i want to see all of the communications with who have you consulting with the minutes of meeting everything relating to setting it and on the tenth day i've got their form letter that we're going to try to get it to you soon as we can and we takes a long time to assemble it and of course we have to react react redacted and so forth so i left about three voice  mails with whoever signed that letter saying in substance that it was believed to me that there was like thirty to fifty million dollars in swing with a vote coming up in them not making a decision weaves the elect absolutely in their benevolent and it's unfair and the secretary of state ought to know about this and so forth and then get a call from a warrior who tells me this was today today that he will send me that they are claiming the so called deliberative process exemption and there is a exemption to public records law that if the documents are being relied upon when the policy is being developed they exempt from the public records disclosure until the policy is made and then they disclose so they have taken that exception to be fair the bottom of the law that there was we stonewalling this number two so that people understand and sending people back if we vote no and if two thirds of the town meeting says let's with rather district the way the agreement is written is you withdraw from the district on july one which is three full years after you gave the notice so july one's already gone by in two sixteen so you go to seventeen eighteen nineteen if they get three years you've got to get to seventeen is  when you first are you it's two thousand and twenty we are a full member of the district with a vote a quote the an absolute guarantee to have people that were full member until two thousand and twenty lots of time to consider other alternatives district is guaranteed to graduate from that school so at least climbing rate the seven years we are protected and finally in theory talk about second guesses we know that to rejoin the district countries with us in terms of our actions jim your stuff looked at the various regional programs my understanding is that there are a number of local communities that ha venture for solutions for some of those students the students would have the option to decide where they wanted to go there are more options than just for the low continuity i would prefer to stay in the district as long as there was at least a reasonable accommodation of our expectations the operating side because we're talking about fiscal year fourteen budgets which was the most recent budget post and then and then there and then i took a look at the chapter seventy funding for also for the school board for and that gives you a sense about what the member for almost is and if you take a look at this you know this is this is three years old but i think it's still close is that the minuteman and asked that really stand apart from stand apart from the others they are the only ones with the member student enrollment is seventy percent and that's and that's a big problem because it's because you know we don't have that many nonmembers that you get into this you know the membership some gotta get up and and and and and and so i mean so i'm thinking in terms of what are the strategic ways that many men can i this sort of get new members in and i think and i think and i think it starts with having having i think it starts with having a brain to build and that's i mean that's something to think about is that the cost structure of minute man and aspect to it to it to is to a lesser so i think that the this this notion that the fifty four percent of the students are the number two house fundamentally speaks to the question of my perspective this district is fixing the district properly we were willing to do that and that was part of what mark said you know really believed when we said we wanted to be a different kind of originally we want to fix the future properly we sat across the table in the senate really to go to that to work with the is we want this school now and maybe that will convince other towns to come in later right we said if that is your approach then we cannot support this school because this district is fundamentally broken in vote on september twentieth is not likely to impact whether this will be built the other ninety pounds have largely voted through debt exclusions as a community to look for the school it will perhaps homo certainly i don't have a crystal ball but almost certainly it will pass th very substantial way i appreciate your optimism jim that that minimax projection that it's going to grow by forty percent is likely to be true i don't look at this chart and forecast hockey stick growth even with a new building now i think even if there is very very significant growth the interesting thing as roi on saturday as well is that it is that we actually have the option to be a member tell which the exactly what the district was only ten twelve years old and it would suggest to me looking at this chart that it is not the building condition that's driving down and it's also worth noting to me just because this chart happens to be a year old the total enrollment shown here is six hundred and seventy three is for two thousand and fourteen the courage and roman for two thousand and fifteen is six hundred thirty five so it actually has declined again since the numbers that you've seen here and you know minute has been forecasting significant growth remember downs not only just for the future but even in the present and that is not actually taking place so i unfortunately not share the optimism that the that it will grow if you look at the next it just shows the operating cost comparison between twenty six students that is roughly one thousand dollars for the cigarette before your average the number would be twenty seven thousand four hundred and thirty six so you know it would drop by a couple thousand dollars the watertown number is based on the sixteen thousand one hundred sixty four plus half roughly a shortage of twenty to fifty for special education and i took the cost of you're looking at using these numbers and the last thousand almost eleven thousand or different use the four year average you're looking at an eight thousand dollar difference there is a very significant difference in cost between member towns and number towns it does not make sense when you have the option to be a member town in this context independent of the school is the reason why no district has going to be in forty years to the best of mine that maybe you know  the schools for six twenty eight the member towns are currently sending three hundred thirty one minutes assuming a forty percent increase from member towns despite to the point you showed don't want to censure being asked to reopen our membership for another thirty to forty years right now and so the question is is that a decision that we should make from a financial perspective right i think the answer is it's clearly cheaper to rent seats in the school the news to buy into the school and buy into this hundred  their students to another community so those twenty five students are going home right now and it's going to it's going away to a school that's closer to them and meaningfully cheaper so if you go from tree if if you are stupid you can run a million thousand nine hundred dollars that they charged three thousand dollars for the sake of argument if they charge that that means that the rest of it has to be made up by the member towns right and what that amount and asked me made up is one million seven hundred sixty four thousand dollars per year which translates into five thousand three hundred thirty three dollars per number student right that's a fourteen thousand two hundred seventy two dollars charge to belmont and a three thousand dollars charge if you're not under now if they charge four  thousand for example instead of instead of three thousand then the belmont charge would be thirteen thousand three seventy five give you additional again because of rome and now you've got a million different scenarios but even the theory best case where where we get charged the same as a non member down were you the same right so there's there's really almost no scenario where being a member down is better unless you believe that there is no access to students right no access to space and if you believe there's no  seven years or more if we want to and we basically are just joining the six towns that have already offered to leave and not indigenous at that we didn't and we are then we going to free the remaining towns to actually build a school that they want to write and i believe that thousand we would save roughly jersey thousand dollars a year just in operating costs all right so to meet from a financial perspective this is not a very hard decision from up from my perspective individual right and that's and so that's the logic line was put in which is and if they don't let you have you know not  so it sounds like it belmont votes no in the vote of the twentieth century putting the other member towns on notice if we vote to excused from responsibility for the death but of the other towns this is the issue then gets shifted to the operational side and the other if the remaining member towns locked in to the current operating expense and they have no incentive to pull us out of any jacket we've got of the hood of his car every time he leaves a little different you know that's all i'm saying is that if it is it in that operating cost premium over the nonmember cost is not also different than what that capital charge might be i was just assuming that if we voted to leave the district no member town would say oh no they can't leave because we would walk away from that eight thousand dollars per student obligation but if that subsidy that minuteman has to pick up is about eight thousand using your differential in the operating expense some communities may say you know what will waive the capital charge in order to keep you paying a membership share  towns and they only get sixteen in nonresident tuition for they may say ok we'll let you have your eight thousand dollars benefit on the capital side because it locks you  is not particularly relevant but just a question if if we are some reason whatever end up remaining as a member i don't think it's going to happen but if we do we would have the option assume to send students elsewhere any was living in belmont working but working on wall street and in the end i was helping helping the drift of traders draw draw contracts and that's a piece of what we're doing now where i mean we are we are trying to arbitrage the rules and trying to figure out what the one to one to you know to take a look at it but but i do think you know getting the membership much closer to the size of the school which can be done either by having your go you know things start to curve up or else it's a simply flipping flipping i'm some of these blue blue bars to gold gold and if i'm in you know making sure that we grow the district and and you know i past this doesn't winter was a break and i think i think there's no way that we could be looking at the survival minimum and without without the key changes in the regional agreement and because because they basically layout the the goal of having fair cost sharing across the number of towns and and the number towns and they create a path by which the water towns are going to be more likely to think about coming in certainly once we have that in terms of the financial stuff i mean i think yes it's a it's a cost question but it's also that it's also a question as to where we put our you know where where we want to assign are where we want to emphasize resources here and in the sort of gets to our values in terms of just i do value having a seat at this table i do value having being a member of two different two different districts being able to cross the cross and pollinate between what's going on in the book tech tech world and bringing back to us to our  value is what it says to our kids and to our families and i really think that kids are going to want to go to a vote tech school because they find that better than what they're finding and little local school and and you know that that's not that's not for everyone but there but there are families out there and kids out there that really feel that way and when you when you when you when you put aside the cost a brain the minute man building within ten miles that we've you know makes the statement that he care to be on that on that board and trying to set policy and trying to make the vote have to work for those kids and families that want that and then the third kind of value is  regional partnership and this is something that mark has talked about ever since he ran ran ever since he ran for selectman back in two thousand it means he needs and he's in he's shown that throughout this whole this whole process i mean i i wasn't there but i hear from my feet here from other towns that that he was that he was really driving force and you know i'm trying to make that work and i want to keep our membership so weak because because it's a good representation of what we can do  in regional partnerships and it's not always pleasant you know i mean i you know there were a lot of flaws in the process that got us through a six hundred twenty eight twenty eight school  well you know i certainly feel that but i think we've got to sort of look past that and look to the future and and that's why i think i'm willing to sort of take the political risk take the take the hit maybe in in terms of the know i respect what you're saying i don't see as an arbitrage or value question i see it as us exercising our legal rights or unfairly negotiate a contract over a long period of time i mean focused on going to happen it's just probably is probably going to be a minimum to be frank whether we stay or go i think roy and mike have some pretty in this capable logic though and they have a big fear about this debt exclusion i mean if we vote yes on the twentieth or if we vote no and yet we stay in it and we have to come up with this money for the school we're going to need a de in our operating budget i don't know how we can afford to run our school system and pay for this minuteman i honestly wish the situation were different i think the force i think the administration drove it to this through poor management and through treating us badly i think is might describe what we were trying to work with everybody and the other towns and the quill and the others just sort of gave us the back of an eye it didn't have to come to this and surreal road again but it's where we are and there's really the way the system is messed up with the incentives we'd be foolish not to just do with the incentives are pushing us to do what dessie is pushing us to do which is to vote no keep our options open i agree with roy it just keeps our options open and we can all time meeting will be able to take it up shortly if that happens and we'll see where we go step by step but it's kind of hard to find a yes argument in my mind voting share than it did under the old degree but what about so arlington's the single largest what about the other eight i think and correct me if i'm wrong i mean some of the communities remaining are sending boy and then you know and it does appear that the school people so this is all little bit moved but you know there is a i think a real issue in the spring that if this if a school is not built to be the best be a subsidy will be lost right now that the projects under forty four plus some additional amount for fields or whatever but they're looking to get a subsidy of forty million dollars or so from that there must be a and if the project is voted down now and they go back to the drawing board either for reconstituting the district or redesigning the school  you can't count on having that subsidy any further be from us by the operators of the project you know which which makes sense and it makes sense that the parties really be managed by one entity then you know what happened in the evening holders you know back to the back to the operator of the parking spaces people would be able to park in any of the spaces not just fifteen so so so there are so many residential parking spaces and so many commercial parking spaces that would service the project and the town's spaces would be part of that commercial mix and all those faces be available to patrons basically to parking which is really defined as like a storage of town vehicles twenty four hours a day and we want to turn over you know we want to turn over at night the spaces would be would be open the employee parking is that specific to daytime yes so in the evening those thirty five spaces them would in effect be released be released and become public yet now there may be you know for example starbucks is going to be relocating to one of the new buildings and i think the discussion starbucks was they would have a certain number of surface parking spaces reserved for their usage you know but again if there's a restaurant i mean there are one point there was going to be here there's talk of possibly a restaurant there's still talk of possibly a grocery specialty grocery store so the important thing is to i believe will be presenting it at the school committee meeting which will be next tuesday the thirteenth so this is still being determined but i think for now i'm just thrilled that we're staff are successfully welcoming our new leadership