hello everyone welcome to the debut of belmont buzz belmont's newest talk show it's a collaboration between belmont media center and wicked local belmont i'm joanna julius the local journalist and today we're going to talk about what the latest buzz is in belmont and that is the upcoming debt exclusion vote november sixth and here to talk about that with me today is ellen schreiber and jessie b i'm going to introduce these ladies i think to be honest with you i think ellen tribe are a nice little introduction she is one of belmont's busiest bees she has lived in the town for twenty two years she has a ninth grader and a sixth grader she currently serves on the warrant committee and as a town meeting member she is a leader for the yes campaign yes for belmont campaign for the debt exclusion she serves on the veterans memorial committee she's on the board of the foundation for belmont education are you still president of belmont kids oh god no right got that ok and you know not when broke p p o remember you know no but she also was very active in helping get joey's park rebuilt she was on the underwood pool building committee and helped fund raise for that she's just i mean anyone who wants to get something done in belmont just call it a gallon is your woman and jesse and i actually in her spare time i want to say that she sings in the family full corral she enjoys playing board games reading books going to theat movies and watching her kids play sports i find it hard to believe you have your due but that's great and jesse you lived in belmont for eleven years you have a seventh grader and a third grader you're also a town meeting member and a member of the high school traffic working group she serves on the boards of the burbank p t a or you yet you still are and henry p t o and you've been part of the town wide safe routes to school group for four years and you're also on the board of the foundation for belmont education and the belmont after school in richmond collaborative so i've got two very active women here both with nonprofit field experience i am an add so welcome you coming on the show so one of you can answer this question what is the message that the yes campaign is trying to get to belmont voters and how are you doing that well we are trying to help the most voters we have a big decision to make on november sixth we are deciding whether or not to fund the belmont seven to twelve school the funding is crucial the project is really important for our town once we do this we will solve the big overcrowding problem we have in all of our schools so with this one project we solve overcrowding town wide we do it we're done and then our schools are in really good shape for the next fifty years and i think the other part of the message is that this is the most fiscally responsible solution to the problems that we're facing it does it in one project it does it with very little disruption i mean all construction projects are disruptive but this one is incredibly well phased we have kids staying in a classroom until they can move into a brand new classroom so we're not messing around with trying to relocate people and it is coming with a huge amount of money from the state eighty million dollars that we will not have if we decide to  that funding on november sixth by voting yes so how are you getting the word out how are you getting this message to the registered belmont voters so we're doing a lot of things and we have been for many months now we have been mailing to people everybody should have gotten a few different postcards in the mail talking about the story we are you know reaching people through door to door we're going around and we're talking to voters and we want them to ask their questions because it's a big complicated project and it's going to cost a lot of money so everybody has questions we want them to have a chance to ask them but one of the really cool things that we're doing we see i guess  several months ago we decided that we wanted to be able to communicate to people through video but it's very hard to show something like overcrowding so we looked at different ways of doing it and we had been looking at different videos and found these explainer videos that do such a really cool fun in gauging job of getting across something that's pretty complicated in very little time oh well i would love to see that video and i think we actually have the clip belmont there's something important we need to fix back in two thousand and twelve school creditors put us on warning they deemed our high school building at a point of crisis saying it does not support delivery of programs their words not ours the problem is our fifty year old building it has original electrical systems failing plumbing flooding leaking asbestos no sprinklers yikes there's also no room literally classes spill out in the hallways science labs are dangerously overcrowded you can't even sit down in the library and it's not getting any better belmont schools are growing by one hundred students every year there's more teaching has changed since one nine hundred seventy one are building hasn't kept up it just can't support the kind of project based learning that massachusetts standards require the building needs an overhaul there's good news belmont was chosen to receive an eighty million dollars state grant but if we don't use it now it'll be taken away the state is a financial watchdog they want their money well spent no bells no whistles just a basic twenty first century school so that's what we're going to do we'll keep the field house and build around it new classrooms library cafeteria auditorium but the really brilliant part we'll add a seventh and eighth grade middle school wing and free up space at all six schools for all five thousand children over crowding gone the only thing we need to make all this happen is for us to make the decision to do it yes high schools are expensive arlington and wall fams projects are both over three hundred million dollars ours is a bit less but if we don't do it now we'll lose state funding and wind up paying more a lot more later that would be one of the worst financial decisions we could make this crisis is not going away let's fix it now before it gets worse vote yes on november sixth i love that you guys i mean i just can't get over it really brings the message across and then entertaining and concise way all the points that you've been wanting to make throughout your campaign has it been launched as have people been seeing we launched it yesterday and there's been a flood of response about it it's town and as the editor of the belmont paper i've only received two no letters i know that there was a campaign that many considered a no campaign called safe schools belmont they filed campaign finance papers with the town clerk september twentieth they have since dissolved the officially dissolved october twenty third but again i mean there really i haven't seen much opposition but what have you heard i mean are you like are you hearing people that are have their doubts about this i doubt it so there's still pretty healthy debate online in particular i'm you know on the  the facebook streams of like different belmont based groups there's been you know there's there are several people who are just not convinced and are very vocal about their not being convince i think there's also the issue of that people might not be informed about what this project really does and i mean the people who are outside of you know the the well connected well informed belmont folks who who always keep up with what's going on who might get to the polls and just think well i heard that was really expensive and i'm just going to vote now so we want to make sure that everybody in town has the opportunity to hear the facts about why this is a good idea to go forward with this project why we think it's the most fiscally responsible way forward why we feel like it's crucial to providing the education that we believe in in belmont so what do you tell people who squat at the price tag of two hundred ninety five million dollars well i the first thing i say is that we're going to spend some money anyway you know it's we have a must fix series of problems in our school system so we have an option that is on the table right now that we have worked as a town for two and a half years to develop and it's a really good solution it is expensive but high schools are expensive so if you look even just at our neighbors arlington is in the process of doing a new high school their estimate is over three hundred million dollars it's three hundred eight million dollars waltham is in the process of working on a new high school theirs is going to be over three hundred million as well and in both of those cases it's a school being built for fewer kids for fewer grades but for more money so while this project is expensive it is there's no doubt but it's less than other comparable projects and it's less than we're going to wind up spending if we don't do this so the the building committee and the superintendent did some preliminary planning this is really the school department preliminary planning of what do they do if we don't build this the seven to twelve school yes and you know they have to turn around the very next day and start asking for more modular classrooms right i already have sixteen we've get thirty two more that's forty eight classrooms twelve hundred kids in temporary classrooms then there needs to be a renovation project on the channel then a renovation project on the high school the total bill for that is two hundred forty seven million dollars compared to two hundred thirteen that we're going to spend right now for this current project so we would wind up spending more money for a worse solution and so that's what i keep trying to talk to people about is that we have a great solution but we also have the the solution that's going to cost belmont taxpayers the least and if this is the solution the massachusetts school building authority has given us the ok to go ahead on this is the one we've been working with them on it's the one that was determined to be the best way forward for a town and it is the one that comes with eighty million dollars from the state that's why we can say this is a two hundred ninety five million dollar project project we're getting eighty million dollars we've spent two million just on all of the work that we've done so far so it is at the end of the day two hundred thirteen million dollars for the taxpayers in the town of belmont and i should and that is that the m s b a money this eighty million dollars it is only for this project this is their process this is their rules and so if we don't approve this project the eighty million goes away exactly you know different grade configurations they looked at renovation only they looked at renovation with an addition and purely a new building we chose in the middle we're doing a renovation with an addition so we're saving money by renovating the field house and the pool and not having to build those from scratch right and i know that the m s p doesn't even cover a new pool yet they won't allow you to build one so if we had gone that route we would have lost pool but so you know here we are there cheaper options i don't think that's exactly the way to look at it i think what you need to think about is that the building committee took all nine of those options and explored them in depth and they were looking for what is the right solution and what is the most cost effective solution ok and that's what they came in and the reality is that we get this is an amazing  brilliant plan that actually solves all the problems that we have in the district right now that if we only have solved it opens up space in every single school in the district by moving the seventh and eighth grade from the to this new building we then can move one grade from the elementary schools into the chair so we have now reduced the treasury from a four grade school to a third grade three grade school and we've reduced the elementary schools from five grades to four ok we instantly get more space for them to do the learning that they need to do in that their way overcrowded for at this point and then on the high school level we're building enough space to accommodate all of the nine through twelve graders and all seven through eighth graders and i said yeah so one project solves the problems with overcrowding district wide right which would have been very expensive to solve any other way much more than we're spending now and so we say to people who are concerned about that configuration in the changes to all the configurations district wide it all now the k through three a four three or six and seven through twelve what do you say to people who are concerned about those well the first thing i'd say is that it's actually not so much seven through twelve as the seven and eight and then nine through twelve there are two schools in one building that are going to be operating with separate entrances separate start times separate stairwells to get up to their core classrooms they'll be sharing some resources on the first floor above be doing it in a phased way so seventh and eighth graders are up in their teams doing their team work the nine through twelve graders come down and use the music rooms use the art rooms have gym vice versa they go back up to their core classes and then the seventh and eighth graders come down and use that shared space so it's very efficient seventh and eighth graders will be treated like seventh and eighth graders they're going to be in assigned seating in the cafeteria at their tables and be well supervised they're not going to be in the same space as the one through twelfth graders they're going to be kept in team settings that are a big improvement actually over what we have a chance right now in that they will be they will be in kind of their own little pods so they'll be kept with their their team of about eighty to one hundred students throughout the day and the set up is more conducive it's more flexible right now it's henery sometimes you have like one class at one end of a hallway of another class another end of a hallway you've got to go through a wall of students to get through with these little pods they'll be like all right in one space all day long a lot easier for transitions and the press rooms between them can open much more easily than what we have what do you say to people concerned about what a building like this is going to cost to operate so we have an amazing building committee we really do and we have you know folks who are in the industry they've done projects like this before we've hired really good architects we've hired an owner's project manager who is essentially our professional project manager looking out for our interests and i say all of that because what it means is that we've got lots of eyes on designing a building that is efficient that where the operating cost is low there's been a big push around energy efficiency yeah so the building is going to be zero net energy which means that at the end of the day the money that we're spending on energy we're also producing as a town and that is going to have a significant positive impact on our operating budget ok and i think that on top of that you know if we look at what's there right now i mean we've got plumbing system heating system electrical systems that really are in need of complete replacement already and that's one of the reasons why just doing a ranch would be so expensive on its own i mean everything needs to be replaced at this point they're just at the end of their useful operating minds so i mean i've actually heard stories of the maintenance staff like having to fabricate fabricate parts that are no longer available on the open market when something breaks oh really so you know these things add to your cost of maintenance and i think that you know having this you know this modern this contemporary like zero net energy building that is operating you know is built for what they need right now will be like a huge improvement as far as maintenance goes i have one thing to that you're going to have a hard time said yeah i think we have i mean i sit on the work committee i look at our operating budgets and i really think that we have a big financial risk with our current building there are a lot of problems and and things are breaking regularly ok so last year you had science labs where the plumbing leaked and it goes through the ceiling into the room below but you've got a specialist in the ceilings so now you've got a wall off a whole lot of things in order to remedy it once you get into a situation where you're spending a lot of money on these kind of repairs and we're very close to that then you risk having to do the project at that moment because you cross a threshold that we're not code compliant so you know we're grandfathered for now but as soon as we spend a significant amount of money we are in for this big renovation i personally would prefer to do it on our own terms yeah in a well planned way building a project that has been vetted it's just to me it's the fiscally responsible thing to do i agree but i want you both to  e people that i interviewed randomly at the belmont farmer's market and to hear what they had to say about the debt exclusion where do you stand on the debt exclusion vote there is no excuse for not to approve getting eighty million dollars of help from the state to build our school solution so i don't know how we could possibly turn down that money because the other choice is spending a great deal more to repair our schools in have a question of building to keep them accredited since that's an very much hoping that you're voting yes yes absolutely well i'm feeling you know conflicted on that and on the topic i absolutely believe that we need to invest in our schools and we need to take care of that i'm also a little concerned that three hundred million dollars is an awful lot of money for a new school we all made a lot of fun of newton when they built a two hundred million dollar high school and then we come back just a few years later we've got a three hundred million dollar high school so i'm i'm kind of on the fence right now on this i'm trying to decide whether we say to school committee come back with a more affordable plan or do we say we got to take care of our kids both both the point both points of view have merit i think you know it's a grade seven and twelve school you think that that's why it's so much money well obviously adding two more grades is going to you know increase the cost you know we just not so long ago built a really beautiful middle school they obviously i haven't sat down and looked at all of the demographics and all of that but  thirty three years i think you do have quite a history do you have any kids in the school not anymore my kids are grown up so i got kids in the twenty's now my son went through the ballance schools all the way through graduated from the high school about six years ago so what do you think about the seven to twelve configuration i actually went to a seven to twelve school when i was in in high school and it was ok i don't think that that's really a problem you need to make sure that that the eleventh and twelfth graders don't spend too much time around the seventh and eighth graders but you can do that in terms of how you schedule you know lunch times and other times so i think that it's a completely reasonable thing to do you just have to manage it  for the debt exclusion i think we desperately need to take advantage of the state money to build the school and we need to solve the overcrowding problems at the elementary and middle schools and so the seven through twelve new building is what makes the most sense we're going to need to wrap this up soon ladies but i do have time for one more question which both of you can take the time to answer why is this great seven to twelve building the best option and it's kind of a two part question what will happen if the debt exclusion doesn't pass you take the first part i'll take the second so i would say that this solution is the best way forward because it addresses the deficiencies in the building itself in high school that need to be taken care of i mean we were at a point where we've been put on warning by the a creditor's that the current that we are in crisis that we the building does not meet delivery of programs you know that we really need to do something there we've also got this wave of kids coming up the classes that are coming up and going to be hitting the high school in a couple years or significantly bigger than the ones that have been graduating the last few years and it keeps continuing that way and it will continue one hundred new students a year up until when until we level off and about if about ten years from now we're thinking it will level off for a little bit before then where our new normal is going to be significantly higher than what the old normal was it will be right around three hundred thousand we have five thousand students in the entire district instead of thirty six hundred i think when john failon started as superintendent it'll be around four hundred students for class yeah which is huge which is huge it's way more than we had even when my kid my first kid entered entered kindergarten and so i think that we have to acknowledge that this is a problem that we need to be able to deliver these students the education by knows that they deserve and that we've been known for and we are protecting our reputation i think by moving forward of a project that solve these problems we're protecting our reputation as a town that values education  so i think that it's important for us to be able to be proud of this project and the fact that it will move forward and be able to provide a great solution for the kids to come and if it doesn't pass and if it doesn't pass we still have to fix the problems i mean the problems are very very real and we have a high school that needs to be accredited i mean very basic so we have a set of you know must fix problems and we have to fix them the alternative is a piecemeal solution that will take over ten years to roll out assuming that we as a town decide to fund it every year construction costs go up by four percent so if we were to hold off on this project for fifteen years it would be over a half billion over five hundred million dollars if we waited thirty years it's going to be nine hundred fifty million dollars right kicking the can down the road is not a solution and saying no to the state money isn't a great solution as you can see if you read up on what's happening in lincoln right now they did not come back and offer you eighty million dollars again ole days i think we definitely got the message across to our viewers i hope everybody watching will get out on november sixth and vote i want to thank you both for coming on the show the debut of them not because i want to thank everybody for tuning in i want to specially think producer and director jeremy missouri and belmont media center paradise flowers for these gorgeous flowers foundation for the belmont education for the bumble bee antenna and their spelling bees coming up on november third and i want everyone to know that if there's a buzz you want to talk please e mail me belmont at what good local dot com thank you