to welcome our state senator well brown's burger to the belmont journal welcome will always glad to be here thank you and so i understand that you have some news on some of the transportation issues affecting us including the l wife gra you know there's been a lot happening this summer the growth of course is because got a lot of news it's none of that was news to the t v i mean right they knew that things were moving in a bad direction there and they've been moving to put in place or maintenance  contract unfortunately things got so bad point before that contract actually started but that contract actually is starting now and so that over the next couple years they're going to do a lot of work and i think it will be a safe garage and they're taking all the necessary precautions so and so they'll move those spaces around as they do repairs in different parts of the garage and there are systematically doing that they've got a nice engineering study and they're doing one has to be done be the key thing to understand is that is a temporary fix that's not a permanent fix the garage will probably need to come out of a service at some point in the next decade or so and so we're going to need a new garage and maybe the opportunities in larger things that have a life or not it was a very constrained space it is so that conversation will start out over the next few years one thing that's happening right away of course which is  bad news for local commuters is the rates are going to go up from i believe it's from seven right now to nine dollars a week day pardoning and i understand there were some some pushback against raising the parking fees of course of course but the thing to  understand those fees are going down in other garages the idea is that there's a lot of garages that are just over for right now or several roads that are full and there's others that are just not being used enough so the hope is that people move around a little bit and more people altogether get to use it actually cutting rates at some underutilized parking garages along the system so what other options do commuters have well so i think for him from a belmont perspective the workhorse community  percent of the commuting adults in in the town of balance as a very very important bus and so we've got a lot of that a lot of attention along with the day for odgers and other legislators and we've got something in motion now it's been going on for a few years i think we're  going to start to see the fruits of a lot of study and discussion in the form of a bus lane along the chronic traffic jam in front of mount auburn cemetery so that would really speed that commute  for those of you who are taking the seventy one dollars bus busy from watertown of the seventy three dollars from waverly i think they're looking at a significant improvement once we get that queue jump lane and so the bus will be able to move forward move to the front of the line and move through the intersection rather than waiting for a whole lot of life cycles and  that will mean more trips and better service less functioning of the buses you know when buses get all bunched together that's because of traffic jams that's what traffic jams due to bus service and so we're really hopeful that that'll make a big difference and we had we hope to expect that it we had expected it in may but i think we're now looking for in september october timeframe but the the everybody is working hard on the city of cambridge d c are there's a foundation involved and we're talking every couple of weeks see that things are moving forward and i have a good feeling about it right now ok one of the things that i always wonder is whether there are there are things that can be done to push more people on to the fitchburg line because my sense is that it's it's underutilized it could be a more significant carrier of people commute years in into boston for those who need to get into boston it could be i think what it needs what we really need there is to have much more frequent service and when i move back to beaumont or from  move back to this area and chose to live in belmont twenty six years ago i only looked at places that were in walking distance from the train and i rode that train for about three weeks and i when i realized that if i missed the seven hundred and thirty i was dead till nine  is not a way i can live too much stress so i got you know started on the red line and taking the bus and so forth and so i think intel we get a much more frequent service we're not going to get a whole lot more riders here here's a stat for you right  square there are about one hundred dollars people get away with a square and ride the train there are about six hundred people who get on the start in waverly square don't take the train but take the bus because just because of the frequency of service it's so convenient you have buses that you know run every five or then they we have to revise our committee we're meeting and looking at trying to understand what the what the alternatives are to really make better use of the rail service we have all over the boston region here's the most interesting idea that i think i've sort of really sucked in for me so far in that study is going to be different on different you're and so we'll see what we can do about that that idea of better rail service and bonus and love to something i'd love to see well so taking taking better advantage of the rail service of the bus lines that we have running through belmont those kinds of things offer the potential to pull some people out of cars yeah and you know and it really help with some of the traffic that we're seeing during our rush hour in you know a number of choke points within the town that  seem to be spilling into residential areas as yes as people look through look for cut through yes so that's a problem everywhere yeah i mean that you know i represent belmont to represent watertown to represent brighton allston fenway back there is what people are talking about everywhere right now because it's a regional problem i mean most of the traffic that we have in belmont is not belmont people but that's true everywhere in most of the traffic in watertown is not watertown people know so people and traffic in brighton is not brighton people it's but it's all of us gone everyplace and that's that's the way we've kind of built ourselves out with this old just spread of residence and employment all over the region it's not centralised people are driving in every direction and that's the challenge we face as it gets more congested i think one of the things we really have to be excited about is finding ways for people to choose to bike you know and take take take less room and so i'm excited about the pump in the community path progress really i think the big news that happened in august is that we did persuade the state and i to say the states been very ready and eager to support this project but to officially bring the community past project into the to designate it as a project which means that it can now it's in the it's on the conveyor belt if you will to be to complete the design process resolve the issues and get into the federal funding plan ok we're still a competitive process and we've got a lot of work to do we've got a lot of competition to get that money but we have made a significant step forward by getting into that pipeline and it means the state  is ready to work with the town in the town of stepping up to the plate and working on the design and i'm hopeful will really get that moving over the next eighteen months or so so i know a lot of people feel that it can't happen soon enough and i'm certainly one of those people what what's the the  likely timeframe that we're looking at to to get that that path constructed oh you know i'm going to say i'd like to see it done in five years i mean i think that's see we've got i say we've got about twelve months of you know six to twelve months of resolving basic issues one of those still thinking of every every major every bite that cuts across a lot of little has a bunch lot of little problems in it each one that has to be solved is too close to this to be on that property etc those kind of right away issues will get through that i think of find a way six to twelve months then the design process let's give it another twelve months and then with then we're in the competition i mean if we if we were getting if we were in the tip competition for two thousand and twenty that would be the best case i'd say and it might be a year or two after that before we could actually get funded and then you know once you actually have funded i guess that's a year or two projects so i think it's the five issue of the five issue which we're talking about so that's something i'm personally really enthusiastic about and hope we can all get to and i'm hoping to get that can come together around funding their point here's here's the thing the state's going to pay for ninety percent of this the town about what's going to come up with the other ten percent for the design so that the town's going through a process to fund that and i'm really hopeful that the will step up to the plate and do that so well what's what's on your agenda for next year well so this is this is a special time you know where we're you know we finished up the last legislative session more or less we'll probably in a few more things done through through the thing for a lot of working people so so now i'm guessing there's some sort of follow through things there is i think we have done a lot in the criminal justice syria in terms of changing laws but now we need to make sure that people are actually following the new changes making use of the new changes and that we put the money in place that's necessary to support let's say more treatment for people who are instead of sending them to criminal justice or they're in prison let's make sure we get in the prison or they're outside of prison they're finished let's get them really ranter support they need that  whole kind of thing so so more work is needed i'm i'm i'm taking from what you're saying with with the prosecutors with the with the district attorneys with prison and jail officials yes and i we need to support them with funding ok and i think i think is the the heart of it for for in all those levels every stage of the process there's things we're asking people to do differently in the long run i hope will save money through some of the stuff but sometimes have to spend a lot of money before we start saving money and i think that's probably the stage we're at right now so that's that's one thing that's the to follow through commitment for me the other thing is you know with the supreme court ruling right at the national level right the states have to step up to the plate and make the necessary changes this year and abortion was illegal in massachusetts and the only thing stopping prosecution of it was the federal constitutional rulings so we fixed that but there's still there's a whole bunch of our kick laws against you know various things that people do all the  to fix that so that's that's one to do item but you know what there's a lot of laws that are on the books that we you know were put on the books at some point because somebody thought was a good idea or made sense and we need to we need to get rid of them and so we need to that's one of the things i'm really looking forward to this fall is try to identify as many of those as possible so we've got a bus housecleaning bill to get some of the junk off the books and lot of that won't have any real public policy consequence but it'll it'll break some people slip sleep a little easier not worry about some of the crazy old laws and also continue to make progress on the transportation or of course we talked we talked a little bit and so that's that's there's a lot to do there really excited about the real vision study that is a huge follow through item for me for the next few years education funding i think revised in two thousand and six and we have successfully done those but what we found out is that what with the work we cut out for ourselves you know the foundation budget that we decided we wanted to provide just is not enough to educate  children with the greatest needs and so there's there's a need for you to come back to that and look at how we're funding schools in general at the state level and especially the low income students yet so so couple of questions or one so when we're talking about but the overall level of funding that we're making available for education into perhaps changes to the formulas for how we allocate funding to make sure that we address areas of special need yeah is the special focus really now is on not so much the distribution because the distribution formula there's a lot of the there's a fair amount of consensus about the basic concepts of the distribution formula but but it's the special education costs the impact of english language learning cost and the impact of you know sort of the general thing that goes along with being you know coming from a low income neighborhood in a household that the various supports that people don't have the kids don't have that we need to try to think about how to provide them so that's that's that's that's a collection of issues that we're looking at and that comes down to money issue i think people were really hoping that we would pass that ballot question that was going to be on the ballot with the with the income tax circuit surtax on the millionaires that's not going to happen because the supreme court found it was not we talked about that i think at a previous show maybe but in any event the the result of that is we don't have a funding source for that so that's that's that's a fundamental problem we have  a couple other areas that are of very important to me one though is of course is the environmental the carbon issue the carbon climate issue and i'm always about and this is an ongoing thing for me the issue of climate adaptation you know protecting the neighborhoods that i serve from from flooding we are low lying areas especially back bay fenway that i represent but also you know the alewife area is very exposed to storm water flooding as  where we saw i think the basic shape of massachusetts is going to remain the same in the st century but we just we more about sort of managing storm water flooding effects but the we have to be very concerned even in belmont about the impact of flooding on our regional infrastructure i mean if major utilities go out and that could include water and sewer sure if the public transportation system goes out of the central artery tunnel is flooded those are things that are totally not so we have to be planning for those and we are planning for those that's the good news i think you know we just nobody's putting their head in the sand about these issues and there's a lot of good people at the mid upper level of a lot of agencies that are working together sharing information trying to put in place a framework to understand just what we need to do ok but that supporting that is a key priority for me and then also moving forward on things we need to do to mitigate climate change as a state and i think the thing that you know our contribution i think our next level is to work on carbon pricing especially in the transportation sector  so that we can have a jet and there's a bunch of interesting ideas that people talk about there that i'm interested in and then the last area that i that i think that i think of hope and not leaving something out but the other big thing that i that i'm talking a lot about  feel like i need to develop my own agenda better on is the housing issue you know that's a really tough issue but it is and i think i think you know it's it's it's the kind of issue that that you know perhaps even here in belmont we don't focus on we don't focus enough on it there are there's a sizeable percentage of the population for which housing represents just a considerable chunk of their income and most of us right yeah and then then we also have this issue of you know for for this kind of an economy and given our location is it reasonable to think that over the long run we we remain as low density in terms of housing as we are you know and look that's that's such a such a double edged sword kind of issue i mean it's density does make a difference in the quality of life you know it is nice if it's kind of quiet at night sure and that's one of the generate some income support their ability to remain in belmont where the road where their other family members are whatever and then and accommodates more people yeah that's something we want to support so there's that's a that's a tough original conversation but i think everybody once you kind of that you know as a region as a state we have to keep developing more housing because housing is just too expensive it's a reason it's a real drag on and on the ability of young people to to make their way in the cell phones they're my office phones they're my e mails are there and you can start a new topic on the website but i'm looking to hear from people about the agenda for next year and the so i really appreciate you have me here on the on the show to give me an opportunity to talk about it thank you