hello everyone my name is joanna juva lists and i'm senior multimedia journalist for wicked local belmont dot com and the belmont citizen herald along with my co host roger coulton i'd like to welcome you today to community conversations today's a nd edition of our podcast the belmont on behalf of the belmont citizen how old i'd like to thank the belmont media center for making it studios available to provide this public service through our community conversations podcast roger and i hope to bring varying parts of the belmont community to the public we hope to make the process of learning about belmont not only educational but fun as well as we get started allow me to introduce roger coulton my co host roger is a longtime belmont resident he's also a columnist for the belmont citizen herald his column is called community conversations he's also an attorney and a very active member of the belmont community serving on committees for energy and housing roger kick us off the take thanks joe and in today's show joanna and i have invited glenn clancy to join us glenn is director of the office of community development for the town of dominant and in that capacity glenn is responsible for much of the physical infrastructure in belmont so for example while his office doesn't maintain the streets that's the job of the department of public works glen oversees the town's pavement management program town meeting members know that phrase well glenn welcome to community conversations it's nice to be here before we get into any real substantive discussion can you give us a brief introduction how long have you been involved with with town government well i've worked for the town for thirty one years i started back in it's always been interesting it's always been it's always been changing which is great when you're with an organization for thirty one years you want to open challenges and you want things to feel like they're progressing view professionally and i've certainly had that like here so you're supervise people and i see you a lot before a town meeting and i see you at borders like mints meetings as a department head well what do you do on a day to day basis well community development has an day a lot of times what i like to say is i my role is to sort of get out of the way and let my staff do their job they're all all very talented all very good at what they do but you know in terms of setting policy giving directions on the things that i feel are important for i'm certainly a red sox fan even after what occurred last night it was an interesting turn of events last evening but i love the red sox i love baseball i love history in my private life i do a lot of end of the constructor construction let's talk about belmont center st to you the work was paying somewhat painful for both businesses and also you know residents as they were driving they were walking through can you take us through the process and why you would say it was somewhat painful sure well you know a lot of similar those projects i often consider belmont center to be sort of a smaller version of propeller road because we try to achieve the same kinds of things on that project you know with construction is it's sloppy it's it's not very convenient especially when you're doing construction in commercial areas certainly the belmont center project was focused entirely on a commercial area you know when you introduce you to let me work which is what we did on reconstruction that we did ultimately in belmont center itself when you put it all together there was a long period of time that the senate was subject to construction as i said phases and you know it i mean they had to be done in phases you can't have contractors working on top of each others it's just a you know from efficiency standpoint it doesn't work but you know as a as a motorist driving through belmont center as somebody who's trying to visit the merchants down there you know we understood that we were impacting that  you know we did our best to minimize that impact we tried really hard to get communication back to keep an open line of communication with the merchants you know as with construction in general often times certain things would occur that we didn't have enough advance notice on it was difficult to get the word out and motorists suffered for that at times the mercian suffered for that at times you know keeping the eye on the prize so to speak of me with ultimately what we wanted to present saddam wants to as well as the  because it was such an anchor presence in the center i know that we've taken it we've taken a little bit of a hit in terms of the impact of our construction project i think that i think the loss of me she says had an impact as well i'm happy that we've  i swear that it wasn't fifteen minutes before there was a group of six of us that were sitting and standing there talking as a user about my center have you noticed a difference has it have the improvements been around long enough for you as somebody who's in belmont center to know what i think they have you know about was one of the goals like one of the reasons that we widen the sidewalks as opposed to what some people characterize are now in the roadway i like to say that we widen the sidewalks you know one of the goals in doing that was to make him open a street friendly make it saw that visitors to the santa felt comfortable walking around maybe stopping sit on a bench for a few minutes catch up with loves the idea of the benches because i think it lends to that sense of community and i'm definitely seeing that kind of activity and it's very encouraging because it was one of the goals of the project so it really is encouraging to see that and you mentioned to a good start with both of those uses foodies is apparently a destination place for a lot of folks and i think the hope is that once opens up in belmont center it'll bring people to the center and you know i  think that use tends to be more of a hit and run kind of a place people command they grab quickly what they want in the head on their way well i'm hoping is that at a minimum when people come into the senate visit food he still recognizes there are other things in the cent they'll make a mental note and they'll say you know what i would really like to come back and check that place out war just because the streetscape is so beautiful now is saying you know what i love to come back here maybe spend an hour or two just walking around and trying to enjoying monsanto so that's really i really think that's important and i you know i think if you've got a strong children's section in a bookstore so that parents can bring their kids and and you've got that sort of cafe set up are people feel like they can come in and relax and not be washed i'm a reader as i mentioned earlier i i center reconstruction coincided with the construction of macy's that that added to the challenge isn't like could that have been avoided that really just couldn't have been it just it just happened to happen at the same time i did to the town want them to happen at the same time just why not just let's just have one big mess and get it all the way yeah well i mean obviously what happened at the macy's building was out of our control to a certain degree because it is private property and the property owner did what he needed to do to get to the point where he could do his reconstruction you know given the choice given the choice i would love to have done the belmont sent a project with it with an open and fully operating bases in that location that didn't happen and so you know the double whammy for the merchants and for the residents of the town it was that you've got this construction project that's occurring and you know i think as a user you know if a lack of a better term as a user of the center whether the construction is in a building off the side of the road or whether it's the road itself that you travel construction this construction so they were impacted by construction i think the double whammy was that you didn't have that anchor presence in the center and then you had this construction project who ran so i think those two in unison created more of a hit i'll tell you logistically for us you know we had some coordination issues with our project on leonard street trying to coordinate with the work that was occurring in the in the form of belmont in the form of these buildings but but that's construction as i said i mean you oftentimes encounter things you didn't anticipate you have to have the ability to be flexible and work those issues out you know ultimately we were able to do that there were quite a few little sna yossi engineer this morning i think they're pretty well complete ok with what was identified to be with yes there is still a couple of areas that people have pointed out that they're not happy with the quality of the sidewalk and nasty o t tells us when we not been a formal walkthrough with the town of belmont the signal systems for example this is traffic signals at thirteen intersections that is still under the control of that and there has to be interaction with al people like to know what to expect right ok well i mean i think it will definitely be some impacts on common street and on chapelle road at that corner none of the utility work was done in advance  road project and so there's going to be we'll see some impact in that regard they'll be some impact on the pedestrian ways on the sidewalks around that site just because of where the buildings are located and what's necessary to be able to construct those buildings the site itself i think is large enough so that a lot of the a lot of the staging a lot of the activity will be contained to the site and so you know i think people will clearly see this construction going on  but hopefully you know any significant impacts will be limited to the site itself so i'm ok before we leave to pella brad and i would like to ask you   but the islands they do serve a functional purpose when the traffic advisory committee held the public hearings to develop the concept plan for the two polaroid corridor one of the things that was raised was this idea of the experience of the motorist driving through the corridor and how do we present different visual items in the car to so people will know that they're moving through different land uses this is a residential area we're coming into a commercial area and so we use the islands and the planting of the islands as a way to do that we try to position them in locations that would signal to a motorist something's different something different is happening yeah  island's was a very rock wide roadway often we would hear complaints from people because they didn't know if it was a two lane road is it a single lane or one and a half lane road because we would split the difference but the fact of the matter is when your readers and in the road when you're trying to manage traffic it's important that you do lineage was traveling appropriately the islands a lot gave us the real estate to do some creative things while also aloneness to get that one to live to travel and people are surprised pull over with this so you've got a parked car in a seven a seven foot parking play then you've got a six foot bicycling if an emergency vehicles coming through and this of course is assuming that the traffic is backed up and the traffic isn't moving through that yes it's moving you just continue to move and you know the emergency vehicle comes in behind you but if you can't move you poets of the right you know most vehicles when they who are into that bicycle lane are going to leave more than enough room for emergency vehicle to put the snow when they're plowing along the edges right you're not impacted pedestrians well yes let's just hope we don't have another winter like two thousand and fourteen and his ability will really be affected by the piles of snow you know and they'll be avalanche potential for can we change topics here for a minute it is somewhat change topics because i think one thing that if you were in pretty bad shape but it seems to me that since the override last year that this summer there was noticeably more street repair going on yeah really is that true yeah i think it is you know the override give us an additional three hundred thousand if i may have a good road the average neighborhood road cost to reconstruct is somewhere between seventy one hundred thousand so you know we probably doing three or four additional rows than what we would have done the contract from reconstruction this year has thirteen streets so there's a little bit of an ebb and flow in how we budget because  management funding does much more than just pay to reconstruct roadways we have to pay for engineering services we have to pay for police details we have to pay for a lot of different things not just the reconstruction of the road and so depending on what one of the demands there on the budget that ultimately dictates how much is available to programs for roads you know my budgeting for roads fluctuates anywhere from you know now the additional three hundred thousand these last many years which is you fix a road but then you don't have the resources to go back and do the maintenance work whether it's you know in most cases that mill and overlay that grinding in the overlay that you see a lot of people do we didn't have the resources to do that and so that road just deteriorated to the point where we needed to be fully we constructed what the three one hundred thousand dollars does for us knowledge it kind of put it pushes us over that hump to have that funding the program started in  ninety six so we're twenty years out from that's we're getting to that sweet spot now in time when we look back at roads we did twenty years ago and we say ok i'm with the streets a great example of this we look at those roads it's ok you know it's time to do a one million overlay it's time to go in there and do that type of tree s and that's exactly what we do on a winter street before and we wouldn't have the resources to do do that in winter street would deteriorate and end up having to be reconstructed all over again and so one of the goals of the people mission program is to get out of that cycle in maintain the roads you know in a smarter way and i think that we're in a position to do that so it's good it's exciting one of the things about being around for as long as i have is you know you start living through the life cycles and some of these things you know so it's exciting to have the resources to be able to do things the way that you think that should be done and it can you explain it yesterday ok and so all i'm doing is i'm taking the conditions of the condition ratings of these roads and i'm ranking them and i'm just picking them off doing the worst st it's very simple so the legwork really goes into determining that grade once that grade is determined for me it's a very simple in terms of program and i'm doing the worst st and when you good the worst st you know i mean to say this is a statement but it's intended to be a question you do you now don't say that the pavement the place of the gas lines of the water lines are the sewer lines this is the question yes so they want to department in public works they have a limited budget and how much water they can do every year and so the st thing i do is i budget whatever roads i pick whatever roads that the wanted to partner can afford to fix the water run ok so once i have that group of roads then i go to the next year national grid is doing gas main work on ten out of the thirteen roads so we've been we've been we've been very lucky in the sense that you know utility work in general isn't very sexy sell you know it's tough to put a positive spin on this can step up send two or three crews to belmont to do the work that they want to get done in advance of our road construction it's a good thing the improvement in that infrastructure whether it's water whether it's gas it's all good you know there are occasional snafu where  right you know that their grade is a forty five you know this is terrible and so then i'll call them back all compose my email and i'll say you know hates you so this is where you live this is the great you have you're absolutely right your road isn't terrible condition but bad news is there are thirty rows ahead of you that are in worse condition and so you know so that's the tough part is you know people intuitively they realize that this road is bad you know but when you look at where they fall on the list and i think it's true for any community people don't don't often get to visit every part of the town you know they they know their neighborhood they know their way you know surrounding roads and sometimes they lack the context of knowing what the street looks like compared to a street that maybe across film one cell that's where i come in  and when you talk about rabbits can i ask for but when you talk about roads this is to follow up on your discussion of water mains and gas lines but you only do the bare you know do it side walk to side walk it is is there a rash there must be a rationale behind that was it that there was a time when sidewalks in of curbing was necessary curbing was included in the pavement or program  the put a committee together to study the finances and and realized that there would have to be an infusion of funds in order to continue with that approach that was an override vote that they tried to do several years ago  budget for a road project wow and some of the board of selectmen of the time realize that if we are continuing to spend twenty five percent on sidewalks and forty percent on sidewalks and curbing we just we're not going to have the resources to be able to go back to the roads we reconstruct in the t it was right when the time was necessary to do the work we needed to do and so they had to make a very difficult choice which was to drop the sidewalks and curving out of the program which isn't to say that there is no side by prepared going on it simply to matching program i told you were doing thirteen streets this year under our program the funding that public works receive a sidewalk work that you one hundred thousand we were able to do three streets for sidewalks so that just goes to show you how expensive and the other part that people need to know is you know that money that was put to the pavement management roads you know that's also a bug public works is using to try to get a backlog of all the other sidewalk complaints all over belmont so if you live on a street that's not being reconstructed and you sidewalks are in tough shape public works is still doing the juggling act of trying to find a way to get in there and fix your sidewalks so it's tough sidewalks the funding of sidewalks and the work the public works has to do with them reconstruction i'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news because we are almost out of time i i do hope glenn that someday we have a am a town that has perfect roads and perfect sidewalks but then you'd be out of a i don't have anything that i'd like to to say bad time i do have one final question and the answer may be no but in a small town it seems like there are there are messages that become conventional wisdom that are just plain wrong is there anything that concerns you have out something that people take as a given that correct you know i'm not i'm not sure this this gets out exactly where you're coming from with the question roger but you know as the director of community development we are involved in so many different areas of the time whether it's is the rote reconstruction of the building enforcement of codes and things like that so i think is this a misconception i don't know but i think that there is this perception that myself as the director of that apartment and to a lesser degree th people in my department that we have more discretion on matters than we really have we have budget constraints we have rules and regulations we have bylaws a lot of the stuff is very clearly spelled out but from time to time i encounter people that feel like i have more discretion that i really yeah ok and so you know we try to be helpful always we we try to be respectful to the residents always if there is ever a possible way for us to find a way to get  where people want us to go where they need to go we try to do that but we do have constraints in those constraints are real that's great well thanks for coming in today and i would like to have you back some day if  nothing else to talk about water quality which seems to be yeah i think all other topics right well you know community development as i said we do touch a lot of different things in the town in thirty minutes i guess is an inadequate amount of time to get all the topics so i would be happy to come back you know one of my frustrations in my role in the town is that i don't often have an opportunity to get information you know i do have a lot of information in my head because i am involved in so many different things and i love sharing information and i love public forums where i can exchange information because you know i think the presidents of the community need to know the things that i and like to thank you glenn for joining us today and i'd like to thank all the listeners for tuning in you can listen to this podcast by accessing it online at belmont media dot org or accident accessing it online at w local belmont dot com i encourage our listeners both to stay tuned to the belmont media center and read the weekly belmont citizen herald visit wicked local belmont dot com for continuing information about events going on throughout the town of belmont