the following high caste is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b mc or the town of valmeyer b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or e mail us at access at belmont media dot org hello everyone welcome to community conversations i'm your host roger col talking today about some of the major financial issues facing belmont in town meeting and to help us do that we have today joanna jubilance who is the senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald joanna thanks for coming over thanks for having me roger we have a lot to cover so let's let's dive right in i think at the top of many people's minds about the the budget for the town each year is the school budget and the school budget for this coming year starting on july first two thousand and eighteen so it'll be fiscal year night teen regularly through june yeah the school budget is going up and is actually going up pretty significantly yes about four million dollars one million dollars that's seven point six percent percentages and the total is about fifty seven million have and perhaps the biggest reason that we're talking about an increase in the school budget is the increase in the school enrollment that we keep hearing about that's definitely one of the factors that's causing it to go up because and will make keeps going up about one hundred students a year and they see that trend continuing that's one of the reasons why they're billing they are proposing to build a high school that's grade seven to twelve to help reduce the size of classes that the middle school the general middle school and just they say the whole district would be helped by that would help take pressure off of every grade in the whole district if you build a grade seven to twelve high school now i was looking at some of the numbers in that this school budget and to be quite honest i was pretty stunned and i've heard these through the high school  building committee conversations but i don't want school population i saw has increased roughly eight hundred fifty students between two thousand and eleven and two and two thousand and twenty yes that it's yes you're right and i look wellington was built and already at capacity right so that's why they had to have students like if you're moving into the town and you have kindergarteners you and you live in the wellington district your child may not go to wellington your child may go to burbank or when brooke because wellington's already at capacity and let's provide some context here because i think  many of our listeners will know that that the school district has been adding classrooms and the way you add classrooms in a town like belmont where you have no space is action at the burbank modulars the modulus at the high school as well which is why the pantry could no longer be there they had to have the pantry leave because they needed the modulars john failand superintendent failand message to town meeting said that the schools have added twenty one new classrooms in the last three years yeah so it's another reason that we're talking about having a grade seven through twelve high school which will affect not simply the the middle school and the high school but it will solve problems going all the way down through the elementary schools  so the the reason the budgets going up for why nineteen is because they're adding nine full time equivalent teaching positions to help and have you seen what those positions are you know they're adding staff to the physics department special ed teacher a music teacher to middle school classroom teachers one middle school administrator because the chattering middle school is bigger than the high school by a hundred students it's fourteen hundred students so they're actually adding one more principal like an assistant principal so there's mr mcallister there's miss and then his two assistant principal principals mr lewis and mr hard to me and and now they're looking for another assistant principal and two and a half high school teachers and one district wide english language learner teacher so that comes to nine full time equivalence some of those were like full time like that is that in this special ed in the music sure not full time and we're talking about additional money for the schools but i also saw in superintendent failand message to town meeting that while the school budgets are going up the student fees are not going up this coming year that's good news so in order to participate in an extracurricular activity athletics or music or theater parents will not be pain more in fees for the coming year that is good news and the other additional cost that's in that four million is that's a lead that's that's just an ongoing expense of the public system and health insurance health insurance is up eleven percent yeah as perhaps a lot of our listeners and myself included i saw my health insurance premiums spiral this year yes well we're talking about many in the schools let me read you a couple of numbers because and just get your reaction to this if you have a reaction right because sometimes i think we talk about the school budgets and how it increases from year to year and don't realize that the cost on our purse student basis in belmont is is actually pretty low i saw in the school budget that per pupil expenditures in belmont are almost seventeen percent below the statewide average  thirteen thousand six hundred dollars thirteen thousand seven hundred dollars a year whereas our navarrete statewide schools spend sixteen thousand dollars and then the belmont schools coach what they call a cohort a group of twenty seven communities that they compare themselves to you know communities such as newton in lexington and concord and  might is thirty six percent lower on a per student what does that tell you what do you think that tells you well one thing it seems to me is that there's no fat left in the school budget that people people think that well there's always places to cut and there may be places to cut but if there are cuts going on a going forward basis they are those cuts would be reducing significant or substantive school programs i agree with you roger and it also tells you that a lot of the parents are paying that's lot of money is going into the schools through other than property taxes it's going in through parent paid activity fees and through private charitable fund raising through the foundation for bauman education well so the schools are going up the bottom line is that schools are going up that there are more teachers because there are more students and it's not likely that we're going to see a change in this anytime in the near future i don't think solution for it they really hope that that exclusion passes in november well here a lot about that in the future in the near future let's let's close the door on the schools for for a minute and talk about what i find to be a somewhat depressing story not that the stories that come out in the citizen or old need to be depressing but let's talk about belmont's new i still call them the new fire stations a town meeting is going to be asked to spend some money on the new fire stations yes and i do agree with you that it is depression depressing roger and if you haven't seen it firsthand like i have it's worth taking a look at these fire stations the two fire stations the smaller one at ninety nine leonard street and the headquarters at two ninety nine chapelle road with built in two thousand and six for tat ten and a half million dollars and since then since right from the beginning when they moved into the buildings they've had issues and the issues are that they leak when it rains water was coming through the windows and the roof so they discovered after hiring a forensic engineer that the flashing wasn't installed properly the windows were installed properly there was some very you know sloppy work as bob mclaughlin the building committee put it and can i interrupt you for a minute to talk about what you mean when you say the flashing wasn't installed correctly rather than channeling water off of the roofs  the flashing that was installed this is my understanding please correct me if i'm wrong the flashing that was installed collects the water and channels it to where it seeps through the rest of the yes i went there today and i even saw that one of the windows when you talk about a window not installed properly you could actually see is that there was like a crack a gap all around the border of the window you can actually see  so they are and that's the other thing that's going on there is this construction worker going on if you go to the headquarters you'll see there they're fixing they're already in the process of fixing these leaks which hopefully they will get them all they don't know if they will but they're hoping they will the town has already spent about five hundred thousand dollars on these repairs and now they're asking town meeting to approve another six hundred thousand to come out of the capital budget and then another six hundred thousand out of free cash which is one point two million additional dollars for these repairs and that's in addition to what the buildings cost to begin with ten ten years ago right from what i'm told things were different ten years ago they didn't have owners project managers or construction at risk managers on these projects you know let's talk about that for a minute because i have read that and i heard people talk about how belmont has really maybe  because of the fire stations changes has changed the way that it approaches building new buildings yes that rather than having the building committee be the ultimate overseer if you were maybe they're the ultimate overseer but they hire a a project manager yep like that belmont high school project has an o p m or is project manager and they just hired  construction at risk manager who happens to be the same one that they had for the wellington project his interest and the and the role that those positions play the role that those people play is what i know that the construction at risk manager really oversees all this of you know these these they kind of babysit the project and they look at this sub contractors that are hired very carefully so there's like three beds for a sub contractor they they really look at at the you know try to decide which one is the best one for the job so they do a lot of research to make sure they're picking the right people they're not just going with the lowest bid it might be three little bits but they're going to carefully choose who they go with so this new position the the o p m the owner's project manager really is charged with ensuring quality work that's what i'm hearing you say well that's the construction at risk manager and the owners project manager is is like overseeing the whole project with the building committee they sit on the building committee and and they help hire the construction at risk manager so they're they're also very important well i'll tell you it makes so much sense to me having my wife and i have just completed renovations on our house and we had a person our architect who oversaw all of the work if it was up to us there's no way we would have had the expertise to ensure that the the work was done correctly  the town is now doing is it seems to be sensible to me so hopefully avoid something like what has happened to the the fire station well and it's important because town meeting is going to be is one of the articles that they're going to be voting on it at town meeting it's they they both fall into one article it's renovations to both of those facilities which have been much in need of renovations for many years and now they they've come up with a solution that was the major capital projects working group and they studied this for about a year and then they formed the police department building committee who worked with designers to come up with a schematic designs for both of them and they actually thought that they would get was going to be a short term solution for each facility but now they actually have a short term solution for the d p w which is going to cost one point two to one point four million and a permanent solution for the police station which will cost six point two to seven point five million versus what a new facility would have cost which would be like thirty million dollars let's talk about d p w first in the for the short term solution and this when we talk about a short term solution that's a ten year solution my understanding is a ten year solution so in ten years the town really has to start thinking about building a brand new facility for the public works on the public works campus which is at thirty seven c street and that would cost well today it would cost thirty five million i don't know what it will cost in ten years that what we're what we're talking about down there i say down there as a c street is down by the river track is the fact that today in today's world there aren't adequate facilities for both men and that's right so what this project is going to do for you know no more than one point four million that's the highest that anne marie mahoney the chairman of the building committee estimates it will be she said they going to add modulars to the building there's going to be a big modular in the back of the building that's going to provide locker rooms for males and females which will include showers they don't have showers right now so they're working eighteen hour shifts and they don't they don't you know a place to shower and these are the folks there not to put too fine of a point on it but well let's put a fine point on it these are the our town employees who go climb down into our sewers yes very and then go back to the d p w yard  today they don't have a place to shop so with this they're going to have showers they'll have a laundry facility they'll have a large multipurpose room for training or meetings a place to rest a quiet space to rest and expanded break room with  kitchenette administrative space with an additional bathroom and there's going to be another modular in the front of the building which will be a private check in area for private contractors because they don't have that now either and they use a lot of private contractors like winter snow plowing so that will that will be a ten year solution for oh and i'll not a whole lot of money and then also that also includes improving the ventilation  building which is important ok let's flip over to the police station because there really have been changes and the plans for the police station  at the last tell me that they discussed this was the meeting last fall yes and they were talking about a temporary solution for the police mission which was also going to consist of adding modulars and then they were talking about for a long term that they thought it should go on the campus where the public works facility is they would build a brand new facility on the public works campus but that would have required changing woodland street from private way to a public way it would have required a lot of  he came up with a plan to renovate and add on to the existing building maintain its historic facade and it can remain in its current location for the forseeable future for six point two to seven point four million dollars so all the discussions that we've had in the past about whether the police agency go to the d p debbie ardor to the old incinerator site or to the current library facility there just those discussions  now closed because the police station is going to stay where it if site so the plan if town meeting approves it which i think they will the plan will add ten thousand square feet existing building with an addition over the lower level in the back of the building the addition of an elevator to make it handicapped accessible the addition of a handicapped accessible entrance on the side of the building sally port also on the side of the building which is where you bring prisoners in and what about parking my image of the police station is we have this public facility there and there is no place for town employees that the police officers to park there's going to be the addition of a three big garage and parking for an additional fifteen vehicles which is pretty good it's not i you know it's not like what they really want on their wish list but down the road when the municipal light building becomes available which could be in about ten years five to ten years i'm told they could potentially have additional parking on that land but tension if and for the most part my understanding is that we are only there is going or may be additional parking as you just mentioned but the old belmont light building isn't part of this now and plan not step plan but this plan also will add locker space for males and females new holding cells a new booking area a safe locking facility for weapons an improved interview and holding room it's really going to give new life to the existing facility and add ten thousand square feet fo r making it a total of twenty four thousand square feet and it's great because it keeps the police station as part of the the campus there with a home or building in town hall i have i i would have preferred putting it at the d p w yard as opposed to putting it all the way out in the edge of town at the old incinerator site you bet but this sounds like a great solution by some creative people at the risk of you know complimenting people but there are some people who really have put some good thinking into this yeah i agree and then you a new police syllabi would cost  thirty million dollars so you're getting looked like a new police realty for acquittance seven point four million so a fourth of the costs right right that's great let's close the door on that happen in the old incinerator site which is let's not talk a lot about that because i think that that's something that does the whole of the show and it's just something the town has agreed to do and has to do  over time right but let's take the opportunity to you at least identify for listeners some of the issues because there will be or there has been scheduled a meeting by the board of s is is already money for this so they're just appropriating the money it's seven hundred seventy thousand dollars to knock down what's on the existing incinerator site that's that's basically what it's for  and then once that's done they're looking for ideas that's what you need is all about come and bring us your ideas is already some ideas that have been made public for a bike and skate park right  farm that put in the new hockey rink right assuming there is a new hockey rink but one of the options is to put the new hockey rink at the old incinerator nomination it's definitely an option although they did you prefer to put it on the existing high school campus and according to patrice garvin the town administrator she said the capping of the site the cap because once this is knocked down they have to actually kaput now the high for environmental reasons yes and the hockey rink actually is a cap in itself it's like a cap that's that's like one of the examples of a cap that you could put on the site this mention earring involved and costs involved but according to patrice scarf and it's like one and a half to two years away this capping so the belmont youth hockey league i don't think wants to wait that long and i actually think that the hockey rink can't wait that long i think the existing hockey rink they're saying may not even open in the fall and i'm i'm not an engineer better tap it seems like it would be difficult to build a big building on top of a bunch of a bunch that's a term of art a bunch of ash that has been dumped in the ground you know we there are probably in our engineering expert to look at that yeah there must be people smarter than i am who who have looked at it it's not going to lie to you though  roger i actually favor putting the hawk you didn't call me incinerator so you really just because i'm concerned about traffic that it would bring to the high school area well it does seem hard to imagine that with the schools having said no they didn't want to give up land for a new library that they would then turn around and say oh but a hockey rink in additional parking is is ok i feel that way too roger and i feel like until that new school is built maybe you shouldn't do anything maybe it's better to wait because once the new school is built you might need more field space you might need you might want to get the tennis courts on the campus somehow you might need decision we have just time for one more thing there is an article that i haven't quite resolved in my own mind and whether it's a big or a little article or actually there are it's a series of articles having to do with retirement benefits then something that town meeting considered last year yes turned down exactly so there's two articles that are almost one is identical to what was brought to the last year and rejected and that is to adjust the spouse will benefit for surviving spouses of retirees from six thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars currently there are three surviving spouses according to floyd carmen was on the retirement board that could go up i mean this is a fling to be more surviving spouses but he doesn't know who is going to pass away when and so he estimates that this could cost the town why would they bring it back again and the reason floyd says they're bringing it back again is because the school the schools surviving spouses of retirees for the schools get twelve dollars so why shouldn't town employees surviving spouses get ok twelve thousand dollars that's the argument so we'll see if meeting votes to take care of the surviving spouses and of county employees and  to be fair right like give the town what the schools are getting shot however that's that's also the issue the other article that's coming and that's to increase the cola base for town employees for what they get now which is twelve thousand dollars right at thirteen thousand dollars which is what school employees get thirteen thousand dollars the school retirees last year this article was rejected they ok we're out of time we can talk about town finances forever and it's fun and hopefully it's informational to our to our readers i do appreciate you taking time to come over here i know that this is a busy com we've been talking with joanna jubilance who is the senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald you've been listening to community conversations i would like to thank you for tuning in you can stream community conversations online at the b m c podcast network at belmont media dot org and you can also find community conversations at the beat by searching for the b m see podcast network and i chance thank you for tuning in we will see what happens sit down meeting next week and i will talk to you again next time i'm your community conversations host roger