at this time i'd like to introduce the chairman of the board who's going to preside over the meeting way up stan thank you thank you mary and i just got promoted to chairman of the board so  so thank you all for coming to format tonight will be to review the articles that will come before town meeting next week and i'm going to run through them in the order that mike widmer intends to present them to town meeting what i'd like to do is present a slide that will summarize each article each motion and hopefully we can have questions for that motion and then move on to the next and then after we get through the whole cycle of there's a question for some earlier slide that occurs to you we can certainly return but i'd like to try to get through all the motions in that order i'm going to have to try to juggle between the microphone of my computer so this is i intend to use the same format that we've done for a couple of sessions already which is that in order to give everybody a chance i would like to limit each person to two questions at most within two minutes and you can certainly come back to the microphone after everybody else speaks who hadn't hasn't spoken yet and let me be very clear that the point of the discussion tonight is for town meeting members to ask questions for clarification about articles on the war and this is no place for debates or advocacy and if if you are not appearing to head toward a question i will interrupt you and ask you to get to your question because any debates and such has to wait until town meeting itself and in the event there are a lot of people in line i may have to just stop discussion of a particular motion and move on to the next just so we can cover them all and we can come back to a topic later on  so i'd like to begin with the first article which is article twenty two it's kind of a lengthy article because it is the capital budget request for this year so what i've done it's all of the different projects that the capital budget committee is seeking funding for the largest item is a fire station repairs you'll see  then there is actually a lengthy list of smaller but important projects yes let me clarify the story with the fire stations the for reasons you're certainly free to ask about one point two million dollars is being sought to do repair work on the two new fire stations and one point two million for next year six hundred thousand is coming from the capital budget committees budget and a further six hundred thousand well actually who will be in the form of a transfer from free cash so if you look at the capital budget committees only list the fire station item is only six hundred thousand but the total spending will be one point two million because there will be an additional six hundred thousand from free cash but that is work that needs to be done let me guess let me go through the list for  it no individual project really stands out to me there's fire alarm systems garage doors generators generally stage and each needs to be refinished because the stage is twenty some years old already windows d p w have been broken for a long time they're finally going to get fixed we hope  the town is in the beginning stages of redesigning the i t infrastructure because especially as the light apartment building gets decommissioned and the library hopefully gets worked on the various t hubs that are located in town have to be moved and the wiring has to be relocated and that's actually requires quite a bit of planning so that some of the items you see are for that  there are some sidewalk improvements around when brooks school the library needs automatic door locks to come up to a minimal safety  standard and then in addition there's moneys for the roads and sidewalks which are largely watched are entirely funded really from overrides from past years and you can see the total is roughly one point nine million dollars work was done to prevent these and why isn't the why isn't some of the stuff being paid for by the builders themselves under warranty period well and where you want to take a first sixteen we had the insurance settlement which bob will speak to about the water damage on both fire stations the insurance settlement covered very round numbers nine hundred thousand capital budget kicked in another five hundred thousand for one point four million we thought that that would do the job in fact once they got into the main fire station they discovered that there was more damage than they thought and so more repairs needed to be done to the tune of and an additional one point two million dollars six hundred thousand of that is coming from the capital discretionary fund so that our discretionary request is one point four million and i'll have all the slides in town meeting since the additional six hundred for that is coming out of free cash those so this year again it's an additional one point two million now to speak to your oversight question when those two fire stations were constructed we did not have an owners project manager now on all of our projects we do so that going forward with the high school the d p w and the police the library there are all owners project managers to oversee this work being done so that we know that it's done right the reality is in a low bid environment you get the low bidder and that's not always the best person so therefore that does step up the responsibility on the town to do more oversight and i think we have done that with the advent of hiring on the project man now bob can answer the last question i'm going to continue my ok but it would be really helpful if we could you know this you know ok one one of mark one of my problems is these links in these damages shouldn't have been started and i don't know what the qualifications are the people on those building committees to help these oversight are clerk of the works people and well the way this whole we wait for mr morris a first state your question and then well we'll try to get an answer for it i'd like to know why the why these things even never mind who's paying for it but why do these things even fail to begin with a crack of dawn if you think you're disappointed i started to bob just introduce yourself in a precinct to ok finished them in two thousand and six they were without as you say and very no project manager without what we now have with ice cool which is construction management risk where you have some control over  subcontractors we're under the file submitted law and we've got a very low price we built to five stations for one point one million dollars think about that when you compare the prices we're talking about in the rest of our capital budgets today when you add all of the fees together and you add all of furniture in the fixtures and everything that went with it and you clued well that was twelve million dollars and when you add the fact that we now the piece of land one point four million dollars the total project price including acquisitions that was fourteen million dollars we sold the other five stations for about two and a half million dollars so now having said that they leaked one of the qualifications of the members of the committee don i don't purport to be a bill that i'm a lawyer all i can say is we hired a clerk or works a clerk or works can't get up there when they are putting on the metal panels and as we found out much later piercing the waterproof barrier a clerk of the works can take care of the fact that when they put in flashing the last thing they have to do is bend it up so that the water is held back instead they leave it down so it suits the water and they were files a bit as they did a sloppy job in the areas of waterproofing for six years we chased leaks we had the roof r out there we finally hired the best friend's ik engineer that we could find simpson gump inhibits haven they came out and they subcontracted with chapman water proving they forensically tested various provisions on the content of the buildings and they came out and they said you can solve all these problems on both of them for one point three million dollars we had filed a lawsuit before we even had the final contract as the stats limitations was about to run the contractors and we sued them all they came out they had an estimate and i tried looking for today it was three or four hundred thousand dollars simp to us that's a band aid approach you can't do it that way you got to do it and do it right we follow a lawsuit lawsuits are expensive getting experts are expensive and the outcomes on always certain we wish trying to get a million dollars to settle a million three maximum claim that we could ever prove on our best day when they got to nine hundred eighty five thousand dollars myself together with town council said we got to take it we should be able to add a few dollars to that and be done with it now we have found out it was not enough money to solve all the problems why is that well first of all it's about six years later so you have probably close to a doubling in construction contracts since the time that we had our estimate and next leak this repair requires a new design now under the new law we need to have a construction manager on boards who are more feasible been added but then the major problem without denial is when they finally get there and start to pull off the various areas of which we find out that it's still leaking we found there was more work to do than we  could i'm not happy to be here it's work has got to be done our committee has stayed with this we have not walked away from it and we're here and absolutely supporting us let's do it we've got to take care of our buildings we're going to fix this problem it's no one on this thank you for that bob any other questions on the capital budget next article is article twenty one is chapter ninety highway improvements you may know that the state has a program of providing funds for roadway improvements under a program called chapter ninety belmont qualifies for about five hundred forty thousand dollars this is merely authorizing the expenditure of money we received a nd the money we receive under this program can only be used for roads  so you did say one point one yes so any questions about chapter ninety though it's hard to imagine there's a reason to turn this money down and you know i'm my question is have you made a list i didn't see any l because we used to have lists of we have this with the roads are going to be improved well that chapter ninety gets merged in with other funds of the town races locally but of when clancy is here maybe he could  asked peter casting you know when my street would be done and he said no later than two thousand and twenty seven priest article sixteen article sixteen authorizes funds for water enterprise and sewer enterprise and the bulk of the water enterprise fund is actually a payment to the m w r a for water that we got from quabbin reservoir and then there's sewer maintenance and work and all that it's you may be surprised at the amount of money involved but that's what it is  k we can move on to was there a question about article sixteen clint clancy director of community development yes fred i think that we are we have certain deadlines in which we are required to submit reports and certain information you know we may slide on that plus or minus a week but by and large we are on schedule you are right we have discovered some areas that we need to address in fact just this last week and into this week what i'm doing is i'm formulating a contract to fix them actually to line service connections that we know all the the stormwater system i'm trying to craft a contract that will give me the latitude to hire a company and keep them on retainer for a year so that any time we discover these service connections that require realigning i can just make a phone call get someone in here and fix it we're also aware of one location with a sanitary main needs to be x rated and replaced and we're working right now to find a contractor to do that work as well so the good news is we are finding places that are an issue which obviously ultimately you know you hope you're finding the source of it and the investigation continues and so i think we are on schedule and i'm encouraged that we are discovering some deficiencies that were correcting ok article seventeen appropriate three point eight million dollars for water main replacement i believe floyd that's a zero interest loan program zero interest  program from the state to help us continue replacing the water mains in belmont any questions about that i should say this is in the article is phase three i don't know how many phases there are but this is phase three ok we come to article twenty three which is close to my heart this is the the appropriation for the department of public works on the police station repair you'll recall in the d p w of the picture on the top left is the locker room facility so called it's kind of curtains off of the large shower curtain on the heavy equipment is right in front of it and it's furnished with cast off furniture that the d p w crews found in various places the ladies toilet is that little space on the right hand picture which is in the foreman's office and there's no lad shower there's just the restroom and then in the lower left is the canteen area which is quite small and sometimes upwards of thirty people need to take a break when they're doing all night snow shoveling and that kind of  thing so let me just recap at the d p w the needs that were identified were adequate shower and locker and toilet facilities for both genders a reasonable break area and the those were the two most pressing issues in the police department the only way to get to the second floor right now is the climb the famous twenty one steps there is no elevator i've tried climbing those steps and if you're carrying anything heavy or if your leg is not feeling well that day that's it's a very long twenty one steps the lady we have seven female police officers there shower facility is on the top right if you can clear away the gear that's hanging there you might be able to take a shower and on the bottom right incredibly is part of the evidence storage area and also where they  process prisoners who were taken and then it is it might have worked in one thousand nine hundred thirty one but it's below standard today so the concerns we discussed last fall in the police station where accessibility really means an elevator to get to the second floor and better shower and locker facilities for female officers and  more secure way of bringing a rest arrestees into the station there's a whole protocol for that making sure the prisoner a secure making sure the police officer can secure his weapon so there's no accidents that way and the general term for that is sally port where the prisoner can be brought in in a secure fashion so last fall we were proposing a solution to address that scope of work at the police station and the issues that i what happened since then is that the november town meeting authorized a building committee which i was part of we retained an o p m tom get soon is who among a lot of you know and we retained an architect an extremely talented architect from cambridge who to our surprise i have to tell you found a way to achieve everything that i described in the police station and more in the current location in such a way that we no longer see a need for a new police station in the d p w area which is the long term solution we had  described back in november instead the scope of work i'm going to run through here is the functional equivalent of a new police station on the current police station site so just to give you an idea of what this would look like you can see in this rendering there is a new second floor in the rear which will be basically office space and that's also where the elevators are going to be located the beauty of this approach and mike smith also a member of our committee was a very valuable contributor in coming up with this overall plan the the existing georgia facade of the building is on is not involved with this work at all and the addition is in the rear and is virtually invisible from the street from the top you can see the addition in the back of the building on the side is the sally po it looks like a large garage door facing pleasant street there is going to be a new driveway cut to enter from pleasant street and off to the right of the sally port  is also in addition that's going to be two stories high if you've been back there you know the ground falls away very sharply there's about a twenty foot great change so there's going to be a basement level and a first floor level coming up that will contain on the ground level storage which the police need a lot of and on the on the main level will be new prisoner holding cells and prisoner processing areas from the rear if you've ever gone to the back of the station you can again see the new addition on the second floor and on the left side of this rendering you can see the ground level storage it's actually organized to have a three big garage  and that's and from the ground from the ground level there to the top of the garage is the twenty foot great change you get the two you get the full story there and then the idea is to have parking on top of that garage so this plan also includes a net increase in parking on the site there's an existing garage door in the back which is in this rendering but that's going to be eliminated because the the new  shower and locker facilities for both men and women will be located on the ground floor in what is currently a garage but that space will be completely converted  ill be on to d p w the solution very quickly there is to use modular units so from the front of d p w there's going to be a smallish modular in front which will provide  some greatly needed office space those fuel tanks on the right are are going to be installed at some future date but they are not there now and they're not they are not part of the project that we're talking about tonight but the architect put them in the  an overview from the rear longer connection it's two or three modular units put together which will include men's shower locker facilities ladies shower and locker facilities and additional space that can be used for both training and kind of a rest area because if it if you're doing an eighteen or twenty four hour shift sometimes you just need to recuperate a little bit before going out again and in the little vestibule it's connecting the two there will be a washing machine other kinds of services like that because if you are out there working in the sanitary sewer all day current time when you come back to d p w there is no place really to take a shower no place to wash your clothes before going home and that will be addressed in this design  there's a cutaway view where you can see on the right side the modular office space in the front the locker rooms in the rest area in the rear and actually in the inside of the building itself the existing canteen or break area that i showed in the picture is going to be actually expanded somewhat and alongside it there will be a new office space with additional laboratories  let me go back to the first slide if you've been following the various feasibility studies that were done over the years for both d p w and police the total bill estimated for new police station and a new p d p w if you escalate them to current dollars for the two facilities you're talking about something in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars possibly more what this design achieving is i would say the functional equivalent of a new police station and a substantial upgrade to d p w it's not it's not a permanent solution for d p w but it is a permanent solution for the police station and the total bill for that is eight point nine million dollars of which seven point four requires an authorization from town meeting in order to issue some bonds and then the remainder can be covered by existing reserves the if you remember the numbers we were talking about last november the all in proposal for what we were calling short term solutions at the time was something like five million dollars and it's in the judgment of the building committee  the potential to have a permanent solution for the police station for seven point four and not have to revisit this whole question in ten years time it was just an overwhelming argument so we and on top of it through inspired work by floyd carmen and patrice garvin it turned out that all this could be done without a need for a debt exclusion so when you consider the functionality that's gained and the ability to finance it we we saw we thought it was mandatory to proceed in this route that's what we've done us look at more yes in round figures the d p w is roughly one point two million dollars and the police station is in the high sixes in the total is eight point nine in terms of seeing more details renderings and all of that there's going to be a public meeting thursday this week while the architect will be in attendance where he will have i just took a couple of slides from his whole slide deck but he'll be there with much more detail and he can answer any all of your questions that way this whole rick to town meeting of the from precinct eight i'm just curious what the expected lifespan of the for lack of a better word the d when do we expect we would need to actually deal with it in fall they can be put in place almost immediately if a town meeting authorizes the money they would be in service by late two thousand nineteen in terms of a life expectancy i think they come with a rated life expectancy of something like ten years but the architect and tom get soon as have both said that of these units are properly cared for you know indefinite may be too strong but they are aware of many modulars in more demanding environments that have lasted fifteen twenty and twenty five years so they but the idea is to revisit the other needs of the d p w in in a ten year time frame and then the modulus could be repurposed within that broader plan because the other activities and d p w include vehicle maintenance vehicle storage and all sorts of other things that this work doesn't touch at all i guess the my other question was is there another potential use in the future for the  expectation is yes elsewhere while the construction goes on and are there costs for that and you know it cetera that sort of thing of the technical term for that is staging and  architect and has given some initial thought to that and worried you know how far they've gotten on that question of where it's reflected in the estimate when you come to the microphone i think the d p w will not because just add the modulars in the two places and then once those are added the people can be in there and you can do the modest amount of work that's going to be done inside the building the goal for the police station is to phase the construction to require even either non or minimal relocation so we are aware of that and that will be finalized in the next stage this is all schematic design which is very conceptual if we move forward we go into design development construction documents and that's when we'll have a better idea reshoot it just gets another potential cost so i was curious yes and i know that one approach that the architect had in mind was the the largest addition to the right of the sally port in the sketch is ultimately going to be a garage and storage space but if that's built first then other operations can move into that area temporarily while the work goes on so he's convinced that there's a solution for it and the clearance key precincts six roy can you see a little bit more about the one time funds that are being used and the  existing with the existing capital funding is that we're rolling over i think floyd would be best position to answer that question the part of the capital piece of this well floyd is finding the right piece of paper when we get into furnishings and equipment the goal there is that the existing capital discretionary fund would step up and take that it's not a huge amount of money and we anticipate that the d p w would open first sometime in two thousand and nineteen and the police station sometime in two thousand and twenty so that cost would be spread over to capital budget season so that's very doable also there are capital budget turnback monies so for example if we fund an item let me say a truck for the d p w that is we were requested thirty thousand dollars for that and we give the d p w thirty thousand dollars and they go to the state bed list bid list and buy a truck for twenty eight thousand dollars that two thousand comes back to the capital budget so we have an accumulation of turn back money that also can be applied to this will be in the ballpark for the fourth quarter for us interest rate well the revenues the high school we gave me in seven fifty do some design studies there is some reimbursement coming back to the service here's where the big money is way back in two thousand and fifteen we had four and a half million dollars over right five hundred thousand of that over right was for that service so immediately we put it to work now on high school fire alarm belmont santa and the public safety radials well starting in twenty twenty two a lot of this stuff is getting paid up paid off think we had numbers that range of about four hundred thousand but three sixty's what we needed in a final item is something called premium as an example we just went out we had a financing about three particular project along with that that seven point four million dollars domino's a aaa rated community we're going to get good interest rate people are going to want to pay but i think we're probably going to pick up an area another six to seven deadlock at precinct seven i've been in both of the buildings if you would and your or the proposed solutions sounds like really amazing and so i'm wondering maybe tonight or at a town meeting if there is a discussion maybe about a range because i'm expecting that the minute that they start to do some work let's call it d p w because i'm surprised it's even standing it's kind of like a house of cards that the minute something happens and you find something else and i would really love to be able to hear a little bit more detail about the discussions that when into the what could happen when you start the architect is probably in the best position to discuss that but my own understanding of this is that at the p w the modulars are really  free standing units so they will not they're there separate from any other issues that are going on with the d p w building itself they're going to be on their own foundations and there should not be any surprises so to speak because there won't be any real work on the d p w building itself so that is the band aid it is two of those and some of an expansion of what was their dining area and nothing else to the rest of the on below right so and then when the police station them the money that's ultimately used that the police station that we're hoping will be less than what we're talking about here because the architect actually calculated a range in what we're working with the worst case scenario at this point and he's made an allowance for surprises when you open walls and that sort of thing so we're hopeful that the actual cost to come in below the number that we're talking about judy mcswain precinct two quick question the town actually  joel samuels precinct six this seems to be as far as the police station and the very innovative well done i congratulate the committees that worked on this i have a question about the hundred thirty one parts of the police station that may not be affected by this renovation or any intice a payday problems with the parts of the building that are not being affected and what how long would it be until they have to be funded  well i'll tell you what i know which is i'm sure that will be addressed in more detail after we get out of schematic design but as part of the scope of work here would be heating plant in that building is going to be completely replaced certainly in the new unit the the new additional have air conditioning and i don't know if there's air conditioning contemplated for the exit all the part of the building there's going to be a completely new electric service brought in because just just adding an elevator means that the existing panel in that building is inadequate so they'll be a very significant electrical upgrade all of the plumbing for the locker room area is going to be new in the addition and they only had slept of that nature in the existing building i think is one restroom so we're hoping that the surprises will be minimal but i don't think we will know that for sure until  indeed ok and let me just remind you that there is a presentation on thursday that i really urge you to attend if you're interested in these buildings because the architect  ok the next article is article fifteen which is salaries of elected officials any questions about that well i will point out that the town moderator got a substantial raise this year so candidate revolving funds so you may be aware that the town has a number of so called revolving funds which are basically funded by user fees for various activities fee is collected and that the fees go directly into a fund which fund is then you're marked for services to keep that service going so in this case there's he knew events senior programs through this senior center the arc gallery in the home or building rock metal maintenance and so forth  this is an authorization to spend balances out of the revolving fund there's this does not guarantee that though that much money is actually in the fund so in particular we are hoping to use some portion of the stormwater revolving fun for purposes of stormwater meet remediation at the police station but i'm told there's only thirteen thousand dollars in the fund because it's only paid that those stormwater revolving fund fees are only paid when a developer has no way of curing a stormwater issue at a site so they pay a fee in lieu of that and we've had very resourceful developers and the only ones we've only had thirteen thousand dollars worth of revenue for example that brings us to article twenty four article twenty four is an authorization to adjust a and annual benefit paid to surviving spouses of retirees currently that benefit is six thousand dollars per year an article twenty four is proposing an increase to twelve thousand dollars per year and  it may look familiar because this identical proposal was brought before a town meeting last year  and happy to entertain questions an article twenty four whether they're currently receiving six thousand dollars per year and the proposal is to raise at the twelve thousand dollars per year well you'd have to come to the microphone actually before placing the question so fred paulson precinct one i have two questions one what will what payment will be  and we'll see if that's adequate currently there are three surviving spouses their monthly allowance is as follows five hundred dollars five hundred seventy nine dollars six hundred thirty two dollars so in this particular radical economics the current maximum spousal benefit for teaches is twelve thousand dollars there are three survivors seven what you're probably looking at is you know in a neighborhood of you know thirty five thirty six thousand dollars on top of this fifteen that's if all of them collect play let me ask you a follow up then the friend i wasn't sure if your question was in the total pension benefit received by the surviving spouse or the increment the receiving end of this program  and of course this is an annual amount so it's the total cost of the town would be the lifetime cost of the paint this is i have to say the identical discussion that we had last year but i'm happy to entertain further questions on  it ok and so the board of selectmen are going to vote on this tomorrow night i understand and the warrant committee is going to vote on it on wednesday night article twenty five is an authorization to increase the so called cola base that is the base on which the cost of living adjustment is calculated for retirees and belmont and the formula is somewhat complicated but the idea i have got this right is that  existing retirees get a cost of living adjustment based on their first twelve thousand dollars of and the proposal here is to increase that so the cost of living adjustment would be based on the first thirteen thousand dollars so because there's a larger base whatever the cost of living adjustment is will have a larger dollar value and of this looks familiar it's because a very similar article was brought last year which did not get approval the town meeting the proposal last year was to increase the base to fourteen thousand dollars the proposal this year is to increase the base to thirteen thousand  i did not see any actuarial calculation for this article in from the retirement board this year so what i did was take the actuarial estimate from last year and figure that roughly half of the effect last year would be appropriate this year because instead of going from twelve to fourteen we're going from twelve to thirteen so presumably the effect is about half and that comes out to about one hundred twenty thousand dollars per year extra questions about that fred paulson precinct one town employees for some period of time have had a nine percent reduction and that goes up to eleven percent for  for a lot paid employees they have to pay nine percent of it and for higher employed employees they pay eleven percent and my understanding is is that  increase is a very minor increase i believe it's something like it says on the memo that the town treasurer indicated thirty dollars per year per person and my question  town it's parodying famous well now i'm confused because i'm not sure how to reconcile nine thousand dollars a year with one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year but  experimental going from three sixty to three ninety when the actuaries calculate this and it's what happened last year they were throwing numbers out at four hundred twenty dollars well you're already paying for that you're already paying for three k i think it would be helpful if we could get a letter from the actuary because i have the schedule that the actuary prepared you november of two thousand and sixteen that was supposed to address this very question and that schedule was as clear as day that for going to fourteen thousand dollars the effect was the incremental effect was two hundred forty thousand dollars per year i cut that and have to get one hundred twenty thousand dollars and if floyd if you're suggesting that the actuary made a table that was actually not accurate or appropriate then i would really like to see an updated table from the actuary  to present a reliable calculation because right now the word from the eye actuary is one hundred twenty thousand dollars ok all right any other questions about article twenty five ok article fourteen i think is a great article it's appropriating seven hundred seventy thousand dollars for work at the incinerator site now the reason this is a great article is that the seven hundred seventy thousand dollars is already available there's been a fund that's been in existence for some years now  intended to address conditions at the incinerator site and the seven hundred seventy thousand dollars will be taken from that fund to really begin work there and taking down the abandoned incinerator building is the first step and then there's a lot of environmental engineering that needs to be done in preparation for eventually capping the site the reason i think it's a great article is because as long as i've been on the committee the question has been what are we going to do about the incinerator site and want to be going to do it and something is now finally happening in your ten for me so that's that's progress and let me inform you or remind you that on june eighteenth the board of selectmen are going to have a public meeting to discuss what's called post close or closure use of that site so in the hopefully not too distant future something will actually happen there and the range could be anything from along to a hockey rink or solar farm or really it's wide open and the point of the meeting on the eighteenth of june is to solicit your suggestions for what to do up there but this is  article fourteen is what's necessary to get that process really started and if there are no questions on move on article twenty is something of a standard article at this point as you may know the town has a policy for funding the opeth liability the other post employment liability the policy really boils down to a formula where the contribution towards the open liability is a formula based on the balances in free cash and other reserve funds and that's been the basis for the payments for the last six or seven years the number this year is a total of five hundred seventy one thousand dollars some of it reflecting the townsite operation some and some of them reflecting some of it reflecting the enterprise funds which is water sewer and the like department let me just make you aware of two other items of interest in the opec front one is that the town does have a strategy to deal with been the longer term the opec liability of course is rather large and four hundred seventy thousand dollars is not going to retire it in the foreseeable future but the plan is to take monies that are currently being used for the pension liability which is a completely separate issue and when the pension liability is fully resolved which we hope will be in two thousand and twenty nine that those monies can then be directed to the open liability and retire the open  was always some question about what the size of the open liability really was it's actually very difficult to calculate this thing because it requires projecting what health care expenses are going to be in the distant future how many people will be there to collect them and so forth what are interest rates and rates of return on portfolios so there's there's a large number of assumptions the number that the town was using had been in the vicinity of two hundred million dollars as the open liability but an open blood billet ian opap study group was formed a year year and a half ago which revisited this whole question of working with an actuary to bring to bear assumptions that seem more appropriate to reflect on its actual situation they released a report in december of two thousand and seventeen where the liability on this new calculation base appears to be under one hundred million dollars which is gigantic importance obviously so hopefully not only do we have a with that we turn to the last item which is one hundred ten million dollars that is the remainder of the operating budget it's basically several lines let me just run through them so you get a sense of how our local government is structured we have four point seven million for general government which are things like the town clerk's office the assessor the treasurer's office human resources and i t n and other functions we have seven point eight million dollars for retirement the bulk of that money is actually payment to deal with the unfunded pension liability that we've been talking about a much smaller piece of the seven million is the contribution that's needed this year or next year to cover the the pension obligations for people who are working next year but the bulk of that money is what we need to spend in order to actually pay this thing off by two thousand and twenty nine three point three million is for health insurance for current employees and other kinds of insurance ranging down to car  insurance we have fourteen and a half million dollars for the police department in the fire department fifty's almost fifty seven million dollars for the schools eight hundred some thousand dollars for minuteman which is a noticeable reduction from last year largely because in rome and minuteman now was smaller than it had been  before thirteen point nine million dollars for department of public works community development and the facilities department which maintains town buildings three point three million human services is a library council of aging and health department and four point seven million is the pay the debt interest on our outstanding obligations which of course we have to do because floyd mention that we are aaa community and if you want to remain a aaa community you need to pay your obligations some number some amount of that debt service is for bonds that will be paid off in the relatively near future and it's that it's that money that will be freed up to be redeployed to handle the debt service on the police station in a previous time any questions on the big budget and school superintendent john phailin is also here to answer questions specifically about the school budget know it's almost a joke because i've said several times that there's a in my mind there's an inverse relationship between the size of the budget item and the amount of discussion but hav questions yes helen bakeman precinct for retirement the four point whatever it is who other than full time employees are able to get retirement and as i recall this plan has been raised as an issue in the past and have we looked at it so let me just ask the  look for it i don't remember getting it thank you same response it's in this booklet if you have not picked it up there is a summary of all of the line items of the budget the expenses the revenues cetera as well as the warren commission report the capital budget committee report major capital project report and hundreds of them are available in their on line i can only say that you had seventeen tireless members of the work committee working on this since january and all and the only audience is you to block at precinct seven and i'm wondering if i can ask a question back at the police fire and d p w sure i'm wondering if in an environment of low bid and we found ourselves in a difficult position with the fire departments how can we and i understand that we're adding into the budget project manager to ensure that the work is supposed to be doing you know being done appropriately but if that project manager is also low bid how do we know it's not ok so if maybe you could talk just about i'm getting a little worried because i really love the numbers that you come up with and the plans and i'm really really excited for our town members and then our town employees and then i get a little worried about maybe getting into that same pet and if maybe you could just address that  you know tom get soon as you would know he is a consummate professional and he is the o p m we had extensive discussions with the architect who is extremely resourceful very committed and i and other members of the committee told him from the day we interviewed him there was a competitive interviewing process that we expected he would be a fanatic to be on top of this project as it was being built to make sure that it was being built in the way that he expected so i think between the nobody is happy obviously about the experience of the fire stations but i think we're all a bit wiser for it between the building committee the o p m and the architect  that there will be as much oversight on this project as one can possibly bring to bear and i am very confident that this building will be built right and on budget i can't speak to the fire stations because i wasn't part of them at all but i can tell you that that issue has been on the mind of the building committee since the first day we met and we are  we are as committed as can be to making this project come out right thought and we are slated in you'll see it in the information we provided to have a high school that will average about four hundred students a grade said just a short period of time ago average about two hundred eighty three hundred a grade and that's the new roman in the chapter seventy money that has come in from the state has supported some of that so we're fortunate and we're very very excited to be working with the capital committee regarding the modules at the burbank school and obviously the work that's going on with the forego adds to their department to support the schools we are adding nine more teachers this year are f t and that is at the expense of other things in the town that could be added to the police the fire the d p forward to the final vote because we think it's going to be a very successful program and creates incredible capacity for the town for the next fifty  low we were compared to other towns how are we standing based on state averages and within our cohort and what we're you know our cohort towns the ones that are comparable to us on what repent spending per pupil at this point received more funding from the time and some from the state we're dividing that number by more students because we're growing so quickly so we were actually staying level as it relates to our standing in the state and to our peers so we are  about four thousand dollars or three thousand dollars less than the state average which is significant if they were in the bottom ten percent the average per pupil expenditure into the towns that we like to compare ourselves surrounding us were good  five thousand dollars per child and the towns that surround us and what are people expenditure this year currently it's thirteen thousand six hundred fifty six dollars and that's based on f y seventeen dollars so we're still from the turnover the i'm seeing in this call that i'm involved in that when brock elementary school and then to sorry about the principals the turnover that regards it just seems high at the end that's just an impression to me i don't know this is the average in other school other talents can you comment on that i'm wondering is it just because they're maybe for the teachers if they feel like they're just too many students in their classroom they're just fine print out you know it is part it is the  overcrowding in the schools not have enough space in the schools all this kind of showing up in the way the teachers are responding by leaving the principal leaving and wondering if this is all connected so i definitely think that you elementary teachers will say that their job is a little different than it was a good ten years ago when they were averaging about one hundred twenty per class and now they're at like twenty five but i think our average turnover is about thirty three staff per year and we're really not straying too much from that keep in mind that we've added more staff so in the aggregate we're a little bigger so if that goes up to about thirty four thirty five that involves folks who go out on a maturity leave and decide to stay home so that counts as someone who leaves and potentially could come back that accounts also f time it's a normally newell's of staff that we feel we no longer want to make a connection with the stay in belmont and those folks who may decide to leave i think our buildings have very robust i think our staff are happy as relates to the support they get from folks like the foundation in their p t o s in the boosters in the palms of the patrons i think there's a lot of support in the town and i think the teachers are truly happy to work in beaumont to be it might be that superintendent's a little cranky so they might they might be leaving because of him but you never know so percentage wise did happen to know our army sort of on par with other towns and yards turnover i don't have a number for you i can say it's on par with the last four years have been consistently the same rough building not be able to provide certain science components if you just comment on that play sure so the level the leveling process in criterion for schools right now is kind of on hold because we went from caps one to park to now and cast two so the state is holding everybody at bay for their kid eight schools in only leaving their high schools to have their status be continue in the in the same way it has in the past so the district as a whole has ironically level one in the high schools level too and that was a direct relation to some of the schools that we had for our students who are on i p s and some of our subgroups so did rich as our principal and ken cramer a  elizabeth putah member precinct two i need some help with this number but there is an amount that each family pays for each extra curricular activity that each of their students is able to be a part of and if we as a community paid that instead or some part of it for even some part of it it it might raise the per pupil cost a bit but wouldn't it be a nice thing to do it would be a great thing to do i think our families understand that their public education in some ways doesn't always feel free in public they pay bus fees courts fees drama fees club fees kindergarten fees and they pay for lunch so we  always stand at this fuse related we're public schools that are feely consistent across the district in across the commonwealth but could actually level the playing field a little bit if they were burdened across the whole time budget and that number of the  fund allocation it should be noted that the public school budget is about a sixty three or sixty four million dollars budget when you look at federal and state grants that dot that also our revenue source for the services it provides as  well fred paul's and precinct one and i i have a question to what extent does the school the proper use volunteers i'm not looking for complicated answer but what is are you using them in libraries and other places in the school  right thank you all very much for coming please attend on thursday for the police station if you can and we'll see you at town meeting