items of approval of minutes we will have presentations by a number of speakers regarding different war articles the war committee will then discuss those articles and vote on the articles this committee deems appropriate so there will be short discussion after the discussion of the war or articles about the state of the war committee report and then  the floor will be open for questions from the public if there are any at nine fifteen ok we should start then with minutes from our march twenty ninth meeting which i believe were circulated by minutes and that i concise presentation and then i'll ask for questions first my motivation for doing us i'm an environmentalist and if we can get town meeting to approve this article it will provide options that will help us meet our climate action plan can help boost the amount of carbon that this town produces by four thousand metric tons equivalent to four percent of our homes energy use i'm also physical conservative i hate waste i deplore waste we have a very expensive way system and we can cut twenty five percent of our  raise taxes by two point one million dollars and the voters approved that now if you add in two and a half percent every year we currently got over right now provides our town about four million dollars of which one point eight million is used for our tr so what this motion and the selectmen have the legal right with any over to add fees on to that afterwards but many people including some on this committee have said there is still an obligation when we do an override to honor that override unless there is something that we have some mechanism to get a sense of the town that we can move on and so this is what this motion does it asked the town meeting to say do want to stick with nine hundred ninety and imagine that things are just the same way they were then or can we can we move past that so what i want to do tonight is explain a couple of reasons why things have changed in twenty seven years that the town needs to consider adding fees onto its truck and was built twenty nine years ago now why is this shrinking why are we not adding more capacity for trash because much of our trash has turned out to be toxic more and more of the stuff that we throw away that we buy and throw away is toxic it is plastics it has all this other stuff in it there are polluting our reverse it has mercury that's polluting our air the incinerator we send our trash has been cited three times for violations from the environmental protection agency for mercury in their in their smokestack so the state is reluctant to do more in terms of adding capacity that way which means we in the future are going to have to pay more to dispose of our trash oh and by the way this is coming up now because we are negotiating a new trash contract later this fall so so that's one thing the other thing is that back in one thousand nine hundred very few communities had what's called now is a page you throw where it's unit based pricing for trash and now there are one hundred forty six communities that currently do that so a large number of communities have started to say hey you know paying for trash using our property taxes is not a smart intelligent thing for them for us to go to move forward in the future third the arctic ice cap that big white thing at the top of our planet that has shrunk twenty five percent since hundred ninety that is a tipping point if that gets small it what's happening is the sunlight hits the dark areas the arctic sea around there and heats up our planet even more at some point excel rates so fast that we will lose control so i imagine we've lost a quarter of that already by the way the town did pass a climate action plan a last town in two thousand and nine in town meeting and we haven't made much progress on that this can make a serious dent so that's that's environmentalist speaking for me so there are compelling reasons why we should move on now what are the options if we move on one of them is what's called page you throw it simply is asking residents to use bags that they pay a higher price for typically between a dollar fifty and two dollars but that sends a price signal to residents to say hey i've already feel this one day i have to devise maybe i can do some more recycling you can pull stuff out throw it in the bin because recycling is free so  i believe that the selectmen should have that option in front of them when they negotiate this contract now it is true that we will go out to bid i understand with pages throw in that in the process we've done that before but again the selectmen are reluctant to go against the will of the people on this override but if we can get town meeting to where young it can give us  give the selectmen a little more wiggle room to consider other options conservative estimates by the state and consulting firms is that we could reduce our trash twenty five  percent that is more than enough to encourage more recycling the slackening can consider returning the bag revenue making it revenue neutral or if they want they can use the revenue for the from the bags for offsetting future or delaying or offsetting future debt exclusions it's estimated it could bring well over a million dollars this to the city to the town coffers so it's a powerful financial tool for the selectmen since its cut expenses provides a powerful environmental benefit and potential revenue now some concerns are about those people who are on fixed incomes or low incomes communities have provided free or discounted bags to seniors that have a circuit breaker on their taxes or to low income folks finally i want to say belmont is one of the eleven percent of massachusetts communities that still use property taxes to pay for unlimited trash pickup so it's no wonder we love our trash but we we are funding a very expensive system and so it's cost newtown money so the warrant committee has a better than average understanding of the financial situation in this town so it would be helpful if you could vote or offer guidance about whether the one nine hundred ninety override is due for consideration a town meeting to not offer any guidance seems potentially tying the hands of the selectmen fine not having them avail themselves of very powerful policy options that many other towns have availed themselves of so i would i would strongly encourage you to  well if you're more comfortable sitting down we have a microphone for taken about that right so what happened is my resolution was only to bill it's wrong but it's just reiterating what our police department already does i presented in front of the board is like men and the police department was there and they said you know perhaps you're not including enough and you're not sharing enough information so we had a meeting that followed up with that may help me add much more that they actually do to welcome and protect all citizens of belmont all residents of belmont and so this is just the the reason i felt compelled to do this was because i knew that there were concerns in our community that started to come out of the elementary and middle schools of children worried about their friends and i knew that it was taking up the time of teachers and counselors and that to me didn't seem fair to anyone that they were in an education system to learn and that's what that's why i wrote it also i know that we have some one charge now that sends out tweets at night and tends to frighten people and some of the things may be unconstitutional we just had a ruling the other night so as far as that goes if this was just to calm our community we the police have been doing this all along this is no change in their process but it's just a as i town bring it to the attention of families that might not otherwise know incense it's been posted i've had a lot of people come up to me that feel more comfortable that it's out there  learning curve anybody oh i can't say for questions because i'm doing that bike path meaning across the hall well since you only used up to hand it over to the right i've  actually confused where we're is the most recent wording i know so i went online two days ago and i saw that it wasn't out yet so i sent allan cushman o'brian e mail asking her to please put up the newest resolution and i assume that she had done  anything that actually it is not states new policies on the part of the town this is kind of a sense of the senate type of resolution so in a sense it has no because i understand the town receives about two million dollars in federal money in one form or another but the expectation at least as i purchased claimed is that given the  given the fact that this is more of a moral statement rather than actual policy or five already thing like that that the the actual financial risk  town is probably negligible or were zero so i don't know and i'm constitutional yeah mike but this is actually an issue that i've researched and written a bit i'll preface this by saying i fully support every one of the bullets but if it ain't broke don't fix it and i say this to you have you considered what message is being sent if this is defeated does that mean belmont's and welcome his will not be defeated wow it will not be that he didn't do any before town meeting before it's a very divisive issue is it though i think people thought it was something different than what it is i think it thought that they believe will be protecting criminals people i understand what this actually does what we're doing as a process now well i do not want to go down on the wrong side of main street frankly i go to town being spend a lot of time to deal with serious problems that are facing down this is a political statement and going to be a long political debate pro or con and i don't think that's what town meetings all about it's not and the reason that i did it is because we have to get a message out to families that don't otherwise understand that the warrants says the warrant committee will report in this article we were not consulted when that language was put in the in the warrant and i think regardless of the  moral imperative underlying this article i don't know the warrant committee has anything particular to add to the discussion i suppose in theory the federal government could try no standing with mike says which i happen to agree with what you say in theory we could lose some kind of well but that seems beyond remote at this point so i guess i don't know what i would generally be in the role of the war committee is to shed light on a question that otherwise people couldn't figure out on their own and this one i'm not sure the war committee actually has anything other than being the votes of some number of town meeting members but we're really just like any other time media member at that point  but that's that was on my mind well that the war committee could say that they would they don't see that there's any cost to doing this just supporting it because we're not changing anything and we're not prohibiting ice could you not say that yeah well let me just say that we're not going to vote on it now we're going to i think one of the things we will discuss later in the evening is whether we're going to vote on this article but you know i certainly nothing what you've said is objectionable on its face it's just have some currency some concerns in my own mind that maybe other members do also about whether the war committee actually has any real role to play here when you called me into the meeting so i'm telling you what what what it's for i know that some of the are going to be concerned that we could lose the awards that we have been getting from the federal government and i would i would appreciate if you said that based on your knowledge at least that this is not an issue that has to let's see next in the order of things  because there are three more speakers potentially and jim williams ought to be next because this is really his article article eight which is increasing the size of the board i've been advised that jim is sponsoring this article that he should speak first and then i gather that there will be a second speaker  to resign my seat until the last election i've been a selectman for two years i think that like many of these other positions elected or volunteer that they're all twenty four seven the number of of direct reports that we have the six committees that people coordinate would be the town would be better served if we move from three selectmen to five just like and what that does is for those i think most people obviously on the one committee know we have a open meeting laws that prohibits for a local body that's governed by open meeting for example i haven't talked to sammy baghdadi for mark political for two years outside of the public meetings that are posted and i'm not i mean no i'm not talking to mark or adam outside of th meetings so if you assume phyllis and i have a schedule of the two meetings a month now for the next year first monday and third monday of each month and if you just run the man hours on that that's sixteen sixteen man hours a month for the committee and it adds up to two hundred sixteen man hours  also the liquor authority and there are a number of other assignments that come into this in fact we didn't have time to discuss this family market which is right i put it up as a citizens petition because i knew from my town meeting member days that i could do that with ten signatures and what i do is i walk around my neighborhood people that i've known for a while and say here's what i'm thinking and they always say what we don't necessarily have to agree with the article in the motion but what you're doing is bringing this to town meeting so town meeting can discuss the issue and i always say yes and so that's how we got started  i was assisted in the original article in the motion by both owen cushman and george hall but when they sent the word to the attorney general to be reviewed so that w come back to the town the attorney general said that this motion in this article he did not only was a change in town bylaws but it changed it was something that we would have to do a home rule petition  to the legislature with and i was working with another group i don't know who's here just be for that group tonight if there is anybody in the odd hope committee that favors this idea and with  and so they asked me to change my motion to this substitute motion which is before you would now read it move it article eight be referred to a committee to study and recommend whether or not the board is welcome and should be expanded from three members said committee should be appointed by the moderator and show consist of the town meeting member from each precinct in five town residents selected at large and show file a written report  recommendations in the town's clerk's office for distribution to all town meeting members by january thirty first two thousand and eighteen that's what we  so what's in front of the town meeting in the ward committee tonight is the substitute motion you could almost argue that we don't have to discuss the idea of moving from three to five because what's been decided is that because of the requirement of submitting a home rule application it's better for the town to sit down to create this committee that's appointed by the moderator let that committee do its work and then address it in the two thousand does and in but it's not happening because i'm so clever it's happening because that's the way that's the way it was directed by mike's decision rule application to the to the state legislature he thought that that was bridge too far given where it started ok and if if there was a recommendation to expand the board of selectmen and it was approved to be town election in the fall or as opposed to waiting to the following april town watching the vote and how many people would be voted at that time three and and how would you work the staggering of the terms th come to microphones of the people on t v can hear i can answer that question for my part that there is no difference of opinion ok on this motion absolutely but every please come up  right he's taken some input from us but we expect he'll make the best would elect this winning in november or whatever really the committee is going to make file a report i assume then the selectmen would take it up and could use that that one of these advantages of increasing and i guess five would be the minimum increase because it needs to be an odd number of people you know which i think again this is not clever but  given the importance of the wording of motion we actually change the language should be expanded from three doctors to five to just should be expanded from three members so that if the committee comes up with a different idea you know they'll be permitted to do it and they're not they're not and kept by by the by the motion that would be passed by  indulge me i guess for one question which is given the limitations of the open meeting law on discussions of selectmen outside at the have an actual open meeting  if there was a larger number say five so to select minutes that morning discuss without triggering a quorum how would you handle the problem of serial communications because presumably the board of selectmen is going to be deliberating the question of where potentially all five of like to talk to each other at some point well you can't do that in we have an issue in town right now where where where someone has reported in an e mail to me the opinion of the other two selectman and so we had george hall come at our last meeting and go over the rules in phillis's meeting with that individual tomorrow to coach them on serial communication the board of selectmen we don't do that  us yesterday which we already knew that if you're presenting facts normally what we would do is send the information to the town administrator more for optics than anything else just because you don't want emails going back and forth  at what let's say if we had if we had five now and sammy and guy carbone were guy crony were on the on the board you know we could ask dad him to be in charge of schools i would like to be in charge of finance somebody has to be the chairman someone else can can can work on the building projects and so what you would do is you would begin to divide the boards of responsibility amongst the five people in then what would happen is let's say if it were sammy and he wanted to talk to me about the schools the two of us could at least commiserate on it but we couldn't communicate our opinions to any of the other three but it does give you the possibility of having more time on court if nothing else because my my it's my assumption would be that if if we had a  team of five i would not do serial communication obviously but i might like to talk to the other for at least an hour a week about different discussions and if you assume that the other four would do the same thing then we would have twenty hours a week of additional discussion on the most recent of the five selectman in that amounts to eighty hours a month which is nine hundred sixty hours of man hours addressing issues town issues and that compares that would make a total of almost twelve hundred man hours or in town business versus two hundred  six i think it's given the span of control the number of direct reports and the number of issues that come up and also the number of committees that we work with there are sixty six committees in town  so to me there's almost no question in terms of i'm not as assertive as and his but i too would like to you know see the results of the committee and see what they have to say but from where i'm definitive word on the subject i have to say i have some grave reservations about it but maybe that's all the more reason to have that take us discussion of the issue  don't even feel that it's fair for me to try to defend the idea because we're going to we're going to go to the committee so i don't want to color you know this motion by anything else that i say about this i'm a selectman i've been a selection for two years i can't talk to my two colleagues outside of an open meeting will brownsburg or weighed in on this a while back i think the last time they looked at it and said that you know you get used to tell you get used to the open meetings law but we have some really significant issues that require time require effort and to try to cram it all into two hundred sixteen hours because we have three people and we're subject to the  asked to comment on the science by law but it is such a complicated by law with potential economic ramifications that i was hoping jeffrey could at least explain to us the genesis  to this is come about for many reasons for the planning board first off the putting board it's well aware of the town's recent significant  respect the last really sort of piece to be looked at is signage in this area and so the hope was fact by sort of looking at the sign by law maybe we can clean up some of the signed some of the buildings and continue to improve the protesting experience and the quality of that just to along the lines that have occurred with the increase in sidewalk space and ventures and so forth and so on  bring our by law into conformance with compliance with basically very briefly what that decision said was that you can not base your by law on the content of what that sign says so in our existing by law if you're a nonprofit organization you get some liberties non nonprofit or a for profit does not get and that is communities were doing to address these issues it became glaringly obvious that there were some holes that also need to be filled within our by law the last time the by law was really looked at and i'm not even charging what extent it was done because i wasn't here then was back in one thousand nine hundred seventy so you know that's at least thirty years ago that this was looked at so to try to bring it sort of at least close to the days standards whatever can in to be in line with their communities or they said there were some glaring holes provisions that need to be also inserted as well so that's what the by law tries to do to fill some of the loopholes to the that's the general generic version it is a fair to say that the existing signed by law language is about thirty years old and this will not only  revise the language but make it more and bring into the conformance with i guess supreme court decision but will will also make the belmont signed by laws more similar to surrounding towns very much very much so as i said we looked at other communities we leaned heavily on the town council town council has been through this exercise in terms of revising violence we have several of the other communities that they are also counsel to and we were fortunate that we came after them so we know what at least communities and what the attorney general also accepted so yes this will make us more on par with what's happening in surrounding communities in comparable communities we looked at  you know the twenty four comparable communities that financial task force and one point one committee sort of identified as sort of comparable communities we actually looked at those twenty four communities in based a lot of the changes on very it's a very dense very dense in terms of the changes we really struggled how to present that in the warrant and really what the purpose for it  was we've been working a while and of our powerpoint presentation trying to make sure that we can get the point across in part it's to sort of interpret prepare for some of the questions that might be coming  well assuming that they were permitted to begin with they were all be grandfathered so it's really those new businesses that are coming in that will  the difficulties is the whole non conforming grandfathering section it's all stems from state law and as i tell people that when they go before the zoning board or planning board that there are trainees have made millions of dollars arguing and and i think we should run through them and actually just quickly discuss as quickly as we can and vote voting in the first instance whether we want to take a position at all and voting on that position and in that spirit i would actually like to start with the special town meeting which of the special town meeting has two articles that we visit the issue of transferability of liquor licenses and i think and i think it's appropriate for the work committee actually to speak to these two articles because it's an important element of business life in this town and my view actually is that we should emphatically support the two articles and my reasoning for that is that i thought it was i proper actually for the town to be issuing licenses for what is really a nominal amount of money roughly four thousand dollars and then having a business owner turn around and sell the license for three hundred thousand dollars which is the evidently the market value of a little license so that by by issuing liquor licenses for what's really a nominal sum to me indicates a an implicit policy making licenses available to businesses more with regard to other aspects and sheer revenue very severe quota that restricts the license it's appropriate for a business to take that as a license to operate a business as proposed at a location and they no longer wish to carry on that business then return the license to the town but not make an extraordinary profit simply from me the good fortune they had of the town of green to issue a license in the first place so to me i think the proposed article is actually a line i would say the economics and the interests of the town better than they are now and i think we should support those but i'm  open any dissenting point of view i don't have a dissent i have a question if you're a fake a business that had a liquor license were to sell to another owner what would be the implications under her under either of these well i don't know but by no it wouldn't it would revert back to the town you mean but if somebody paid three hundred thousand dollars for one and now they want to sell it they have to sell  by the town that new owner would have to apply for have a life it would make sense to me under those circumstances if somebody was really taking over the business and thing in the same location or somebody's brother bought the business and is otherwise going to carry on i not have that language in the home rule application but it wasn't in the motion either so there was a mistake made in the motion and then there was a mistake made in the home rule application and then when the loading  given its license the kept come counting because he wasn't given the license based on transfer of those so what happened after that was that he had two amount was four hundred thousand three hundred thousand and according to town council and i'm sorry that george is not here because you guys are trying to make this decision  the size of the business that was getting the license was not admissible and the discussion of competition was not it doesn't and the price that was being paid for the license was not for the local liquor shorty we were we were advised that the only thing we could do was to look at the suitability of star market and so that's why sammy go to sam we voted the way he did because as he's explained in the newspaper because he was afraid that the town would get sued if we didn't vote that way and i voted that way because i was told by the town council which i still believe to be true that the three considerations that most restore velma back to the non transferability council advised us that if we didn't have another town meeting that all of the licenses would be transferable because that's the way the case law involve you might know more about this than i do i read the case i was given and all of the licenses even though the original ones were nontransferable that they were not be transferable apparently there's a lot of controversy in the state about this and there's some talk about not having any state law governing how can this appellate issue liquor licenses but in the meantime we're in the situation that we're in so what town meeting this again this  motion and we just yield you mr chairman i we at the stage know this meeting with voting oh yes i think at this point we need i think it has a financial impact as the town might have had an extra four hundred thousand dollars if things were done a little differently the first time around so it impact of those businesses to be sold and change hands so if a compass someone comes in wants to take it over there's no guarantee that what your license goes with that there's a gentleman's agreement or maybe they'll be some discussion they have to reapply so my concern is that this could hamper some of the existing  es now but it happened earlier with the transition to a totally different business i understand those concerns but i really still have some issues about the ability to pass on to if another family or sell it down the road and not having that not guarantee but a more of a guarantee that your that liquor license will go with them business i agree and i think i expressed similar reservations about the language before but i'm voting for this with the expectation that the license would be reissued i suspect that could be contracted or and i'm not a liquor license transfer expert but i am familiar with many sales a real estate that are dependent upon getting not it's not a concept of permitted by the state so what happens is if you have a dry town and you initiate a new license and you say that they're not transferable in two thousand and eight that was the case in two thousand and thirteen as we know at least three mistakes were made with regard to transfer but that moot point because the case law has to be blow to a point where all the license or transferable so what happens is if you happen to have a license in a town it's intrinsic to your business i was shocked when we first realized that  pledge his license just collateral for him no no let me let me finish this time just before yeah it's important for the for your consideration i didn't understand how you could pledge something that you didn't know and yet this is a convention in massachusetts it's run by state law it's determined by state law that is permitted so the question is why did they allow that in the reason is that they don't want liquor stores that are run down they don't want restaurants that are rundowns what they do is they allow you to pledge this license which you don't own and which is renewed every year licenses are not permanent they're renewed every year and you can use them to finance your inventory to build out your restaurant it's it's it's pro business we have a situation there where there's a change in the ownership in the business that that that will be the price will be impacted by whether the licenses  transferable or not in so this is not just the way these articles are written is to allow town meeting to kind of return to where it was in two thousand and eight and i think you can see that but the discussion is going to be different because the law has changed in there there is there is a situation where the license is renewed every year in there they're part of the intrinsic value of the business so i think if you know george will have a lot more to say about this and i'm sorry your advice you want to know but it's but you know you have your vote but don't vote thinking that the town can sell the licenses for four hundred thousand dollars i don't because i'm that i don't think they're it's not the case i don't think that was the expectation of so maybe we should quickly take a second vote just yes formally correct so i think entertain a motion for article one of the special time to move favorable action second is there a second ellen thank you all those in favor opposed wait wait wait oh sorry one proposes favorable action within a reasonable time period i will deem the committee not interested in taking a position so i would like to start with the speed limits article  our that's article three ok in the annual town meeting for anyone who would like to make a motion regarding article three mean we were not asked to comment on the demolition delay by law which is article interesting well my memory is before we did we did think that had a infect d real estate values and so forth so i don't see that commenting on it this time saying different and the fact that we voted to comment on when it came up originally  thank you i think you're absolutely right oh lauren meyer co chair of the historic district commission thank you for having me say a few things with regard to the six months versus twelve month question and i will say two things first is that we had only two properties that went through the demolition delay process one property we have to the delay period because the property owner had demonstrated due diligence in terms of exploring all options the second property at one twenty two waverly street we were unable to get the owner or develop or real estate representative to meet with us to discuss alternatives and by the time with all of the requirements in terms of notification of public hearings and by the time the building department notifies the historic district commission and a public hearing is called with sufficient notice to residents we were already pretty you know well into that six months  all of the our adjacent communities who have had demolition to live by last for a significant amount of time all have twelve months delays and there's been some interesting studies newton in particular has since night they first in acted their demolition delayed by law has enacted several times to strengthen it adding time and adding adding properties to make it the most effective so that's a you know a little bit about the six month the other thing that it does is it makes it equitable between sort of commercial institutional religious properties and residential properties and no other community in massachusetts and massachusetts splits the delay period by use and so that simplifies the buy a lot makes it easier to administer this phyla has been very very carefully revised with a lot of work with the planning board related to it and i think the result is a very reasonable and in fact last  restrictive bylaws then many surrounding communities have the issue of economics has come up in discussions no question and there are you know some property owners who are fearful that it will have an effect and in fact we've been working with the office of community development to look in more detail at the economics and in fact the assessor w today about property values in belmont and by and large i will say that that the overwhelming evidence and that includes many published sources are that preservation enhances real estate value and in fact there is documented evidence that a house and not historic house next to a historic house is enhanced in value by being  by being next to historic property and so on the other evidence and we will have this you know in a in a better you know book point for for the town meeting presentation but another key factor is that historic properties appreciate at a higher rate than non historical properties recently the town of wellesley passed a demolition delay by law that i believe  applies to all properties older than fifty years and they cited belmont as an example of the positive benefit of you know demolition delay so i thought that was you know very very interesting and it had a very large carriage house in the back which we took down you know for what i think were very sound reasons with taking down the carriage house had been subject to demolition the way it depends on the property and there are there are two properties on the list where it is the accessory structure this is a den of fide and not the main house by and large i would say the answer is no probably but the inventory forms that have been done for all of the properties identified what what's significant and that becomes the  becomes the the the deciding factor so if you have a non historic garage you have a garage i have a garage built in one nine hundred twelve for example not i significant on the inventory form therefore not subject to demolition to i so age doesn't have to do with it necessarily it's really about whether or not that excess yury structure is significant well i have to double check belmont and that does you know make the case for the importance of historic accessory buildings you know from the commission's point of view i can tell you we are not really  so concerned about garages and things but if you have a significant excess or rebuilding and some houses in beaumont do there are some on the list that have  know a borrowing then you know that is part of the part of the property one of the issues that came up in a public meeting because there is an appeal process is if  you know the significance of a garage or accessory building could be appealed to the board of selectmen and my answer to that was yes absolutely true but i think it's also maybe more than we can actually be realistically take on this even if there are clearly pros pros and to my mind cons to the article i'm just wondering if where demolition was demolition of a structure on the list was really an option is probably going to be very small he looked at all of the p c looked at the assessed value so so in that case you know we had a site meeting with all party parties involved with you know architect from the historic district commission we walked around the building we had a public hearing the public hearing was extremely well attended in fact it was the biggest turnout of any historic district commission meeting until you know we had a little to the table if it's six months because you know by the time they have the hearing word you know sixty two or a month and a half into the process that's four and a half months later and they're just going to wait it out and you know all of our surrounding communities have learned we experience that directly in the historic district commission and all of our neighboring communities you know have experienced that and that is why twelve month is the norm if there are communities with longer than twelve months delays because you know what we really want to accomplish in this is the opportunity to explore and in some cases that can be that can accomplish a positive outcome so six months you know to go back and forth for the to have a discussion to have good developer architect real estate representative for them to explore some options come back to the commission take some time and i think six months just isn't long enough bob i actually so that's where we are you know it fifty seven second just to bring it to a vote all those opposed to not favorable act you next this article five i thought jeffrey's explanation was very helpful i also don't see a an obvious economic impact from this i suspect that small in any event that it could be positive and it could be negative but   nothing that's when we certainly have a study that time you know we had an experience last year of having to opine or getting ourselves involved in  opining on a zoning issues that we really hadn't studied and that i think we should avoid such situations you know we're going to take an opinion on a moratorium like this then we should really study it planning for the thought of that study that we have books like women should not be involved in the miniscule detail you have to get involved in should be a board of directors appoint a strong town administrator and set policy and you will attract people to the job who also have a day job because i don't know how anyone has a day job they can't build them well i think it's appropriate to appoint a study committee to set the town could be comfortable oh i'm if they don't have it i think there are big issues and  the the i would agree the board of selectmen might be better served by having fewer things to the side rather than having more people put aside a plethora of issues and strengthening given that there's no quantifiable economic impact but the role of the board of selectmen is obviously so fundamental but it's appropriate for us to vote i think selling the government structure committee did look at many different things override on the garbage contract we're using some of it described on other things and so if the board of selectmen have feel that they have the authority and the power to to allocate some of that spending to to other purposes i'm just i'm i'm just wondering again why permission is needed well we had this discussion planning meeting earlier in the week and i it sounds like there is no legal impediment to the board of selectmen adopting a paisley throw policy it is entirely a question of whether as a political matter i guess it's a way to put the town covenant with the residents not to charge any more for trash given provided for the for payment for garber services why are you coming back to me for something i don't work for an additional fee yes and that there is this sensitive one danger future overrides  this is the first time i've sort of heard heard your your words from the moderator of that that's the intent to frame it and just i mean i know i view this more as a framing of a non binding vote and in front of town meeting about question has me in as as everyone says if your is no legal binding on the on the prop two and a half vote after the first year and we should just be concerned with what the legal ramifications are and leave it up to the board of selectmen with the pearly that they want to take on taking the hit the voters i think who are much more relevant here are the voters of the past three voting list and there is no way that more than a quarter of those voters could have voted voted in one thousand and so you know this is i mean this is a question i think it's great for a town meeting to talk about wh going to do or not but it should be in the context of the current issue and whether we're so let me want to hear from town meeting on it not not not add something that is extralegal to a vote that was twenty s  the discussion about the nanny the one nine hundred ninety override is misunderstood in the community people think that once you do with override that the monies have to be used for that specific purpose the people also don't understand the voters don't understand that and override amount in this case it was a significant event it was two million dollars at the time this is in one thousand nine hundred that that money that that a a accrues every time the taxes are so it's about four million dollars now and we don't spend four million right so every time the idea of going to pay as you throw comes up a discussion what happens is people refer back to two million dollars you know the fact that it's there and it's available for that but what kim is actually suggesting is that we all understand that but we have to think forward and if you think forward and mike mike understands this too what would her understands this too if you think forward the idea is that ok we have this override that took place in the past and we understand the funds go to the general the general fund now and then we spend it as we budget but the real question is you know should we engage in the consideration the page you throw in the because that might make sense for the understand if we're not going to talk about whether we want to do paisley throw we're just basically saying go ahead and do what you've done in the past contracts if we put them both as a here's another way of putting it we get we if we vote in favor of this how does that translate to the siteman deciding to make that choice for next september because it i would think they would want to explain it to people to have some public hearings to go through the process on some basis and i don't know if there's enough time between june and september i mean it that that's why i'm i'm confused well unfortunately the clock is running quickly because i think this is the end of the impetus for this might have begun more than a year ago when the previous two like non selection certainly agree eighteen months that we had to think about this has shrunk to very little time because i'm just not sure what kind of and not a question of this particular issue but more of a generic discussion of that that said we don't have public guidance that that's what i think i think it becomes very ambiguous now because the overhead are we voting on whether or not we're placing pays you and so i think there is an interview that impacts whether or not we should take a vote let me actually interrupt everything for just a minute it's nine fifteen if there's any member of the audience who has not previously spoken who would like to speak this is your time to do it agree we're going to get you but i said i said we will take a break for public comment at nine fifteen so with nine to fifteen if anybody would like to speak we do hear the words will move on it's we're moving on ok you're in the other point to put out there is that just because we've passed over right doesn't mean we have to tax the full amount i mean that that that's that's another issue for the port of for you know the board of selectmen and has such a high tax tax some would be that they only you know bill seventy percent i think most of you know of them what they can so it's so it's totally up to the board of selectmen and town meeting can play an advisory role for public  whatever but but there's nothing stopping you from doing anything about this anything that you want to do as of who are willing to give just one thing i mean i think that because it is a perennial question of whether or not we should or should do something that's different than what this sort of right was i think that's the reason for it if there is to be able to give some guidance to be selective about you know what that's how things now you can only truly find out what the town thinks by having a referendum but in the short term you can take it to the town meeting to get a sense of what the town thinks and i think that that's th it's a little bit tricky because i think that the board of selectmen should always consider all options because you never know what might give it or idea at the same time there are mark i don't know of any other town which had an override with that stated purpose there are so many many different ways of implementing a zero different financial implications it sounds like the town genuine i think there is an entirely reasonable concern that regardless of the potential merit of pace you throw that many people in town with you with as a tax increase for what i would call in the last  creating a lot of antagonism if a trash proposal came along that was viewed as unfair themselves so i think this raises lots of complicated questions from both good policy point of view and a financial point of view so i think that if we vote in favor of this it should be made up slightly clear that is simply for the purposes of promoting further discussion a but in no way passing judgment on the merits and i think without understanding i would recommend favorable action that i might even have to be explained when reporting our vote belmont's legal exposure expedited arrest and detention deportation of legal illegal immigrants or even u s citizens caught up in ice in foresman actions will violate their fourth amendment rights a c l u and other civil liberties groups promise lawsuits continue irrespective of the fate of the article i just i don't see a financial implications so i will leave it to my committee members whether whether it really is meaningful or appropriate  took a no vote on on this i think you know belmont would be seen as less welcoming a community to you know not just immigrants but but but but everybody who cares about don't want to experience that impact and i don't i don't think that we as a town should countenance having to experience that in fact so i guess it may seem tangential on the remote but i think that there are potential well and i think it's in the realm of speculation where the financial aspect of it is in the realm of speculation that really the size further analysis and so i think it's up to the body right now whether there's a motion or not we are in a political body we should be for dealing with money and i think it's very political games in this committee power town meeting we should get about doing business it's not a straw poll it's not it's not a forum for expressing political views particularly on issues that people may disagree on so i think that's part of my motion ok so so can we can win every process of the whole thing ok with the understanding and you kind of put the political aspect on the table by mentioning the current president so i'd like  within the house budget has been proposed never once said by the legislature it's different than the governor's budget also proposed as you know there won't be a budget till the legislature votes it to decide that had it at five o'clock before that and i don't have a quick question for the articles rhetoric change but i know that the revenues from the house budget have have gone up but do you know whether the state charges to your bill might have changed there the date or dates to be determined you know incredible it didn't seem like it's not that much but we went through a lot of money meeting up in a couple of weeks and the the big news is that they're working hard to get through the lincoln planning and zoning process and they've hired a