candidates for town meeting member and for town white offices is going to be thursday night this week march st at the general middle school again ninety five washington street the snow date for that will be wednesday the th we better not be used in that so at seven to seven  canvas for town meeting member will meet informally with folks seven thirty pm the tommy member candidates are introduced in the auditorium and seven forty five pm the candidates for town white officers will speak and answer questions this is going to cover live by the local  cable t v t v station sponsored by the league of women voters voter education fund this is the basically the last debate prior to the time election a climate science and policy event will take place at the st church at four of four con and get a free ride on electric school bus after the event sponsored by st church bethel temple and sustainable belmont in the world of course some of women's club presents dazing with about one proceeds to benefit the restoration of the home for house the n b c series of local belmont celebrities who will be dancing in this including these two over here patrice and mark among the cast of many so again that's friday april th from six to eleven p of the bad belmont aquatic team developmental swim program for six to eleven year olds and belmont high school developmental swim program instructional course offered for those who want to improve the stroke technique participants must be able to swim freestyle backstroke twenty five dollars yards which is one length of a pool without stopping to be familiar with breast and flies drugs ability to dive preferred swimmers will be evaluated by coaches to confirm whether they're ready to enter the program so the back development program will run from april meeting actions by consent number one proclamation for tired animal control officer john gets we have a lovely proclamation is anybody here to accept john's here oh educated this community particularly about coyotes and and the fact that they are not to be feared should deal with them in certain ways and day you always have assessed i think it's a and affection of all of the all of the served and where john green is passion for coyote's has earned him the stink in as an expert educator teacher all of us peaceful ways to co exist with this wild life in a mall in where john shoes for the next animal control officer to fill as you share the proclamation of the taliban what tonight i hope you're able to weave in the credit he deserves for keeping residents in belmont safe from all sorts of wildlife while respecting and caring for these natural habitants johns kept open spaces while dog owners like me enjoy parks and time well spent with community members and their pups in most towns animal control is like a four letter word here in belmont johns taught us including our children so much about the balances between animals and humans and money able to attend this pos meeting but i want to ensure the you know how much our community appreciated working with john over the years aaron movie and so i want to as well he's read that into the record thank you to aaron and thank you to you john thank you it's really been an honor working here spend the best seventeen years i've had may and thirty thousand dollars one hundred million dollars for the belmont high school there was roughly another seven may point four for  where one of nine community simak commonwealth massachusetts out of three hundred and fifty one dollars that have a aaa so that's a major milestone for the town of belmont now just to what we ultimately going to finance it's one hundred and two one million thirty thousand dollars the difference being six million seventy thousand dollars that we received in premium money so the belmont precise number for the benefit of the viewing audience as far as the benefit for the taxpayer because i'm working with the end i can in the assessor's office but i can't tell you this is probably going to save this five million dollars translates into a little of that is having the double triple a ratings as i always point out when i say the little bit of luck i should send my good friend the fed chairman a fruit basket because when he stop raising those discount rates it had a major impact in that so this is the lucked out of a timing is everything so we hit this at the perfect time for thirty years thirty years we lock that in march two thousand and twenty or so people who say this isn't the bonding for the whole project the bonding is going in and phases in stage i don't need all the money all at one time so to answer those questions because i get this question all the time why don't we go out and borrow two hundred and twelve million all at once well these are general obligation bonds now and taxable we need to spend the money in eighteen to twenty four months so it's not a case that we can what borrow all of this and have it hang around for three or four years the last thing we want to do is to get i selves to caught in what we call aba trash it's the worst thing any community can have hanging over their head the other factor is wind  without exaggeration reviewed every paragraph every question we were supplying them information probably made up to two weeks ago to make sure that this financing was the interview and other financial you know this this was mandated by the people that are buying our bonds this what this wasn't this wasn't something we signed up for so j p morgan to us that we have breaking rated by bo it some point then we will give it there is a meaningful savings to the taxpayer we will deal that town meeting some of our borrowing will we do that this year or you will see me tom standing up there in june could be authorizing five there over there they've done the job we had a few cleanup items but that meant six were all i'm going to be i thought i saw it's a standard operation to kind of reduce those types of things i never lose sight i'm also a taxpayer also keeps our bonding capacity yes absolutely you know i would just because of the magnitude of what we're going to be voting on tonight and see if anyone the public had any comments on this matter c n n we will close up portion the hearing there is a vote that we and eat each in such form as may be approved by the town treasurer of being here by a ratified confirmed approved and adopt it for the move the board vote that the bonds shall be subject to redemption at the option of the town establish post insurance federal tax compliance procedures in such form as the town treasurer in point counts would deem sufficient or in such procedures are currently in place to review an update said procedures in order to monitor and maintain the tax exempt status or any of them to be necessary or convenient to carry into effect for visions of the foregoing votes second all those in favor of so it's real  assist the town from the standpoint of making sure that we have very compliant tax will bonds because a small group that we have set up i'm going to call it the cash flow management group it's made up of floyd common we're going to be meeting once a month on a thursday we will be tracking the expenditure as the cash flow and the m s p a reimbursement so critical piece of this puzzle because one we want to make sure you know really ma on policy regarding electioneering during the early and absentee voting for all actions our town close this year th only during the early voting period before the state election in november that electioneering as defined under chapter fifty four dollars section sixty five dollars would not be permitted at town hall because we became  voting place during the early voting period at that time we suggested that maybe we should look at whether that was successful or are there any problems with that and consider doing that before each one of our elections for in person absentee voting which happens about three weeks or so before every election and then for the state early voting define periods so that's why i'm back there was this is just to make sure people basically aren't i'm campaigning in town hall during out so the ballot time correct because it becomes a polling place and i know absentee voting by the way is underway downstairs for those who qualify and this is and we had as a pilot program just for the public in the fall for the fall election with the early voting we had a pilot program seem to work well so this is to make a sure any members of public wish to speak on this matter so you know a close up portion past is one question for clarification so right now we're only doing for absentee voting for ten elections will we do early voting for other elections going forward or player distribution of material intended to influence the actions of voters footprint that oh after within one hundred feet of the entrance and finally three hundred and fifty feet shewed me of the entrance of polling places and election of federal state or local offices were as an increasing percentage of boma voters are taking advantage of their right in opportunity to vote in person by absentee ballot or during the early voting period established by the legislature in come to the town offices at four hundred and fifty five concord revenue in order to obtain absentee ballots were voters should be given the same right an opportunity kastrup team ballots free of electioneering activity as is enjoyed by voters who cast their vote on the day of the election whereas observance of the one hundred and fifty dollars foot rule established by chapter fifty no poster card in bill placard picture or circular intended to influence the action of the voter other than those expressly authorized by general washed up to fifty four dollars section sixty five dollars shall be posted exhibited circulated distributed in the town clerk's office in the building where the town clerk's office is located on the walls there off on the premises on which the town offices at forty five dollars concord avenue stand or within one hundred and fifty feet of the building entrance door to said town office is given under our hearings this consider one of the things in the memo provided is the option of having an internal search versus an external search as the board is aware you have recently done external searches for my position went away so there's a there's a consistency with external searches so we do we also proposed a timeline and a search committee we guard the so whether or not it's internal or external search committee would have to put together a timeline would have to be put together we're hoping to have somebody in place by november so there'll be a nice transition with the chief leaving so i guess we're looking for direction guards to how you want to kind of proceed with what the police chiefs are i mean there's a we've known as you said the other positions that report to us we've used we've done an outside search internal candidates have applied it's kind of you know there's a plot plus and minus the one hand you don't want to discourage people who are internal about moving up on the other hand you don't really know what's out there and so you start looking and we've actually several others from outside going into the process not even sure that would happen but getting blown away by the commanders that we received so sort of doesn't going outside doesn't preclude food internal people from applying obviously and they may end up being the only finalists that are part of hiring a consultant to the do the process which we've done with the general manager and with john a minister we hired group white to do those processes but i believe for the for this position of this p for the search company had to go out again because there weren't there weren't it was only one applicant or something and then we had to put we had to choose or no applicants we had to change the wording of the r p for the search company and we understand is that it was this is why we're starting it so soon because this takes longer so if qualified candidates if we have stablished through the search consultant or perhaps with you jessica the requirements or the level of expertise in experience that we're looking for and what the requirements are and you can even have an assessment center as part of that and if you don't not satisfied with the results of that then you go external i'm just suggesting that as a possibility just take longer i think and i know that you have to but it's not going to it's a definitely doable given the time from where we are so you could come in handy so i think you would director i don't think that that would discourage internal candidates typically what happens is a lot of times when you do the wider search of anything you might discourage external candidates when they know that there's some role to you know one or more internal candidates that are very strong so that's usually the way that goes i've never personally seen an instance where it discouraged me and you know less as we had with both of our time is greater than the general manager about my life search it did not discourage internal candidates nor did nor did the internal qantas presence discourage the ex or look  we ended up with the right was a group of applicants for both on and we ended up using outside people and honestly that something that wasn't quite sure that was ever going to happen it's just like you know i don't like prefer and i think i have to recuse from this if in fact  candidates in i'm intrigued by the idea of a two step process but i guess i do wonder if we were to bring the consultant on are there different rates depending upon how long we engage them how many steps in the process is there a cost savings to be had or at may be a two step with great different two different payments depending upon what services are asked to be it was very helpful having grew white in the other processes because you know we were elected officials were not human resources experts it was very helpful to have some external people who had who had knowledge of other who worked with other towns have done searches for something like a police chief i know i grew white had done police chief searches in other towns and they knew people i think and some of the candidates came in because grew white call and said hey there's a job opening a bomb i know you're looking  we would never of no not without grew white so they can help us source candidates i guess the other thought that i have is if we were to initiate a two step process does the consultant help us understand what the market is what's available out there and help us look at our internal candidates versus that market maybe give us some guidance as to whether or not we'd get up and i'm not yes so i guess i'm saying that you know regardless of what we do i would think the consultant could be you know money well spent to help us and sure it wasn't you money to be fair i mean white was actually was the other was the cheapest of the ones who applied  people here working with the department of the would be important but we also want to ensure we hire the best qualified candidate it's an important job and sets not only criteria for me and that's why i'm wondering if the consultant then helps us helps working with that search committee determine based upon an assessment of the internal candidates are we comfortable that we have someone who is meeting the objectives or do we feel the need to open it up to do that i mean running i mean you both of you could establish you know  conversations with the police chief there he's done a lot of work since he's been here two suspects succession plan and i was ready to lose that work that he has done i'd like to do i mean i would recommend doing that for us but but have a short sort of a fuse on that it's not the sort of delay the process because that also just talk about the search committee briefly that the idea of the search committee consisting of and this is something i've talked about last time what we're doing for not not having one of us on the search committee is we have the ultimate hi hiring folks and i thought of a little i wasn't really keen on having a sitting selectman on the search committee to vet it however i ended up getting tapped to be on the search committee for the gentlemen for belmont light and jim williams was on the search committee for ten minutes straight or i wasn't terribly thrilled with that want to serve at your pleasure and that would be great and then superintendent john failon a representative from belmont schools like a principal to citizens from belmont people could apply will put out a request a representative from council on the dring president or  know well thought out you know search committee you're going to get representation and input from yeah and then the police chief works very closely with the schools and i think it's critical i didn't know this chief has done you know has great relationships with schools as well as the police department i think i love the fact thank you for having someone from sea away on it as well and this was also with this outside police chief this is what grew white help us with general manager from about like group white someone who went out and found us a general manager from a different light department to put on the committee  two thousand and seven the board at the time was very direct in the sense of what they gave me as far as much in one as i would say they made it quite clear that they wanted some type of succession planning in place and to move t and given the opportunity in the fine people in the department i think it's important that we continue that in two thousand and twelve assistant chief lane informed me he was retiring at that point in time i looked internally to see what we had for people interviewed three people in the department and i chose assistant chief jamie my guys at the time who was a lieutenant so that in the idea that we could continue the process that we had been working together as a team to move the department forward i just want to keep that in mind and have i know the decision is yours but i think it's important that you keep that piece in mind so that we can continue the progress that has been made i truly believe as well in the team and the department itself but we've got a lot of things going on as you know we've got the renovation project coming up and we have a lot of other things going on as well but i would just think and hope that you keep and consider those pieces of the puzzle and i to lose sight of that i've been very fortunate in my piece of being appointed as the police chief and i want to thank the town in the community but i think again moving forward i think we should keep a lot of those things in mind and i know j mention it in the in the memo about the morale upward movement all those things you want to consider because i've got to tell you honestly as you mentioned each one of you we've got a lot of good people over there many female officers too we have no chief we have seven i'm very proud of the men and women of the department and they do a great job front of our community but i just want i don't want to lose sight of that and i just want to keep on moving forward so i think that we that he promised it would do but i mean the impact and the fact and i know that you mention about going outside for the town a minister for his position and for the belmont light manager's position it's i think this is a little different the police chief or your community is a little different and realize how important it is to hire from within the ranks of the belmont police when i heard there would be a discussion about the cheese process in the possibility of the town spending the upwards of twenty five thousand dollars on a consultant for a nationwide search i had to voice my opinion as a town resident and officer of the belmont police the same issue was discussed by the selectmen and the police unions in two thousand and five an agreement was reached to always look from within st if unsuccessful hiring from the outside can be risky and costly it could cause this department to become a revolving door and offices and supervises would have to undergo a change in strategy every three is the belmont police offices supervises and  residents watching this meeting in a very concerned with the possibility of the town spending thousands of dollars on an outside search when they are viable candidates inside the department why not interview these candidates st then go to the outside if necessary we have candidates within our own ranks that have accepted chief jobs in the past and were finalists for others in neighboring communities the trend to hire from within is overwhelming watertown lexington waltham and all have high it all will high and from within most communities a staying with internal viable candidates the candidates that we have in belmont a highly qualified and have similar or better resumes the most recent chief appointments from other communities there a need to validate this with a nationwide search we are currently involved in a renovation project that will take a few years and we feel this is not the time to bring in an outside person it would take several years for an outside chief to come in and get used to the department personnel in town itself with this run of ation going on this would add more responsibilities and create undue stress and stability issues with another parliament there are several current bum on offices who already have options to move to other departments but going through a wasteful outside search them around this department will suffer and people will leave i have seen this before we had morale issues in the past and lost twenty five percent of us  offices that came with a total of twelve offices in our department that transferred out a dominant over a short period of time the numeric cost of the town was hundreds of thousands of dollars but the quality of the offices and what they had to offer unmeasurable i would like to summarize within a few points we already have candidates within the department to take the chief job and immediately take this department to the next level the candidates we have a going to have a vested interest  improving the quality of life for the town's community members and a genuine concern for the office as well being our offices believe in our internal candidates and believe it would be it would allow for an easy transition through these tough times and outside  candidate could take years if ever to get to know the community police personnel and make relationships with other town departments this will be even how to do in our innovation as there is limited space in areas for the community to engage with the new chief the trend to high police officers from within is happening for a reason these towns realize the ease of transitioning with an eternal candidate and stability within a police department is important searching outside would negatively impact the morale of the in tight apartment the candidates and undermine their relationship you'll need to have a productive healthy police department the outside candidate if chosen would have to be substantially better than the internal belmont candidates the melbourne candidates have been to the f b i national academy which is only offered to less than one percent of police office nationwide in addition they have over twenty years of leadership experience and all mine this is an easy decision to at least interview the internal candidates before an outside search is conducted in other offices want to know that internal candidates will be highly considered this decision affects every officer because of possible future promotions and how the select perceive currently this save the thousands of dollars invested in a search and invest that money in a project that the town could truly benefit from we have a great police department with qualified and talented leaders i am confident as an employee in resident that all candidates are ready and willing to take the leadership role to help guide the belmont police into the future thank you for your time thank you thank you you should know that whether it's internal extra i think we're going to be spending the money in the consulting way but that's what your point would like to give him that flexibility and i was scarred and said that she spoke to him but i still would like to be able to give him that flexibility so we can do that and we do i'm certainly not here so he's pretty busy i think would be his choice then so he would do it  belmont prides itself on education where community has a lot of highly at it educated individuals that live in our community that seek professional development under the chief guidance we have the opportunity to attend  i wasn't planning on speaking but i really have to echo what officer benedetti debt bennett debbie and and ben just said i i don't understand why you would have to spend any dish no money for any additional because we've got so much to spay anyways but looking at the talent pool that exists in the belmont police department i really don't think you can find better not to mention they know people i think it's very important that chief mclaughlin has been very accessible to all of us and i think having someone local who we already know is going to make it a big difference so i really hope you stay with the internal candidates i just think you do us all a better service encourage just as we discussed before to have it be a two step process a drone an r f p where if they're just helping us with an internal vetting it might be less than if we initiate a broader issue i think with such an important position and it's you know i know it's money that we need to spend but i think it's important representative from the belmont schools possibly a principal to citizens of belmont for which that we will have an application process a representative of the council on aging the president or a member of the p t a a current police chief or i think current or former police chief in massachusetts and even our town administrator so there will be nine members nine members in total on your nd ever yes art we have a screening committee next would be to i guess to market or you can come back change a liquor license spice corner l c is not going forward this evening that is off the agenda i don't know if anybody's here for that but we're not picking that up tonight which puts us still way behind schedule nevertheless we're going to soldier on to go to accept donations to john marshall assistant on administrator june howell recreation department june and department have been working on this for a while so i'm going to turn it over to june to talk about the donations that you'll be accepting tonight in a very very brief update of where we are with a different project and it will be very quick as you know the recreation department in cooperation with the fire department have and have begun this project to place  on all of the towns fields and parks we have received several donations so work is ready to begin in the spring for to start putting on the fields the storage boxes have arrived pay some park so five fields to begin to see what happens later is there one of the high school fields there is not one on the high school field that control right now that the town doesn't that's right but right now the coaches carry  donations and hopefully you'll see my face more as more donations come in very very grateful would be a great thank you so the watertown savings bank charitable foundation the belmont boosters club belmont youth baseball sport program which is our special needs program and special olympics program so the murphy family in the bay state federal savings charitable foundation has joe needed money to offset costs for special back in two thousand and fifteen there was a foundation budget review commission report that was passed and recommending legislation to modify and enhance the budget chapter seven funding for schools and they discovered a number of areas that they needed the findings but that three out of the group have a specific impact on belmont special education health insurance and so back in two thousand and sixteen the school committee is selecting to put our members did a resolution supporting this commission's recommendations that there was legislation during that period that fell through or didn't get put forward and so there's a new legislation and a new hearing that's going to be held this friday to review a number of acts that are proposed and so the school committee at the recommendation of the bell and education association this fall and put forward a new resolution completely agree with you know even though we continue to get increases in chapter seventy eight that it isn't nearly at the level that the but the foundation budget review commission had recommended based on the recent cost as you outlined here so i know that the state when represented rogers both have been discussed with them a number of times support you know moving closer to what the commission had recommended and so our resolution is a very general resolution because of the number of so this is these are the proposals eight of them right that are going forward to town meeting for c p a projects and i guess we'll just take them in order police station reviewed the documents recently and then no the few questions that we had we resolved with the architect the current estimate is at seven hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars which is what we applied for and we're going to go out to bid here in the doors everything yeah the applicant and vice chair of the building committee just to be clear the exteriors of the police station was never part of the original plan presented to town meeting it was always envisioned this other piece but thank you for the clarify any members of the public wish to ask a question about the police station c p a funding will close that we're not voting on these to make as the article will be voting on favorable or unfavorable of the articles that warrant is out but we're just going through the analysis of the discussion tonight allowing for public comment thank you for your sake if you think you know all the town hall complex slate roof steve dorrance this is one hundred thousand dollars also in the historic preservation category for this lovely building in which we yes steve dorrance the director of facilities this is for a project that was st recommended by the c p c back in jan you to advance i'm hoping for your support today the request is for one hundred thousand dollars to repair the slate roofs and the secondary damage that's been caused by the leaking roofs for instance in front of the h r department here there's a five foot square section of ceiling that's actually been removed because it was sagging structurally unstable beyond that we found some scatterings of mold which is problematic you'll see some pictures of that in the file the big challenge with this project frankly is  we'll need a very significant crane on site to lift some equipment off the roof we have flat sections of roof in two places and those flex section are rubber membrane roofs and they're obviously they're leaking by virtue of the stains secondary to the repair of the slate roof in the rubber boots will also paint the secondary damage so that means that for example in the auditorium the entire auditorium ceiling will be occasions so the original p appeal was for seventy five and having gone before the committee they were willing and eager in fact and worried that seventy five dollars wouldn't be enough increased it to one hundred cleaned and the restoration also includes a power device for winding it written routinely which is now it's done manually and to do that work we need to improve the ladder in the tower it's all internal but the it got dust and dirt from in there and that you're going to be cleaning it up and sealing cleaning it to seal it was that doesn't occur again one point that came up was that we had i don't know whether you just heard some point we could vote on this vote on this but there was there was some discussion george's he sound that to be the case but i mean is it is there a slim chance that we could be sued well the question was that this is not a religious purpose and there was a case regarding sting glass windows where the court has said you could not use e p a money for that because that was religious but this is a clock that the town purchased litigation risk just because there's an awful lot of interest and you know making a law on this topic so it's hard to quantify what that risk is the the action case which we also were involved in defending there were there were two concerns about that that prompted the s j c to remain on that too so a lower court one was that it as the chair just mentioned that involved the restoration of stained glass windows which had it explicitly religious an injury and the other was evidence that that that sort of the purpose was to support the operations of the church by by taking on expenses that the church was struggling to to  the funding is still the funding yeah the funding is still the funding we need to move forward this one would just be on me tell me yes ok this would be for the design funds not the construction firms i mean i certainly i won't be a member of the board but i strongly support this moving forward it's you know tama seen also paysan park music festival st of all i want to apologize for not having been at the warrant committee but i had a family emergency so i had to go visit my daughter out of the country i'm sure you're all thousand the nd year i asked for fifty thousand this year thanks to the help of the director of the highway department shame arcot and the  peter peter quinn the architect i got a lot of help from them with the design and peter recommended a place in new hampshire so and and mr market suggested that we had a little more to the request so the request went from fifty to ninety and recognizing what you said chairman dash  if we don't have to use all of it we won't but we will be purchasing a structure rather than it being stick built and good so that should make it a lot simpler i do have a question like i thought i heard mike smith say that they've already chosen who you know they send out to bid already should i be doing that now and i'm not the one to ask but i think you would seem to me you want to have make sure the appropriation is in place before you do that yeah when they do but there is this is this an external consultant or is this an just internally build this is internal i mean we doing it you say oh now we have actual plans that we could and people can respond back with and this is using the existing slab this there no actually it's going to be using boring slates to build time hooker it's prefab so probably because we don't have it that's right credit it's a very minimal structure juliette it's not it's not i can't imagine that there'd be much i was just curious that's yeah i mean it's very minimalist take away the equipment that's there right now much of it is broken and replaced that we would look at so the town field's playground is beach and we've really street sort of cornered in there and right now we are not using the full space that's available so when we met with the recreation department in the d p w they suggested taking a holistic approach to just view what we had available to us and the water field design group suggested that we take out the courts  that was partially because the recreation department and jay took a look at that and said well these are really old if we are going to do this let's do it one time let's do it correctly and let's invest the time and money now so we also learned that the coast the courts are oriented in correctly they should be oriented north south they're currently oriented east west so we would be able to remove them reorient them put them back the pickle ball and basketball courts as they are soon be changing them we would just be moving them and then using the extra space that right now on the beach street side is completely and really not usable the way that it's such a situated now and put some equipment in there so we would do two dollars to fifty five dollars to twelve dollars and then an older slash exercise park or area which blake who runs the park or program for the rec department has been in communication with us as well as really excited about the possibility and i think it's i think the true face funding that you're talking to all really are so right now currently the how we deal with the a projects from the d p w standpoint just like the playground and grocery we have been you so in the beginning for the st year we use the consulting fund money that is in that total project worth noting in this particular one that there's been some discussion within the community preservation committee and markets can certainly comment here as well around what is appropriate to ask for in terms of private fund raising you know some these projects do have private fund raising others do not with the right amount pit yes ok so this is twenty thousand dollars to help restore the vegetative buffer around the pond the bank of the pond and it's mainly to remove non native vegetation and hope the native vegetation  preservation the next one is also i guess for you rock metal habitat preservation control of non native in a vase of vegetation open space twenty five thousand four hundred dollars this is also coming from ameritrade or are a conservation agent and this is similar but not the same thing is quite right so this is our rock meadow our seventy acres of conservation land that's why this is actually our st open purely open space project see the other one was more of a black swallow what it is they're saying that right there was a place where the monarch butterflies stop in and then a black swallow or they get mistaken for milk wheat and they lay their eggs on it but then the eggs die because it isn't going to leave and that this would remove that invasive species and help the monarch butterfly population and about ten or fifteen years ago and so we did do some full year spraying i think once but it it would be cutting the black market gets a pod it looks like a milk and the to do with pesticides and herbicides particularly near well in that location near the community gardens and in the other location of this is a property the black swallower is not really so close to the community in the farther meadows and so if the town i don't know if there isn't i p m policy with the town in terms of how they pushed out to be great to know what it is and further concern using life estate which is now  time discussion a possible vote on sooner or later sipos closure use as we promised march th which is now we would move move on this i would like to note i know there's been a we've been talking about this god for like nine months or since last summer i know at least we had the st of the large public meetings i want to thank everyone has participated in this process i think we have many many public meetings we had many many people both very crowded in town hall and extremely crowded in here and over the beach street one hundred people over there it's been the community turnout has been the envy of a lot of our communities around us who don't get that kind of response from the public who care about things i'm glad the belmont does the process how we got to where we are we started with we went out we had a visioning session into in the auditorium where we had a big board and glenn wrote ideas from people we end up with seventeen ideas opposed closure use for the incinerator site we then created a matrix so of different kind of factors so we could  objectively analyze those seventeen up based on who made the request or who made they had the idea but how they all work relative to each other we cut that down in half using the matrix we then did some more research into the remaining ones we cut that down to five where we stand today and this was all done through the use of the matrix and from doing some studies some of them were a little more difficult to discern the the details on like they died in a robot digester is a very technical thing that we had to get a consultant and there was some like a bike and skate park didn't require so much or open space field didn't require quite so much research but now we have to decide because we do have a deadline and mr clean's is stated from punitive element about having to start designing the cap in may and we need to figure out the post closure use st we had become versation back one was zero in february with department of state department capital asset management maintenance where centrally i think at this point in my opinion they've taken two of those five is actually out of our hands where they said that we could not we cannot generate revenue from the site and that we could not even do it with a public private partnership and that pretty much put t on the skating rink in the end robot digester they we have while we could go back legally to the legislature and get our neighboring legislation redone a we don't really have time because of the may deadline they talked about and also the state didn't give us the land with the state did as they say they appraised it they sold us the land for the appraised value and then they credited us the cost of remediating all the contamination on it so effectively we paid zero for it but that was appraised value restricted to municipal use only with no revenue generation and they said that if we wanted to go back and change the legislation and make it revenue generating then they would want to reappraise it and we could end up owing the money because the appraised value would then go up and could be above the cost of the remediation of the because if you can make that an office building or something it becomes a way more valuable property if you take off the municipal use restriction so i wasn't really i'm not thinking oh at least for me not terribly interested in going back to the kept it not giving it to us in the st place so they were going to give it to us to make a fortune because that was something that they would have done and so we have left then our it would be three choices after all this process open space like skate park and up belmont light solar a solar farm battery storage and associated sort of uses i just want to throw out my thoughts on it and we can you know have a discussion about i mean i think the open space piece i mean we're kind of land poor in the town we have a lot of open space and we really don't have a lot of land for some of these other things that we could use and that this isn't the greatest open space is contaminated and it's on a weird typography in the d p w whatever we do is going to continue to utilize it p w trucks and you know decaying leaves for another storage up there or something greatest place to spend bucolic afternoon so i wasn't i think it would be almost a kind of not making a decision for open space the bike skate park well a great idea if you've seen our meetings in the last year we can barely clean maintain and police the parks we have we've had to search the couch cushions for change to pick up the trash at joey's park i mean that's where we are right now so it's too well it's a great idea to build and maintain bathrooms and have police go up to it was a pretty remote site clean graffiti maintained at moet place light bulbs and such it's a good idea i just there's just simply no money for that as point ongoing you could maybe build it i don't know a c p a money or something but we just can't his point we can maintain that right now the last part of it is the solar and battery storage which by the process of elimination you probably see where i'm going with this the the solar and battery storage i thought for me was the best it has a very low neighborhood impact we heard from the neighbors very clearly that they didn't want one which was i think the bike skate park would be an issue for that it meets our climate action plan  goals it's less of a disturbance to the natural state in the soil because you're not building a building you just they put them on there with some ballast and those at best specially the energy storage the batteries are basically cargo shipping containers that you just placed there you could remove them of the technology change be easy to swap pieces in and out i know that chris roy the wilmot late john manager was here he was talking about how we would really to make it a viable solar array he would need to have a two megawatt and that he would need the whole parcels i know a the bike skate park people said you could put bike skate park and solar around it the christian said really he would need the whole thing i'm not the d p w piece but the rest of it pretty much the whole thing to make this viable and it would seem that if we did it i would be in favor of doing a vote for the old and serious site post closure used to be a solar or a battery storage and other belmont light uses because i don't want to tie it in to any one thing along with the d p w as i don't know someday maybe the only way to build a ury college i would see solar farms on my way up to vermont so i love that idea and i support it wholeheartedly and if we can make that work that's great i think the storage unit idea as well as a wonderful idea so that's what you support i support tha enough for the battery storage for the public that what that does is it allows you at night when the power is cheaper to buy than during the day that bomb out like could buy get power at night stored in the batteries and then discharge it and use it during the day and thereby not you know you'd be buying the energy at a cheaper time in the days for others are you know are the action that we're taking you know at the moment michel like apartment you know through a lot of your leadership on those issues and also the energy committee we just heard from chris were earlier today it furthers that cause if you will by having a solar farm there in the storage unit so i'm fully onboard with that it doesn't impact the neighbor the neighbors will never really know it's there it's somewhat of a passive use if you want to think about that point of view but also a passive use that creates you know enormous benefit to this community and chris has experience having built a solar array in concord which was up which is a plus i mean i'm in agreement i think you did nice job walking through the process of elimination i had from the beginning thought there's been  very natural upside to the community associated with p v i think when chris talked to us about the energy storage and that was potentially even more intriguing and made the combination of a nice powerful combination i think it has the benefit of being i think you use the word passive i think it's a good word mark it fits nicely in that area that does have a fair bit of open space and tends not to disrupt that it also has a close proximity to a number of neighbors and i think would hopefully be relatively low impact very very good viable option and we did talk with the cam about that originally they were not saying that we could do a solar farm until they realized that we actually had a municipal light plant and then they said we didn't realize you're the municipal light plant that's different so because belmont belmont why could not do this is a public private partnership with an outside firm belmont light would have to do it as a town entity in order for this to work in there again we're not doing this tomorrow this is one of those things where you know the we have to do the cap and design the cap and build the multiple parcels there and i know chris had indicated desire to sort of all of it i think we should sort of figure out whether or not we can successfully use all of it let's carefully place p v or storage or where it sits in maybe remains somewhat open doing this of doing this kind of a use of the solar is that it can be easily removed if you're not you're not building a skating rink that's you know this is something you could just pick up the shipping containers and take them out if you decided to so change the use there's also i think  the cap would be less intensive and hopefully cheaper if you were going if you were to build if you were putting it sinking a foundation of a building through the cap of puncturing the cap or rather just putting these items on top of the engine we need to hear from our d i was going to open this up to a lot of people but yes glen i also understand that there are seven there were seventeen ideas so there are sixteen constituencies that probably will not be pleased with the decision that was not their choice however we can't do everything and i think i hope at least if you don't like the outcome at least respected the process i think that we did the best we could we heard from everybody on everything and we did hear you hear you and listened to you and we did take everything that was said on all these choices into great consideration so i'm glenn clancy site and so now you know one swede lock down exactly what uses we're looking at on each possible and we can begin to look at what it's going to take to regrade the site to accommodate those uses  yeah i think you know if you want to add to what we were talking about about the solar no i don't think so you know it's just the comment about the cost of the cap the estimate has always been a baseline cost factoring in a very simple cap the the costs above and beyond that simple cap to accommodate buildings or other uses was never really part of that estimate and so you know we find ourselves now with a use like this really back at that baseline estimate of the incinerator site so i know we're giving sort of a broad idea of what it might be but basically with the amount light we have any idea how tall something might be like an energy storage structure we haven't designed anything however they we did look at the curious i don't think we haven't put it out to been purchased particular items this is just time of the use the implementation of the use obviously that's a whole different discussion because it's bordering this rather pristine area so that's why i was wondering how that will be factored in i think those are things that we should factor in to cause issues and i think the ability to regrade the site will give some latitude to address some of those those visual concerns for users of rock metal i think we can be clever about that but good point thank you anybody else student but nevertheless i don't have a resume i mean our our appointment rules do say that we approach the chair of the committee however we did approach the chair of the committee he's just not here i was like so i was going to enter mt for you're right the vast majority of them are of someone i just spoke to her tonight she was terrific but i think that sort of alongside of appointing people were talking about the size of the committee partly because maybe i was being too conscientious and i was concerned about quorum we've had not put together a resume yet but i don't like so yeah if you don't have a resume you can i can count as we don't have an application so we have an application for this is we just like it's in our book she's in the book oh ok so that we got some doll core so how many usually show up at your meeting if we're lucky and we work really hard we have about half of them because we have performing hard to leaven half of our twelve performing artists so the five a good number you know you have to work really hard we don't have any forget about it see it no no no i was told to say that some towns we said this when we came in the summer some towns are actually offering to assist and supplement the state funds that we distribute so it's just something we think about it to think about and if you like to know march th the public information section was held on the part of his asian plan for the complete streets grant program the twenty people attended in real time prioritize project categories d h b the towns consult presented and the comments the next one will be to one january th that was about the rising until the petition on baker street set in motion to rejoin the discussion i'm sorry no it was after that we it's we were we went into executive we went into we had to take on this public hearing in the middle of the also up above at the very top of that page it said that and b g had prince cress concerns in a written letter about the safety of the induced crossing of the railway tracks of brighton straight think what it should have said was a written letter about the safety of the south side crossing of the railway tracks a bright street and a project proposed in cambridge could provide path access there were three new pieces of information this says that it was in bt a concern doesn't have to go through the underpass but the