updates on some of the many assignments and updates from liaison's and then after that we will turn to a discussion of by the committee as a whole about the information we got last week from  submit to revise so it would be one potential option would be to revise the budget notebook after notebook to insert to make it more user friendly and to focus the report on so the whole sentence would read one potential option would be to revise the budget notebook to make it more user friendly and to focus the report on the executive summary which the same or yeah you're right the board is like one sponsor the application of cycle we don't want to make a president out of this however this is going to do with giving rolling with the state funding because it is we've been for the design of the state pays for the construction of the community and we're getting some traction now as you may have read so we want to keep this moving in the underpass under the tracks this is been a safety issue for decades you know kids kind of like cut the fence apart and kids right now if they get to the high school from over the work area just your walk over the tracks people have been hit in the past by train luckly not me time recently but it's something that needs to get dressed as a safety concern but we nearly had thought that this had to be done as part of the path and so know the library the underwood pool the post office generated well into burbank everything is on the other side of the tracks so and then i used to get cars off the street as well as part of our ongoing overall scope of traffic mitigation we're trying to do because then people particularly high school students over and when brooke would have to drive to get to any of these things they could just walk or bike so this is there's no panacea to the traffic problem of this is a key element to it and we felt that this is this is got so many good public health benefits and you know getting cars off the street benefits and traffic benefits and then just sort of benefit for people over the whole birth neighborhood and for the new high school since you're ripping the place apart anyway would be a good time to do it but this is kind of a no brainer it's a nonstarter non controversial matter i think and we really just want to keep it moving as you know the community math has been split into three pieces after two through waverly square and you all so it's a big project but we're taking it in bite sized chunks and this is the smallest of the trunks and that's what's going to go before a town meeting for the c p a funding for the design in the state would pay for the construction there got to do with our we have a very difficult our view we have a very dense town there are reasons why over the last trump were the hardest part of bill obviously but they really really really the metropolitan area planning council wants this done so it's then they're good willing to pay have filed the formal anything with them because they want to see the plan we need the money to preside we do plan to show them to get them to sign up but we've talked with them and they're at the understand the general gist in the here report of the c p i you know the community have implementation advisory committee and thirty years we've never gotten this far so it looks to me like this is a real thing and if we can get cars off the street and get people you know safe you know safe way to buy good walks that you do not interact with the roads to avoid some things out over on the nd more lexington you know and keep cars on the bikes away from each other that will attract a lot more people having to bike and ride with a line bike program and all these things to do with driving the timing of when when we might start construction on this would it be before this i don't know how long the design process will take that as it is it's a tricky from talking with this date is tricky to do work on an active rail line and they've they've talked about you know taking the tracks and building a new set of tracks and running the train on issue then i mean everybody wants this tunnel i can't believe it's going to happen i'm really thrilled that it's going to happen this is amazing i just have one question with regard to the spur that connects to could happen you know obviously we've heard that everybody's talking to the building committee for the high school and everything is you know fine but but that is does this have to be done right away i mean it's it is is the is that part and issue with regard to planning in terms of the high school project  oh yeah i'm just nd everybody's happiness and other resident of that area so i'm going to use it but one question i have is about that we talked about the concord concord outside i'm also curse about the chilling roadside and whether we were anticipating like a cross walk there it's a pretty it's a it's not a lot there's a lot of pedestrians in that area now i think it's going to be used more i just want to highlight that great idea especially as someone who's a bicyclist but i was wondering just what the assurances we can give the other town meeting members just to get them over the hurdle if they're worried about design money being spent and for sure what the state money is coming behind it is their state money that set aside that we know it has not yet been spent that's in there in their budget that's just kind of waiting to be use or just kind of wonder if i understood the cycle of that money doesn't really work that way but they've been really i mean we've been talking with the metropolitan a bike i should remember this off the top of my head but i don't are and you all over the last couple years our annual funding out of the c p c has been in the two million ish range of trying to get a sense of how much this four hundred thousand is relative to what we've historically been expanding per year and and how much of a kind of reserve we have now that you know kind of where we eating into next year's support i mean when you have a big capital project it is also the fact of the c p a money can be used delivers the money to do the big number which is actually building the thing this is like a pretty good investment in the project or we're just going to design it and then someone else  i'm very very grateful as a member of the capital budget committee the you know the capital budget committee several years ago was asked for some funds for this path and clearly this is not something that the capital budget can fund so that the fact that we have the c p a money to make this investment i think is an amazing thing for the town i think it's wonderful it's great so i want to get a sense of the money that we have currently so you said it was like one  r so this would be four hundred dollars of it the money that is coming in i guess this is like what do we have to allocate once we come to the main town meeting is it just is it just going to be the seven hundred dollars that will be le hundred thousand dollars from this state so that we'll have approximately two million balance when it comes to town meeting that some portion of that will be allocated busy and so on but projects that we know are coming well actually you guys have gotten for many projects already right so i'm a sunni in that you've got something from the town field playground because they got design money last year so that will be if you know based on any of the prior playgrounds that's not going to be a small amount and then you said that the the one a or one b will be coming estimating so clearly would that this is sort of the st time that we will have more projects than we can fund always in the past we've been able to fund pretty much all of the project discussed last spring a little bit which is looking at you know what our capital projects are going forward what for appropriate for the c p c and are they going to do they have or are they going to have a kind of a more policy regarding whether they want to have some in reserve or whether there are things there they are creating reserve for because they know what's coming down the pike in a larger chunk you know for example the one million dollars or maybe there's another at the field the field that you know if we're going to build another field out  incinerator or something are we are we thinking about that the c b c is opposed to approving things that come through without prioritizing what the towns needs are not without but i'm just saying like i wouldn't you know compared to the twenty five thousand it was one out but still sticks in my craw that the sons of italy thing you know that i would think we would want to go to the bike path or to the town field instead of to something like that this year and so is there priorit of the types of projects that you take on and you say no to some things yeah well this year i mean they may have to put an offer here or a policy on how much you reserve or whatever we have this discussion a little bit here last spring and  broader than just the c b c but i know we focused on the c p c also because i think there were some not not a lot of clarification to us or we didn't really understand the reserve and how much whether that's something that you consciously build or whether that's something that is just a one is the design of the complete design of the tunnel is not completely independent of the rest because if it goes on the north side of the tracks then there has to be some i assume some design work to accommodate that versus if it goes if the path the brightest trees on the south side of the tracks then has to be some design for that piece of it and it's not completely clear to me how a complete design for the tunnel will be worked out without also working out the ultimate connection to brain st i think those issues will work themselves out before we get too far  and the nd question is the four hundred thousand dollars budget is designed to stand that is is a ballpark estimate because design costs are commonly estimated as a percentage of the expected construction costs but while belmont has considerable experience with certain kinds of projects like paving streets replacing water water mains that sort of thing we don't have any experience with engineering a tunnel under an active railroad where the embankment is actually pretty wide so  i completely support the the fact of going over the project going ahead with this but what happens at four hundred thousand pounds of not being enough because here we're going to be extremely reliant on consultant to do the engineering and the state and the state to get it all done so is the answer is simple as if it's not enough we'll have to have a supplementary appropriation or maybe too much without money turns out well of course  and that's just basically always going to take a building maybe going for their job just to secure the funding and build them so that it's sort of a different more more active focus we appointed we're going to appoint six people to were there for we were definite yeses and then including your esteemed chair and then one of them and then the other two we had a lot of we have a lot of interest in this a lot of really good i mean to be fair get everyone's resume in before we voted so the other two will be filled and then they'll organize themselves and then will fade fade out c p i ak and move forward with that so that's the committee i think exactly right that would be you know we got to do like any building committee would do you know putting things out  c we're picking people who are actually you know again the focus of this committee's difference we're trying to pick some people from the c p c p i to keep some continuity but we're looking for sort of different skill set to two questions after you get monday next week or something like that you want to talk talk about them well you could like that as a procedural matter i think it's only appropriate for the war committee to take a vote on your article is actually urged people to come will be televising it as well the last one we had was very well attended we used to come up with a universe of uses we've got all sorts of i don't know a seventeen uses or something like that we wrote them down we close that off and we've been chipping away at them and doing some deal of due diligence on them we cut the list down to seven now we've cut the list down to five and those five are going to go to this forum and we're going to get comments on that is the goal is to make a decision on those closure used by the end of the year at this like then i believe the five are just leave it as open space and a robot digester solar farm bike and skate park on black skating rink thank you so those are the photos of the five that are currently left keep in mind that this use would be for a while because the idea is that the land would would be necessary for the high school project for lay down enough for you parking and such so you're talking maybe five years until we get to the point where it would be available for the post closure use so but we were getting public comment on the team and the site is large enough to accommodate actually two of those uses yeah the solar farm doesn't have to be you know it could be you can do it by can skate park with a solar feature doesn't have to be a one hundred percent solar farm for instance but we created a matrix tantalize it in their maintenance costs an ongoing cost and benefit to the town with the developer paid to kept the sites and so we wouldn't have to pay for it and that sort of things and there are a lot of we have a huge fan of fifteen dollars or twenty cities that we looked at to help us analyze these in an object to fashion we're trying to put aside who put forward the idea and just look at the idea and so we've been doing that in which you can get down and  talking to people however there are some if you're putting a building on the site where you will be having a foundation that goes into the ground the capital efficient if you're facing what they're doing is there's like twenty feet of contaminated ash that the water like goes through and then runs into the charles river basin so the idea is to put a plastic membrane on top of it and then put dirt on top of that the water runs off as the simple engineering idea but if you obviously are putting it by a plastic membrane and you're cutting a hole in it to put a foundation it's a different kind of deal and we heard cap originally people thought it was some kind of enormous clay physical thing but it's not it's a very heavy plastic sheet which can be cut the best and to put a foundation into it but there's other you know obviously you have to seal it whatever the case and there are a whole bunch of reasons why it or that we just after investigating it decided it was in the highest and best use i mean something like open space just leaving it like rock meadows vacant land i guess could leave it open for someone in the future to come up with  cons and they all have their constituencies and decision has to be made on just have to make will get the public input the way i think and then we'll see where we go from there but we've decided we kind of want to get this done by the end of the year make a decision  some don't last for long at all but and i'm no expert and in my mind i just wonder whether you know how durable something like that is you know juxtaposed against you know a twenty foot clay cap i was hoping would be one night it is looking like it will be a robust town meeting so my guess would be it'll go as long as it will go the route of what is on there other than the c d c for the underpass would be in the vote on the high school funding traffic safety pedestrian like safety and someone who's in town who is a traffic engineer got out and suggested that you know it should be a traffic advisory committee that kind of sounds like we're giving cars priority you should be a transportation advisory committee of multimod transportation that looks at traffic and pedestrians as well and we're saying they're going that's a really good idea and we looked at the charge of the traffic advisory committee which is quite old and it really doesn't do that so we've talked about whether we should just put a new charge on the existing committee or else just create a whole new committee and since then we have the trees came up with a new charge for it and conduct transportation advisory committee so we keep the tax in ground too and so the idea would then be  the old tack and have a new tack taken down so we did this all we did this with the c p we also did this with that economic development committee which will we created we got rid of we created this business study committee which is now operating w different business people to come up with they're going to do six months study and do a report to us about what we can do to be more business friendly and do more business necking on the development and whether they were what they would recommend as a charge for a new permanent committee to bring that about and then they will do six months do the report and then we will create a new committee to carry out whatever they come up with so we've been sort of when the committees think times change and some these committees have been around a long time when you read their go back and read their charges just why it doesn't make any sense and more so we're really excited about the transportation advisory committee and going forward and you know treating pedestrian bikes with the care they deserve and have not been because we're hearing a big shift i think in public opinion in that we've been doing little by little the signage we have a policy and we've done a policy but we've been doing is calling for people to buy a sign and sponsor across what you know the sign to see that you know stuff for people across walks whatever dollar fine man on the loading dock gave us a bunch of the neighbors around the new bradford development been asking for something to be done at the cross walk of wills to interim hello stepped up with some money that we're going to be accepting on monday night to purchase some of these signs and place them  crosswalks around town so work setting money if anyone wants to up what have your name on it but you will have good karma having done this and to try to slow down the traffic and we also adopted the traffic advisory committees recommendation for the sycamore lexington intersection where the woman was killed to one do a short term change a short term fix and then no more long term fix down there too you know because it's about intersection to make which was hired and is working with the traffic advisory committee to a town way traffic study they've encountered you may have seen them around town in cars they're taking random license plates and running them to see where the garage to see if to cut through traffic around the traffic and sort of going around town  this is got to do the whole town and give us ideas of what we can do maybe during rush hour there are no injuries or one right turn only whatever we can do to try to stop the problems that we're having to endure in the rush hours so all the things that there's no a nd experiment we're going to put the barrel back going to pick them up more frequently and see that no matter what try that for a few months and then we'll revisit and see who will keep working on experiments until we can figure out some solution but we're trying  mind was what is the role of the warren committee at that point because one possibility is to have the our committee not part of the development of the original proposal and then we react to it after it's a warren article and at that point it's either an up or down vote or an amendment potentially from some member of the war and another possibility is if you this is a kind of legislation where when something of this nature is a topic that there'd be something like a comment period where the board of selectmen would get input or would solicit input from the public and then town bodies for example in the war committee on something like this that there's a consultation before the articles finalized after and i just wonder what your views were something like that i mean there's it's tough i mean we do have you know obviously public comment curious on large items like the incinerator side the traffic stuff we we have had big public the trash contract we have had big public and multiple big public forms but for every little the and that you know your job is to advise town meeting because they don't they don't meet all the time so now in times like this between town meetings rely on you to sort of be their eyes and ears in the watchdog to oversee what's senior tax deferral because the interest rates really isn't what he percent or something is going to drive people off and so they went bananas it will go back and we'll take a look at it and they have their public view things and they went back and looked at it became to us that when they said well we recommend going down to four percent and then we have a meeting collectively between us and assessors came up with twenty five percent which is what we're going to be putting forward obviously timing out to approve it and you advise time meeting and opportunities there to come and  participate i'm certainly happy to talk and usually when you're meeting you know especially in the spring like every week i will i'm going to be here so i can bring things out like i'm around because up to now about this in riverside before they have this sort of happened when you were meeting so it's sort of was a summertime thing having to you know collaborate more like collaborating committee maybe the issue is just an accident this fall that the schedule was such that that you were not question belmont is facing certainly if it does and i think as a as a vehicle for this type of question one so for example what occurred to me is separately from the interest rate is what to do with the number of people who have already proved a liability when the expectation that was present is that going to be written down to forty percent no no we actually discussed then we decided that the people there would be from whenever  taxes until they either pass away or sell their property and then they pay a plus interest and the ice and we get our money and they get to stay in town are priced out so that sort of call but if we do the idea of the results i've heard from some people seniors who told me that they would be interested in it at the rate was just so high that they weren't interested in doing it but if the river were reasonable they would need present seemed a little high so those people in the program ready for center already the program why don't you do attract them program but if eligibility of another day but we're not doing that just a quick question for clarification so the people that are in the program right now they continue at eight percent going forward with but they don't they don't shift to four and a half percent of robust participation in the program it could be a cash flow if you were going to get money it's not a question of that plus interest of so it's but again the income eligibility asunder we're not trying to get like seniors all seniors we're trying to give seniors there alina valuations are determined based on the four and a half percent for they continue with the eight percent my understanding was it was eight percent up till now the forty percent going forward for everybody all of them are ok i got a fair deal i got to go i got over it but we're not giving a break to change and or a good number of years people got accustomed to it's going to be lower and the question of what's an appropriate interest rate for something like this recognizing that let's say the regardless of the dollar  amount it would be good to have an interest rate that automatically adjust us so people wouldn't have to decide what the interest rate should be should be should be an objective process for that were happens automatically and the prime rate for example right now is five border percent and it would make sense to me to take a market rate i don't know why how towns choose these various rates and it sounds like it may be a not very well determined process but if we pick something that is widely referenced like the prime rate it's five and a quarter and just to make it simple you could take five and you could take the prime rate  the st week in january and that's the rate for the year and then you would only have to change it the next year and of the prime rate for a long time the prime rate didn't change it for six or seven years it was the same and that's just the rate but in the event there is a significant change in economic circumstances that is just addressed automatically and it is just one less problem to worry about we had a big discussion about that about whether or not it should be some floating euro prime or something and we decided it was too if you're trying to entice seniors to get in the program it was easier to just they would be more likely to join for the on the number rather than have them do the math so we decided that we would just pick  conceivably to cover the difference and of the town were paying let's say ten percent on short term loans and and somebody has the very taxes or to have that doesn't seem right where it was if there was some market automatic market adjustment that presumably the tax tax deferral rate would have adjusted commensurately and everything would be in sync with each other well two things one you could change it if there were a massive discrepancy to the ideas to help low for people who just don't pay their taxes and they want to take a what is the interest rate of what will be the interest rate on that because i think there are some people who just don't pay their taxes yeah that's a different i think that's a whole different statute as far as people who pay their taxes and they have to you know this town can go into tax taking all the analysis and come back to us with a recommendation and they came back to us so we were not doing the analysis because they know the stuff we do so i'm sure they could answer a lot of these more detailed questions on the sort of telling you where i was telling you what we're doing and like  to look into something they did i'm wondering if part of what they looked into was the financial impact on the town of increasing the number of seniors taking advantage of this so you know what is that in lost tax revenue for a particular budget year and what you can't obviously measure is the difference between somebody having to move out of town and and then you know who and the school population was more than two thousand everything that sort of changes we felt this live in we felt you emsley it was time to bring it back to do something for the seniors step one was to double the tax work off which was a small thing but it's something which we could just do which we did this one which goes to town meeting is a little trickier but we are fully in support of lowering this interest rate that we could then ideally and seeing about whether or not the tax work off eligibility below could be tweaked because the feeling is that a benefit from that in town of some of these seniors who have advanced degrees and can do things can come in and work off their taxes for the town so we don't have to hire someone to do something that would actually be might actually come out in our favor so we could make doing the census i mean there are things that could be done and these people wouldn't hear of the get a tax write off but the amount of work they do well i didn't think we're going to get into the detail tonight but falling on allen's i just many people are taking advantage of the existing program and here's what our lost revenue is here's how we think the utilization will increase next year if we make these changes because people need to understand what impact this will have on tax revenue in the one hundred million dollars budget if it's two hundred thousand dollars it's a yawn or if it's five million dollars you know i think people need to have an order of magnitude in an think in order to but but somebody has got i think be willing to say here is our projection in order for town meeting members to make an informed decision about yes or no and i wouldn't expect that that would be the case i mean where i think we have some of the da roll can be useful and somehow and i don't have to seem so speculative factoring in what the impact would be if you had a family of three or six coming in because then the impact from the drain on the services would be i would think much and if the word committee is going to take a position on that i don't know that we are sometimes we do sometimes we don't with planning more articles but from past experience i know overly districts can be quite controversial and there's not a lot of time here and so if that's coming i would urge you to try to figure out how we can have some sort of discussion of that presentation about that before we're called for it because it could be a little more complicated  well i think we've learned a lesson from prior zoning articles not take a position until i had an opportunity to really understand the article which can be very complicated and there's not a lot of time here you know if we're the only time there's an evening time so i'm just wondering if like if their numbers are impacted i won't be here next week well but so that doesn't matter but i'm just wondering how many people won't be here i don't know maybe a comment that i made last time it seems to me this is framed as a school building project with the alternative of doing it with the non m s b s a but i really think this is a solution to enrollment growth that has strained and strangled our system throughout with kids in trailers and repurpose buildings or whatever and so was much as i appreciate the many vs be alternative i really think the alternative is the building project vs continued strangulation of our school system as enrollment grows  and i just think the project is compelling for that reason alone i think the the the m s b s a our school building project lots of people are focused on managing the cost to make this and it cost efficient project and i think the data comparing larger costs in arlington and wall bam for smaller number of students help bear that out and i think the real benefit of real need is to address  fact that the enrollment is not just you know unpleasant it's a crisis we've reached a crisis stage we can't fit any more people into these buildings anymore and that being the case they can't wait you know that the time cannot wait the school department does not think that the town can afford to wait for twenty years to get a process that the m s p a would be buying into which would separate out these projects into the middle school and high school and so on and so i think you're right that the crisis is the a moment growth that can if it can't be met by this particular project which has been carefully planned and vetted and you know so on then we are faced with having to do this alone and that's going to think it's larger than the two of our elementary schools put together it's almost as large as what the cherry was built for so it's not just oh a couple one hundred kids over the last few years it's a huge increase in the number of students in this solves that problem that's of the school system but that this helps solve that problem or my favorite thing to say i absolutely agree with what's been said and what struck me jenny of the conversation last week was like you said the high school has been of concern and needs to be rebuilt fifteen years i mean the building itself needs a lot of work so just into the enrollment i mean it's something that when we worked on the wellington school i think at that time the town had to choose one project for they could go before the f b i and the wellington was the one that was in more dire projects in other towns in the state and the expense is is driven by the fact that schools are simply expensive and there are  factors beyond our control that we have deal with but the factors that are within our control are being handled extremely well so i don't i think the the best course really is to proceed with this because the alternative is to me is really unimaginable construction costs will be ok so that's why i think it's a vote of this project or do nothing if you're going to vote down this project for all of the beneficial economic reasons then i think it's unlikely you're going to vote for the renovation project so i guess i think that's delusional in terms of presenting that is an option to that's really not that great great of cresent option to people it's because people some people think ok fine do nothing that's really not like you do nothing is not an option actually that's right do nothing isn't an option it's do all these other things that will take a long time and be really expensive and come out worse constitution i don't know that i don't know that how could a claim is that you have to spend x amount to one town versus another i don't think that case because that case i mentioned last week the mortars were carried today th t i do share bob's but i share the concern for i guess chris and bob that if it's presented the way you said jack that people will say well fine just voted down and they'll figure it out and they'll walk off x amount in they'll come back to us next year that's not it's not going to happen i know it's going to be a ten year wait twenty year rate if but then as i hear that has to be made clear to people because as i said with the chancery we did go back eighteen months later we had two votes and we didn't have to have to vote on whether to understand that but you know i think people may well think that it's ok to think about taking a nd bite at this apple and because of the new m s p a procedure is it's not and there's no time you know we can't you know will lose the money will lose our place here our work with the state it will go away and i don't think people necessarily wonder stand that based on the history of these things in the town so that's going to be an important message voters deciding whether to approve the tax increase in order to pay for dates for the debt yes town meeting will decide whether to authorize the bar a way i if we do have questions we won't really have an answer to those questions before leaving which starts less than a week later on that tuesday night so as i didn't know if there was any way for us to meet earlier and  intention was not to meet next week because i'm supposed to be leaving the country wednesday night but you're certainly welcome to be put out in front of them but i thought it would better be best just not to meet or to have this perhaps we could do that next week if we do think there's a need to have another meeting before the th we could split into working groups after our very quick vote next week for those that are here would not necessarily even have to be that long but just to get organized and that would be a way to x but i think could do that because what i'm thinking is we had a lot of questions on for him for instance the differed you know tax deferred means and it just seems like we're going to run into the same probably run into before where we don't get the questions answered until the day of but we may not be in a position to do so does anybody have any more explanation what they're going to be bringing i mean i'm just we've all i didn't i mean i know nothing about what they're i think it also be good to ask about the urgency of this why this is coming in november supposed to or may whatever it is you know it's about precedent in a way he was talking about coming to the committee preservation committee cycle when i feel like we're just getting more and more and more things happening  it doesn't seem to be the best way to promote a thoughtful discussion ok so the upshot of this for me is to invite both the assessor and the funny board to come  just comment about next week there are a lot of people in this room smarter than i but i think if we're talking about subcommittees we can all kind of go to different corners because there's overlapping membership and all of that so i don't know how we're going to have some committee meetings  it's work so we guarding open meaning we don't have to post anything for next next week to just to pick the chair of our subcommittee we just have to gather many agenda i will say something like o