hello everyone thank you for tuning in to this episode of belmont in thirty i'm joanna jewel a senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald and wicked local belmont dot com joining me today i am very pleased is selectman adam dash welcome adam has lived in belmont for eleven years with his wife kim and two daughters lillian who is now a senior junior oh she's a junior at which college new york and eleanor who is going to be a junior at belmont high school a senior at belmont high school she's also a drum major for the band the more g the very exciting by day adam you're an attorney for your own firm adam dash and associates in somerville before becoming selectman you served for many years on the war committee you also served on  zoning board of appeals the underwood pool building committee this c p a study committee and you've been a town meeting member for nine years it's all true you're often seen around town wearing fedora see we have one right here so i love your for dorothy and we talking about that later a little bit more you ran a strong campaign against opponent her bony for the town election april fourth and you won easily your slogan was vision experience action so i thought it would be good to have you on the show to talk about how the past five months has been since since you became belmont's newest selectman i mean can you believe it it's been five months yet the campaign seems so long ago because it's been such an active five months so much has happened right with a bit of a whirlwind but it really has i mean how would you sum up summarize the past five  active and exciting and fun enjoy you know going out and talking to people and people certainly are not shy about talking to me i certainly like mixing it up and debating the issues of the day and it's certainly different being selectman from watching someone be selectman i really have a great appreciation for those who served before me adding now i actually spent some time doing it time that is that is the key word here i mean it's a lot of time isn't it out between your work and family in selecting how are you managing that actually surprisingly it's been quite fun because i mean i'm my own law firm in somerville as you said i have attorneys that work for me we've been able to have people cover things as necessary and i basically control my own schedule so i don't have to ask the boss for the time off if i need to do things such as talk to you today and do other things and i'm great so it hasn't really been i really haven't had any conflicts to speak of and that's good and i enjoy  and your family is obviously very supportive yeah like i said one daughter's gone ones already a senior and my wife has a full time job so yeah so would you say it's been what you expected it to be to the extent anyone can expect anything yeah i come to and you sit at the table it's it's very humbling but it's a great honor and i'm really enjoying it well it what would you say is been most challenging the past five months oh there been a couple of things i mean i say first off would be getting people to serve on committees which has been one of the things i've been trying to tell people to do and if you're watching i'm telling you i'm mean if you want to get active in your community if you don't get involved and volunteer in these committees that run our town the right one else is going to do it right so if you want to be active and you want to be involved it urge you all out there watching to to apply we are in the process right now of going through that so it's too late to apply for this year but i renew the put i renew the call for next year for people to get involved i a very easy process to submit resumes a form online on the town's website and to do that there's been some frustrations things such as for instance the video keno issue that we had with the state where before i got  elected they some stores came to this like minocycline told me no they could not have video keno right the video key that was put in and several of the stores by mistake right and then when i got elected we told the lottery commission to correct the mistake by turning off those screens and instead they appealed it and we fought that but we did not prevail right it was frustrating but we we gave it the fight that we could give it and then of course as is always been the case even when i was the war committee the challenge of dealing with all of our capital and budget needs while making it so that people can still afford to live here which is an ongoing ongoing issue while it is definitely a lot a lot coming up in the fall and do you want to give people searching for a new general manager the trash contract has to be determined this fall so we're going to be having another hearing in september we had a public hearing a few months ago we're having another one in there we're going to have to make a decision to put out the request for proposals for a new trash contract  we're dealing with the liquor regulations i have drafted as i campaigned on reforming our liquor regulations and tightening them and i've drafted some revisions which the other selectman we've talked about a couple of times and we're still talking  right when you think you'll be voting on those with the hope this fall what we're waiting on right now is the home rule petition to finish as you know we we pushed through a town meeting this past spring the restrictions on transferability of the liquor license and so that there would not be transferable and they'd have to come back to the selectmen again back to the town yeah so that seems to meeting passed it by in the ninety three percent or ninety two percent that went to the state legislature than they have to pass it as a home r petition and i actually went up to the state house and with our representative dave rogers and testified before the committee to get that home rule petition passed so it's difficult to pass the new liquor regulations which sort of encompass those restrictions until the state has acted on the restrictions so we're talking about all sorts of things with the regulations that i drafted and redline what we currently have and i do a lot of this work in other municipalities doing liquor license works on familiar with what are your what i  see career in my job area so i'm familiar with the subject matter and what they typically have but the state has to finish the homebrew petition process before we can actually implement them but i was able to get for instance the committee appointment regulations none that's right and other towns around us do so i analyzed what some of the other towns around us had done to create a predictable set of rules and help people get appointed to committees that many i'm sure they made in that five months do you want to talk about any of the other accomplishments that that you're proud of that you can say ok wow i did this sure already in my five months you know it's kind of amazing to go back and kind of think of what we've done but i mean i'm very proud that we passed the welcoming town resolution that's both of the selectmen in a town meeting in the nick and i was able to go to a summit that mayor marty walsh had in boston at the kennedy senator senate senate center mine was that waverly square and they were doing that to create wife i for passengers on the train right as it turned out after we started digging into it because i i saw this and i brought it to the attention the town the minister's office and we started digging into it it turned out that actually only about thirty feet are for the wife and then beyond that they were just going to use it to sell the cell companies tell me my cell phone service that's terrible so it didn't have to seventy seventy four feet tall really tall really tough so that's an eyesore so all the cities and towns that someone from the town go to the m b t a hearing on it along with others from other towns in the m b t actually temporarily at least has backed off a lot that may not be done but i think that the m b t heard loud and clear that putting up a network of seventy four foot towers smaller mean people complained to me that the markings in the belmont center started to come up already the painted lines after the renovation and so i started bringing that up and this town was able to go to the contractor who finally admitted that in fact they were done poorly and they needed to be redone in the came in actually redid them so if you go back out there look you'll see that all right so that's really i didn't do the work but i certainly brought it up and i say the the fence that was damaged by vehicle over the winter  by the library i sort of pushed that issue and now that fence has been repaired so that's really getting people bring up issues and i think it's reasonable i certainly move forward on it and then there are just like your slogan said  well what about this the town administrator search if feels like it's taking a long time well i can't speak to what happened before i got elected but since i got elected we interviewed three firms to do the search because ironically under this process you have to do a search for the firm to then do the search so we did the search for the firm and we chose the firm of grew in white which is the one that i wanted to after the interviews i thought it was the the one to do it actually turned out also coincidentally to be the cheapest which is a nice it's nice when the best in the cheapest coincide it is so they were in that process of of doing that right now and vetting candidates and at some point there's a search committee that's out there because legally i suppose the search committee cannot be the committee that makes th decision which is the board of selectmen so there's a search committee that is currently vetting candidates i know that the search group has been interviewing people i got interviewed they've interviewed others in town about what we're looking for in a town minister and then  assuming they will then bring us candidates some slate of candidates and we will decide who to interview and who to hire so i'm expecting that before the end of the year why it took so long to get to that point before my time but since my time being on the board it's moved fairly starting the process with the belmont light general manager search right but that still is very early stages because that just recently happened yeah well adam very recently you donated a gift to the town it an original color plan of the town hall building which was also belmont's public library when it was originally built and apparently it was originally built in the eight hundred eighty s i believe right yes and the play and you found it on line i'm going to let you talk about that but the plan is from the american architect and building news publication and just tell our viewers how you came across it and then we're going to be cutting to a clip of their presentation but how did you come across it and went well this past summer i was on vacation down on the cape cape and i was on my phone just searching the town of belmont things for sale sitting on the screen porch because unfortunately that's what i do and i was searching and i saw that this print was there from eight hundred eighty one from the publication which from what i understand looking it up and doing some research on it is that was a very low circulation magazine for architecture back in the eighteen eighties  and apparently they felt like our town hall was wonderful enough and designed to warrant the appearance of a national publication but so few of them i guess circulated and so few of those have survived i've never seen this image is certainly the original this has seen this is not some common thing and she said no she never seen it either and i figured well maybe i should purchase it and i believe it belongs in town hall i wanted to bring it home someone the minnesota had it and was selling it so when i had a framed and  had brought it back home and belongs in town hall me i could have put it my office or my house but people need to see it and it's rightly hanging in the board of selectmen room if anybody wants to go look the times in belmont now i mean all i keep hearing is there are all these capital projects that needs to be done limited funding i mean for people living in the town i mean should we be worried vote on those recommendations to the we're going to be voting on them at that time but i think we'll see what the recommendations are we can have a discussion and at some point about them but the idea from what we've been hearing and this is been discussed at the board of selectmen level as well from who's the selectmen liaison to that committee stating that some of the their ideas to have some that are short term fixes and some that are long term fixes so we can spread out the cost right clearly the high school has to happen now because we going to get significant state reimbursement and to do that you have to stick to the states timeline so that has to be done in order for that money to happen so that's going to have to happen first and then things like however the conditions such as at the d p w yard and the police station for employees are not great and there are some things we can do short term to address that to make those facilities better without replacing them entirely but with the goal of eventually replacing them entirely would you call them short term solutions  long term solution while the fix the high school is clearly a long term situation building a new building and as with say the police station building a new police station would be a long term but making the current police station more functional safer and better for the employees would be the short term solution and by sort of stretching it out and phasing it it sounds like that would be a way to allow us to get this work done in a way that wouldn't overburden the taxpayers which is the goal so the cabbies leave the capital needs continue in the budget right now the budget for that we just passed four eighteen that we're in right now and started july first of seventeen was not that difficult a budget to do looking at next year's budget gets a little dicier once we start getting out to two thousand and twenty and beyond yeah the budget could be could be an issue so rest assured people to rest assured that we know this we are on this and that someone has a lot of very smart talented people we're spending a lot of time on these things and that i think that we can solve any problem we put our minds to and we will solve it but absolutely people should should be aware that these are the problems we don't we're not trying to sugarcoat it that's the situation now someone has an idea for a solution that they may want to make public what do you recommend they do so adam i get e mails from people almost daily with ideas on this that and the other thing and i think it's important to to have ideas i mean i am five certainly the work committee floated some ideas that some that worked and some that didn't but i know there's a process that should be followed when you have an idea so what would that process be i think one should talk to the people involved in the stakeholders out if you're talking if you're proposing something in a neighborhood you need to talk to the neighbors in my proposing something that has a town department or board that is involved i think you need to talk to the town department or board oftentimes before you before you make it public that i know that's what i've always done  talks to people off the right off the record and to talk to the chair of the various committees because sometimes there are things you may not know about a particular process or particular situation while your idea may seem good one to realize what the full situation is it may not seem as good as you thought you may want to bring it forward so but i know that that is a lot of intelligent people in our community with with a lot of ideas and that's that's the other reason why they should get involved in those committees that i know you're looking for people to get involved with now as far as what they're going to vote on at the upcoming on special town meeting which is november thirteenth that is the tentative date that we have set you know what are they what are the big for town meeting ok happening there will be a report from the high school building committee and we've chosen the designer you know the architecture firm yeah that's exciting they have the model of existing site at me belmont which i thought actually really cool very cool very large three dimensional model and yeah all the houses around it it's really something isn't it couldn't see your house on the white house is definitely right on and yes really something how they did that you know i'm very impressed with that farm parkinson well i get a higher yes and the idea that they have they're thinking of a virtual reality goggles where you could actually walk through the old building in the new building before it's even that i think mazing i think that using the technology like that they're very forward thinking i think will be really interesting now and there will be a vote and will it be on the town election ballot as i was at the most recent meeting and i think you're there to is it the no is there an election in november where the town actually asked to vote to approve what they want for a configuration so that the building committee can go for it when is that going to happen i know the town has to vote at some point on why they are not they approve ok a lot you tell our viewers about that charter well there's a tentative timeline which of course could change right the timeline that we're working off of is one in which we will be having meetings starting this fall with the public about the configuration because of course we need to know whether we're building a nine through twelve and a through twelve or seven through twelve facility because depending on what configuration we come up with the building changes size so we need to know what we're doing and we need to talk and hear from the people i would urge people to urge people to get involved right down to those hearings were having them on different days of the week right there having  month different times of day summer night summer day so the people can't really say that they didn't have an opportunity to attend and we would like everyone to get involved in this discussion and then ultimately a decision will have to be made as to what the configuration is right then the designers will actually have to go and find a design a building and come up with the cost of that and then it would go on the ballot as a debt exclusion for the town to come up with whatever that dollar figure is that's needed to be ready when when is that election be for that that are that ballot the current timeline that we have that we're shooting for is the in of amber eighteen ballots ok however for the dead exclusion however many things can change that would affect that but that is the date we're shooting for i think and is there going to be a point where people will up want to approve are they seeking people to approve by their they want to do that configuration and not before they get that far well we'll have to know because we have to price it been ordered to put a fit a dollar figure on the debt exclusion ballot we have to know what we're building and to know we're building we have to know how many graves are going to be in it so there's a threshold issue that has to be decided this you know right away by the end of the or early next year as to what we're doing as far as that configuration and we've got a consultant been doing work with parents and p t o s and students right and with that maybe locker only frank locker has been doing that work to come in with the school to committee in the school of personnel and with the high school building committee as to what the costs and benefits and pros and cons of doing that are and we've the members of the high school building committee toward recent high schools which have had different configurations to see how that operate that's good and it sounds like the state is ok yet with us doing a seventh or twelve or eighth or twelve or nine through twelve so it's just a matter of us deciding what it is we want to do so that the debt explosion would mean that the taxes well the rates for at period of time not permit it means that well the taxes would be raised but what people pay would be increased just like when we build the pool or we build the wellington ok we would borrow money yeah and we don't know how we would bond for instance we don't know how long the bonds would be twenty years thirty years that would depend how much you pay or would dictate what you pay every year but that payment would then be a debt exclusion on top of the taxes it's not it doesn't change the tax rate ok it's temp because we've changed the tax rate  permanent right you do a debt exclusion you raise the money everyone pays until the bond is paid off then you pay off the bond in the money goes away off your bill and you know for instance we paid off generally and then we added on wellington in the in the pool so you know you can exchange debt for debt and that's one of the ideas with about phasing the project and having some temporary fixes and then some longer term fixes so that you could have some debt come in come off another debt come in come off the books and to the extent we well i hope to have a high school project whatever we turn decide to build it approved and maybe even built an open maybe that's too soon but but certainly in the world would be nice right certainly in the works would be great and to have our our initiative to have more collaboration and cross pollination between different groups in town the different departments in town and little by little we've been breaking down the silos that used to sort of sign me us and i think that it continues and it continues and we bring in more people and hire people who are collaborative and we have an opportunity with newtown and then a straighter search in the general new general manager the light department to continue that collaboration between departments so that everybody can get where we need to go i mean we're all in the same boat right i mean if we can all be rowing in a different directions we won't go anywhere we all need to sort of be rowing in the same direction to get the we need to go efficiently that and it's a good analogy i think that's and i think keeping for years on the work committee i get an idea about something i like to do and i write it down and i went back and looked at the list after the election i'd like fifty things on it and when you think about three years and you divided a part and you see how much you have to do every month it looks a bit daunting so so one thing i was not just one thing but certainly i think number one would have to be the capital projects in the in the budget in stabilizing the us financially and getting the things built that need to be built so we can deliver the services that people expect i mean we need safety we need good schools we have good schools we have good public safety but we need we have good d p w but we need to give them the tools and the building to operate in order to continue right that and right i mean my goal in running in my goal and serving is to leave the place better than i found it and that's that's going rate that's what i'm working to do as i've said to people at town hall after the election i'm not i'm not here to get reelected i'm here to get things done and i thought that people would appreciate the efforts that i do and would think about that next time around right anything's done next time around well let's ask you do we have time to talk about the f doras i think we might have yes we have a little time here so you're often seen wearing a fedora and this you brought one here today this is the one you wore what can you tell people  well i'm bald and i don't want to get the sun cold in the winter i think that so yeah but you tell me when i interviewed you during the election there there's a history with these fedoras well yeah i mean when my grandfather retired from pennsylvania as an executive and he got a place down  just looking at them shopping for the early i think you need to you know as with anything when you're wearing clothes you need things for different outfits to match yeah i don't want to go wearing a black suit in a brown hat and you know have hats for the summer straw hats and this is like a linen hat or in the winter you want to have your  one so there is their favorite shop that you like to go to your go to there are couple of online stores which are good and then there's a good one in harvard square but there are not a lot of happy dashers left anymore now and that's for sure has been sort of what i have done with the time when i'm not working for many years means like as though being vice chair of the war committee was not time consuming right while i was also vice chair of the underwood pool building committee you know she likes to be busy i can tell you like to be busy and i like to be involved in my community i think we've got a really interesting community it's like this always this in this sort of urban center we've got this great small town right next to all the amenities of the big city and i can walk out my door and hike up into the mclean land and you're in the wilderness almost it feels like and then you can hike back down to the center and get a coffee it's into unique to a unique place with really good school system really smart well informed people it really is like in the way says of sanity sometimes and i think that makes us definitely unique so i guess that answers the question that i was going to ask you which is why you moved to belmont the short answer would be because my my wife's works in waltham and i work in somerville and this  the kids are growing up and you know do you see yourself here for the duration i don't i have no intention of going anywhere a little bit here when i go to work and i just got word that our time is up so i have to wrap it up and i'm so glad you came on the show i want to same thing for coming on the show and why are you out here again in another five months how about that any time any time she wants to talk about how things are going though great evil things which has been very thank you everyone for tuning in if you have had ideas for future shows please email me at belmont at dot com thank you