from town residents actually number of actions by consent and we will do have a report from the media center update on no regulations from the board of health residents other than what's on our agenda is this evening stand i think david was going to provide to us an update on this really terrible accident that occurred friday morning at the  as you all know that area is under the jurisdiction of the transit police so they are the lead investigators in the accident and they are working the scene and they are collecting data and belmont to the extent that police department chief have relationship with the chief of the transit police so to the extent that we can assist we will but the sole jurisdiction for the investigations the transit police and as soon as they provide needs assessment i think that's an important discussion certainly even belmont as it is a community that might have issues as relates to the abuse so that's terrific that the health department and the e this is a little bit earlier in january but on generous severance from nine a m to noon we just missed a day but there's been cardboard recycling that's been taking place in this community it's a pilot town your thirty seven c street from nine a m to noon and then on february fourth ninety into new carpet must be flattened but does not need to be cut so this is the only one that may be dropped off so it's a very short process you put to one thirty p m this is bring your lunch beverages and cookies will be provided so if you only want cookies and you can just show up and have something to drink as well go to the public for a week when your friends are there any other announcements  seventeenth saturday december seventeenth is a visual event to provide support to all the members in our community that we are a community that embraces all of its members and that we would take a stand if they are feeling marginalized in any way for bully or physically harassed and i think that this is an event that came about because there are instances statewide as well as nationally that we're starting to see the attorney general's office has initiated a new hate crimes hotline this year and this was it only it only opened about two weeks ago and on the first day they had four hundred calls so we're looking to do as a community is to say is to is to get in front of it and to say we already know as a community what our values are and what we stand for and we want to make sure that everyone in our community is feeling that where as members of the government police department states that they are committed to working in partnership with all citizens of our community in the delivery of police services raising the quality of life for all to promote dignity respect in a safe atmosphere a recognizing our responsibility to maintain order failure for flaws it's protect individual rights whereas in may of two thousand and ten the state of massachusetts took steps to protect all students from unwanted aggressive behavior by passing legislation which prohibits bullying on school grounds buses and activities and requires that schools take steps to report respond to bully him and up on my community and the bum a public schools develop a plan to educate students parents and educators about that is the expectation of the bum of public schools that every student parent and staff member of is familiar with the bullying prevention intervention plan and whereas the beaumont human rights commission is charged by the board of select no way you could build a ramp and we of course would get a variance well funny thing happened on the way to the board we were denied the variance and therefore the bleachers got built to with the platform but with no press b thousand and nine bill revised the plans and see whether we could get a little cheaper if we had like a half ramp was half left which we didn't have any money at all to me even this past year when it looked like the stars would be aligned between funds that we had leftover funds that were left over from so called harris to when they redid the field and we came up within seventy five thousand dollars and the deal was those funds would be allocated if they could be matched by private funds of the remaining seventy five thousand dollars needed to my right to charge of that raised to seventy five thousand a lot of generous people a lot of help on the post first off i'd like to thank our h r department they're very instrumental in helping us obtain this grant it's a fantastic grant and david and phyllis that's a ten thousand dollars grant which will provide our drivers plow training simulator training similar to what you see police and fire have emergency vehicle training so this will put the gentleman in a simulated driving experience with snow plowing all the obstacles of how much snow plowing your mailboxes your trees anything and everything so they'll go through some classroom time and then they'll actually summon some time and it actually simulator that this set up like a truck i did bring a picture of it  see tonight thank you mike it's a great great program actually saw this at the american public works national snow conference that i attended from want to get this for many many years and like i said people not only getting ready for the election but have printed my little thank you's and sort of summaries in the aftermath one of the best things is that more than one hundred poll workers from around town one hundred one hundred and actually helped us during the period of this election which is not just one day of course because this is an unusual time there was an election reform law which allowed and created a period of early voting so that lasted eleven days before the election basically running an election every single day for eleven days and then on the election day run that one again and then we were audited we were chosen in belmont to be a part of the kind of random audit of three percent of the precincts in the commonwealth or twenty two hundred sixty six were chosen we were number forty eight so just a few days after the election we were chosen for that had to run again so over a period of less than a month it was a lot of work never mind the september the two elections in september and tell me right sara so i have saved the folks who work for me you know nancy dionne and meg just so i could do without without them i just it is not alone who's sitting here although i'm the only one who's here at night today they are the ones who have put in blood and sweat i have to say so you asked me to bring in some statistics for you you have so you could know so belmont really hangs out usually between the eighty five percent voting on presidential election years and this was no different we were a little over eighty two percent but eighty two point five percent of our seventy thousand eight hundred voters which means that fourteen thousand six hundred ninety one votes were cast and counted and every one of those is a person with a name and voting record behind them of those people those fourteen thousand plus sixty one hundred of them chose to come during early voting thirty four percent i'm one of the highest ones in the state certainly amongst the towns and cities that are in our kin bracket of demographic size of town it's it's a pretty large number we've we made a pretty big investment of energy and and money to make sure that people could fully embrace early voting if they wanted to and make it available as a facility to people seem to really really like it the result of course is that we are somewhere between our usual eighty and eighty five percent it didn't seem to drive more voters they seem to be really really happy but it's very costly and a lot of the kind of back and processes which we would things that continue to develop each town and city had to develop and so we had to do a lot of back and stuff and it took  tremendous toll on people who are kind of recovering so our last information was was finally certified the day before thanksgiving just so you know it starts it started to work twenty four than into the day before thanksgiving we could certainly never have done it without all of the cooperation and really expert help from the guy who's just sitting here the d p w folks the police the fire the health department every single i t every department really came in and kicked it for us they did a great job when we put out the call for sawhorses or signs or a ballot boxes or health screens for privacy they they came forth and and they just did a great job we could never have done it without them so more numbers you're interested because i know you're a numbers guy who actually thirteen hundred absentee ballots including overseas and military voters twenty five hundred new voters were registered in belmont from january twenty fourth twenty five hundred from january through november now you say to yourself she why didn't belmont's voting population increase by twenty five hundred because the voting the voters are like the ticker tape it goes up and down at every moment in every of every day people are constantly being pushed and pulled as they go to the registry motor vehicles or they register in law minster or they move from framingham then we pull them from belmont so it changes every single day so that that's twenty five seven hundred separate transactions of people new people registering to vote in belmont and then of course nancy who does all of our scheduling of our poll workers i know your mom was a poll worker margaret and she does it like an air traffic controller i can't believe how she gets everybody in the right place to go out and they're trained and ready to go so it's it was a  for their particular cue the new new registered voters i mean it's just i'm really working hard to hear about these things right and i was at the high school interesting laugh i went to the high school as i do before every election to register his vote and kids weren't really registering to vote because they had registered online another one of the provisions that had happened in our group during the election reform laws and they were happy to see me or a few of them who came up actually had to do it or had some questions but for the most part the ones who were committed to register to vote already had more people and some of the other kind of it's nice the largest voting early voting was interesting too which is here i phone in your town hall so anyway obviously i'm really proud of all those folks and i've put their names in the newspapers and you know i want people to look at them and say thank you they do a lot to to help belmont to make sure people's rights are protected and joyfully they're happy to do it and happy to return however one of the it's just it's not really a disappointment but i really would hope that i would have endorsement from the board moving forward i have approached several brands for i'm i'm very interested in pretty committed to try and lobby to get a constitutional amendment for no excuse early no excuse absentee voting because by adding early voting to massachusetts basically creating a no excuse absentee process they not only created wonderful opportunities for people they added a tremendous cost we had early voting ballots physical ballots and on the lopes we had an applications we had absentee s which are guaranteed by the constitution and then we have official ballots so we already have three different types of ballots requiring three different types of handling printing costs shipping cost administrative cost tracking every one of those and it's i t examples that cetera so i hope that i have is that we won't let this opportunity pass us by and is you wouldn't have to be right open poll workers for the ten to eleven days before the actual election day because people can just make up an absentee ballot for any reason why they can do that anyway right now they could be for early voting if you had a reason state that's right my son's in d c he you know that's where your religious right is there's only through you really know your qualify and we know having seen early voting that this is something that appeals to people they like to be able to schedule what they like to watch the weather older people particularly we just want to get there before the crowds go that's right so if we're embracing this and we the law says right now that it's a bi annual state elections i really would like some movement in that direction to say not only let's make this available to people but pouring licenses back in two thousand and fourteen to take a look back based upon the legislation that was passed whether or not the transfer billet he issue could frame it so in two thousand and thirteen we had petitioned the town meeting to add additional retail licenses in pouring licenses and we had a very routine  issue and clearly we had all our retail licenses gone and so therefore the value of having a transfer was more more more substantial than if we had available licenses for retail available so george was asked to take a look at of making sure that we could go back oh we have the vehicle to go back to the legislature through town meaning through for an article to make it clear that the licenses that we have for both retail and pouring could have some transfer ability restrictions attached to them as was the case or was intended several years ago so he can explain what the what the recent history has been with regard to legislative request for  new licenses from cities and towns and what the mechanisms that take place in terms of what kind of restrictions can be imposed but this is something the board after the vote for the transfer that took place several weeks ago as town council must take a look about trying to make it is there a way to go back to the legislature make it crystal clear that we want transfer ability restrictions on a licensing board but oh right we want we want to georgia look at this i don't think the other eight point here is comic if i'm if i may because i think this is a very very important issue for the town the issue of the transferability of the licenses so if if i may mr chairman i just want to recount the history a little bit to set things in perspective so people understand why this is such an important discussion ok initially in two thousand and six you know town meeting authorized us to request our legislators to allow us to issue three retail licenses one all out the hall to beer and wine with the following restriction in the special legislation and the home rule petition once issued the licensing authority shall not approve the transfer issuance of an additional three licenses retail alcoholic beverage licenses one for the sale of all alcoholic beverages and three for the sale of beer and wine excuse me and two more for the sale of beer and wine total for beer and wine except it contained no restriction on transfer ability the special legislation in fact the language it contains said the licenses shall be subject to chapter one eighty three of the general laws which star market and i just i again for people to understand how important this discussion is i just want to ask you a few questions george the board of selectmen could not have forced the loading do to surrender the license back to the town am i correct short of its going out of business and i mean as long as it continued to operate it was and no but we as a says a licensing authority could not tell the loading dock well if you want to transfer it no you have to surrender it back to the town we didn't have that legal power right i mean the that's correct ok it's ok and we as a board of selectmen don't have unlimited discretion to deny a transfer of liquor license ok so we could not under the law we could not look at the financial benefit to the loading dock i thought it was outrageous that they were able to sell the license for four hundred thousand but i think you advised us that we as a board of selectmen cannot take into account the financial benefit to the loading do when deciding on the application of star market for the license write the case law a couple of things a transfer is judged by the same standards that would be applied to a new license applicant and in both cases the discretion of the licensing authority is fairly broad or at least that's what the courts like to say but the reality is there are permissible reasons and there are impermissible and  cites reasons unrelated to what the what the court interprets as the purposes of the statute then those aren't sufficient reasons to deny either the initial issuance or a transfer of the license and i don't think the fact that the transfer or was being compensated would be considered a proper reason for tonight ok and also i think you had you had advised us we couldn't deny the transfer to star market merely because of its size or because it was owned by another corporate conglomerates right we have to focus on its operations at its current location right the size of the company the terms of how much money it makes or or its ownership is or not it's not really the fact of the inappropriate factor you consider the business that is being licensed at that location and the nature of that business you can certainly consider the size of  cannot deny someone and license the transfer of a license simply because it would compete with other businesses in town right the standard is public need or public want not not a protection of against competition and there's a case to certainly make you that you could certainly make the decision that there isn't a public need or want for an international licensee but if you were expressly doing it to protect existing licensees from competition that would that would not be an appropriate reason for denial ok and even though you know the intent of town meeting may have been that the license not issued to the star market if we use that as grounds to deny the transfer to star market that would also not be well there's an alignment between the views expressed by town meeting and permissible reasons for denial then that's fine you can look to how the public has expressed itself in terms of public need or want but if if there articulating that we you know we don't want if the reasons expressed by town meeting don't line up with permissible statutory reasons than just because the town meeting expressed that you ok ok so just to conclude i mean my purpose is to let people realize that absent legislation restricting transfer ability you know we don't have absolute discretion and our hands are tied in many ways to deny the transfer of the license on impermissible grounds then that would open the town to litigation sure i mean i think what i've been trying to accomplish in part in this memo is to show that where towns want to to and not be sort of faced with this problem of having to approve transfers for value or transfers to different neighborhoods or they've actually put it in the enabling legislation and that's become very commonplace to conclude i just want to make it clear that given those constraints it was really my intent and i think selectman williams and ten p can speak for himself to really try to steer the town down a road that wouldn't expose it you know to  liability granted it's not an ideal solution but that's why we need to sit down and find ways through special legislation to restrict transferability  carry forward the prohibition on transfer and there that was in the two thousand and six legislation and the question was could we do something about that could we go back to the legislature and and fix it and  i'll just say for myself i've gone back and looked through my own notes twenty thirteen was a very very busy town meeting season we were juggling a lot of sort of big town meeting issues and this really didn't get a lot of attention  there were may have been some brief discussion about carrying this forward but and i've looked at the temp minutes we talked a little bit about the breadth of the board's discretion in terms of the licensing initial licensing decisions we never really talked about transfers at all so i think this warranted kind of step back let's look at what our options were and to what it's to the what degree now we could ask for an amendment to to conform the enabling less legislation to what we want and part of that exercise for me is always looking at what is the legislature's practice on this kind of stuff and as ns out i don't think there's any single subject the legislature increasing the quota the number of licenses that can be issued and so one of the things that i noticed is that actually they all follow a fairly all of these bills are like other bills of their type there are several types what the most restrictive type is simply that the town through its legislative body asks the legislature to approve a specific license to a named licensee at a named location they just don't grant knew what they they actually think they grant the license essentially through the legislature meaning the licensing authority obviously comes back and holds the hearing and formally grants it but that's that's the way it is and many of those include a prohibition on transfer both as to the person corporation and cetera and to the location the practical effect of which is if that licensee goes out of business the license ceases to exist because the what the initial legislation only authorized granting to that licensees so the license effectively turns into a pumpkin if that licen is that the licenses are restricted to particular areas of town and they're being you this is being used as an economic development tool in a lot of places some cities have towns and have actually gotten the ability authority of the legislature to charge an additional sum of money for new new issuances or transfers but the transfers are limited as to location either the specific location of the business they should  or or the particular zoning or business district to which it's restricted and that allows the licensing authority if somebody wants to sell their business first for a new person to operate the same business at the same to approve a transfer and such as just the sale of the whole business but not to allow somebody from across town to come in and ask for that the whole license be transferred not only as to the person but as to the location and move it somewhere out of the difficulty we were pretty small we've allowed us transfers but only but not as to location and some of the ones that talk about issuing to specific licensees allow transfers but not as to location so that the license doesn't cease to exist if the licensee goes out of business and then a great many towns they're on restricted you know they they raise the cap and they basically get added to the pool like like any other business so the question here one that one of the things that i i would i think i've recommended in the draft that i've presented is to ask that that the twenty legislation be amended to include a prohibition against transfer as to location which would preserve the that would which preserves the continuation of the licenses if the existing licensee either went out of business and and or well or really just in the situation where the business was sold and then if there was no sale said to us before we need to look at who the applicant is for the license and whether we believe that they meet the needs of the community and intent of this law so because the provision would be in there that they could change because we would do it for a site to prove the most like what we can do that you can't do it right well i mean it could be a playable to the current licenses but very most of them were issued more than three years ago so they would be past it but  you know in the in the situation that you were just confronting that i think part of the heartburn that people were feeling about this is the license had just been issued and then the licensee turned right around and looked at me and flipped it and that's at least what a three year requirement does is  you have five believe seven licenses of each type still to issue for restaurants beer and wine so you're way under the quota we have nineteen that we can issue we have an issue on that he you know we have we have we have seven we have seven available restaurant wine and beer you have sixteen you've got nine nine of them out and i haven't issued and you have ten all alcohol restaurant licenses authorized you only have three of them issued you have seven additional very wan and you were granting one all out we don't license three and it was forseeable that that would immediately have value and so the transfer ability prevented that from becoming a commodity that could be sold when we went from three to six one in two to two and for you that put you very close put the town of belmont very close to what it's quote it would have been if this was a chapter one thirty eight town and just speaking for myself in my memory of the discussions i'm not sure any of us anticipated that they would be snapped up as quickly as they were and we've got a right to fully you know fully employed again i mean this is frankly another way that the three licenses that were issued under the previous legislation back in two thousand and six i think up those were issued by the licensing authority knowing that there was a restriction in the statute ok and the applicant know that there was a restriction in the statute on transferability so so it's no surprise i mean couldn't we say that that restriction survives despite thousand and fourteen legislation because there's an argument ok i mean how are they harmed if that's how that now if they were to tran if they were to surrender it to the town and we were to reissue the licenses for the new applicant i think we have an issue then of transfer ability because that would be under the two thousand and fourteen right would have because that i that the license actually came back to the town and then we gave it back to the the purchaser that i don't think we actually did that but i think i think that was that was the concept and then when we hit this this second star transaction in my mind that was like a complete exception because you know i think it's better if the licenses come back to the town and then get reallocated because that takes all the juice out of it but we were faced with a situation where that just wasn't the case right and then and then you know you end up well you can't consider size you can't consider competition you can only look at the applicant and we ended up where we ended up at least two of us did so now we were thinking about what we're going to do going forward when i read your commentary about location you know everyone and i don't want to say everyone i'm saying there is a concern about small business but most of these businesses don't own the property where they're located right and so in my mind as a business person if you attach the license to the property you're providing a real boon for the individuals who own the property and i know people who are looking for commercial real estate and know much for eight years you can't find anything for sale so i i i'm concerned about the idea of of linking an alcoholic license  or license to a location and i like the idea of an area i think that kind of protects you know then you know there's one over here there's one over there but this civic location i'm not so sure about that the other thing i understand population how many more to all retail licenses can we appeal for i'm not suggesting we're going to know there's no member there's no limit because but i don't want to you're not we're not one is not a chapter one thirty eight community which is to say that belmont stop you know ceased to be a dry town by going directly to the legislature and asking for its own set of rules rather than by putting a question on the ballot to the voters saying shall we become shall alcohol sales be permitted that that's a particular way of going about it under chapter one thirty eight that now brings you fully within the provisions of chapter one thirty eight including the quota system so rather than accepting the quota system which is so many license per five thousand population belmont just went directly a legislature and said give us permission to issue x number of licenses the first time and the first time the second time the third time belmont is never formally accepted chapter one thirty eight so we're not under you not under that rule number one and number two is that the section seventeen limits in chapter one thirty eight are really something of a joke at this point anyway i mean what legislature is doing thirty to forty times a year is granting the towns many towns that have accepted chapter one thirty eight special permission to go go to way beyond that limitation there has  establish a quota really and there i think because of the amount of money that's been paid for licenses and some of the communities in the urban communities the restaurant industry and their lenders are feel that that would be disruptive to the industry and they have successfully fought against the removal of a quota system because you're saying that there would be on the minute number of licenses it will reduce the value more because the value of any money would take forward step dictate how many of money using your license as collateral in order to make an investment in the business in order to make an investment in the business they say this is important to the to the stability and the solvency of the restaurant industry so this argument's been going on back and forth for quite some would baker had it in his governor bigger had it in his modernization bill that he submitted in the spring it didn't survive the final thing so the legislature deals with an onslaught of these special requests every year you can you can go to the legislature and ask for as many licenses it's because you want with and what i was trying to describe in this memo is that when towns do this they tend to go about it in one of these three or in some combination of these three ways and i don't see much variation from that or any one more question it's my understanding that the star market license was approved by the a b c c on december second three with respect to the citizens taxpayers and voters appealed to the a b c c as you may know when the licensing part of a b c c came to belmont on december second and handed the license over susan cleary asked what about the appeal and the answer from the licensing division was what appeals we don't know anything about the person handling the appeals has been out sick for the past two weeks so i finally called the drawer office of the director this morning to see if anyone knew what the status was of the appeal and the memorandum so the the loading dock has applied for and all alcohol restaurant license right you know and is w will that application be impeded by the fact that there's this appeal outstanding in the licenses are in there we've said to their attorney i mean for two parts to this answer there is a statute that allows you to hold both simultaneously but it but it requires that the business meet certain physical parameters i do not understand that the loading dock is seeking to hold them simultaneous no you're not were asking you know it's i don't think it intends to meet those parameters so that doesn't apply but i would expect that they would not be eligible therefore to issue to obtain a pouring license until there they were no longer the licensee of a retail license you know and i did not quite sure what the status of that is we did obtain we indicated to to his counsel that we thought it was premature to go forward with the pouring license application with a hearing on the pouring license application before the final approval of the other so the final approval has been had ok and we december second and basically  granted both pouring in retail that's where i am and i'd like to also understand georgine based on your recommendation how can we move forward if with all of that if my colleagues agree that all licenses that have been issued both pouring in retail it's at the same location whether we don't grant it to the new licensee right but i have one more point to make and just this this doesn't have to do with the license discussion it has to do with town meeting motions because i think there's a lot of confusion around motions you know we experienced this on the town center where people thought that the design was part of the motion which is not the case we experienced this on this second round of licenses where people thought the fact that it was discussed made it part of the motion and because it wasn't part of the motion it didn't end up in the home rule so you know that put us in a very untenable position as the liquor authority because all the sudden boom you know the that the license is not restricted so i think that you know if people in town meeting in you know we all have to be careful that if we think something has been  done and we think a motion has been conditioned somehow by the discussion that we actually have to make sure that that that that happened in there is a vehicle in the town meeting procedure that you know there's a vote now you can say that's not in the the way he wished no one really picked up on that i would suggest because i went back and i read the first of all we know none of us ever talked about transfers that's right we talked about you know what how much discretion does the board have and  don't and we talked about not wanting a package store type of operation it's there was never any discussion of supermarkets versus local businesses it was more the nature of you know  of trying to spark this with this memo we have a couple of months anyway before a deadline for a town meeting article i've put out there are a couple of drafts for your consideration but if you were to want to organize a group of people to look more thorough early into this to determine exactly what it is we want to put forward i would certainly welcome that i didn't get very much guidance when i drafted the two thousand and thirteen legislation about what the town actually want to i think we can go back and revisit thirteen over and over again i think the point that i'd like to make is that i'd like to move forward and try to if my colleagues agree i'm just one vote here i'd like to see us move forward with some kind of change in all of these licenses to create a new entry answered nobody provision within all of them  you know i've been told that the selectmen should be doing this and then the question is you know should we be doing this or should we create a committee would i mean i don't think we could i think we can decide if you guys agree gentlemen agree a good one and then get to this point which i agree with but i do want to mention spirit of that because you know their reaction to the transfer to start with you know while even though our license is not transferable now this is such a public issue we shouldn't come yeah i don't think it's a bad idea for them to come before and see whether one or both of them can attend or that number nine hundred and let me let me tell you i agree perfectly and wholeheartedly with you that this is an issue we need to address and we do need to bring it to town meeting and have town meeting make a decision on transfer ability and you know i'm suggesting and you generally may feel differently  to meet with us perhaps and at the state house you know there may be some concern about imposing restrictions ists of licenses that are already outstanding that we need to discuss with them  i also if you want to sweep in the the out the restaurant licenses the parking licenses i'll just say that in terms of urgency get more people read it it's really retail because you're at the quota with retailing you're nowhere near it with pouring licenses but if you want to do it all together it begs the question as to whether we should maybe draft a special act that pulls everything yeah into one law you know that because you're  eventually eventually i mean if there's more development on south pleasant street and and in cushing square and waverly square there could be a market for those restaurant i think so li three i want to thank you board for all i think yeah mostly agreeing that the best policy would be if a license is no longer being used to come back to the town to be reissued i spent the past month or so talking to almost all of the selectmen up here going back tonight jane ninety eight and that was their understanding of the original intent of the entire set of regulations that george described in a large matrix  no matter how ambiguous it may have become after the two thousand and thirteen meeting so i think that's going back that basic principle goes back to the basis of what belmont it's town meeting and it's  i've always wanted i hope you would hope that you would entertain this with some urgency i think there is some uncertainty out there among people who hold licenses that store what exactly their conditions are and i think a special town meeting as soon as possible would help clarify that and i think the board seems to be heading in the right direction i would prefer a restriction on all sale and transfer both pouring and retail and since i've been talking to and i've also talked to former selectman bronzer berger and i asked him what was the potential of getting this sort of restriction passed through the legislature and he said he was ninety nine percent certain he could get it through so i think it trade be good to have him here and consult with him about the process and also whether this is going to be a separate act for pouring versus retail but as far as he's concerned a restriction on and it's from the friends of the month sports seem to support them on sports program events any further information around that they will use it for the program ok wonderful do i have a motion to accept this generous gift of a thousand dollars from the friends of belmont sports  serve as the nonprofit who do fund raisers to golf tournaments and other kinds of things and so they have been very generous over the years to do fundraisers in baker basically supplement the sports program sport program had they focused on children with disabilities absolutely because she's the mother of a autistic child yeah that's right thank you very much it's wonderful hello jeff sorry running behind tonight team elected vice chair relations i was on the border for a year now and i've been a producer and volunteer for say about a year is now and i just love the be the center of that it's a wonderful resource for the town and i'm  looking to do great things continue in the footsteps of the people for us that did such great things with it so i think it's a great thing for the town for the people here to make the best of a great programs ok very very strong position and i'll say a couple of things just to highlight and out of that actually we've been we have taken a formal vote yet but we've been talking with the town schools and investing considerable amount into helping the town extend the fi network to the press box and that's a major really project that we write so we're waiting and that will allow us that will give the town more capability to school more capability but also we'll be able to go live from that area and  well installing some permanent cameras in that facility and just expanding our live what's interesting is we're able to go live now if we wanted to from here and we would you could be see this people involved with classes and out a specific person who's now their outreach to schools in working with a number of both with the high school and the middle school and we're doing a program this january with about my world film we're bring we've done i mean i can just touch upon the numbers they've all actually gone up over the previous years our organizational individual members account is three hundred one but that actually does not count a good portion of the school in town staff were all under the same membership we gave back to the town two hundred two thousand dollars worth of equipment facilities so that was actually service that you would otherwise have to pay for so that's that's that's  think a good indication of how we're serving at least in terms of a quick meant town residence organizations and then they have a government hundred twenty nine meetings covered i don't know what the number is going to be this year but we're always trying to improve that i think that's a remarkable effort and that's something that maybe can be replicated in other areas like waverley trail you know for example yeah so i commend you i think that's great that's great that's a great idea yeah i mean the yeah and original productions we're working on it we've been working on off and on with various kinds of news programs but we're again more seriously working on a regular news community news program with one of the local resident who's a news also now working on a p s a with the police department and health department called hidden in plain sight drug prevention and so that's a interesting project that we're doing with them and we're doing a lot more public service announcements a lot more work know to the motor pool because the fifty caliber machine guns weren't working on a whole line of tanks that he had in germany he said i need these fix he he's in patton's tank they go to the front he gets out and he fixes get our arms around identifying those people as well so we actually had in iraq you know in iraq war veteran at our table at the last event so there you know those guys are in town to be exact ok thank you we do a lot in terms of publicizing what we do on camera a lot i think there's more that we can do you know through belmont media center to advertise and to explain and talk about the issues that we're working on ok so let's just let's talk about that all right talk to you since twenty ten about that you got forth to to allow us involvement to make the right decisions around minuteman relates to the building project in our county he participated in there we would have been able to reach the i believe the right decisions without his his hard work but he's decided to move as he deserves a break and we're at the table now we asked for applications we received gems of course and soon as i understood that you might have a full hold wholeheartedly support your being appointed  this position it's going to be a challenging one because you know i think most folks know we are withdrawing and would be over the next three years so i think we need someone that can reach out to the minutemen and district members and continue to represent belmont's point of view and sort of in this sort of transition period there we're going through and understand further how we can continue to provide high quality vocational education to our high school students this is actually a joint appointment although this board has authority but you know we have the last time at least in the invited to the tom moderator to join his my could not be here tonight so he said we should proceed to think of him and you know jim the interesting thing is well number one it's a temporary appointment so it's only three years right and number two maybe you can help us coordinate bringing some of our kids back into minute mad as a as an on district member i mean you know so you know it was certainly something we charges in this in this pre construction time come back ok come back you know come back to come back to belmont and i also want to be a member of the board to try to make sure the school is a long term success as well jim we look have a question i do yeah i just wanted to mention one thing on the warrant committee you were the one on the eleven the one is that correct i'm not i'm not on the on the september meeting and then at the at the at tobar nineteenth meeting or something like that there was looking to simply start the ball rolling as i'm sure everybody's aware question for voted marijuana as being legal here in the state of massachusetts about six weeks ago julie and myself and the third member donna david attended the annual meeting of the mass association of health boards the oversight board of all the boards of health care of massachusetts to get our certification and part of it was a discussion on where we're going forward with marijuana to educate us as far as what has been done what needs to be done and  trick the point of this is that if in fact belmont one stab some control over the availability of sales of marijuana we have a shorter time table than you realize and so for that reason i wanted to bring our board forward to you today to kind of get the ball rolling with you gentlemen a little bit if i may again everybody knows that it passed here in belmont it passed roughly fifty three to forty seven percent so not a huge mandate but certainly speaking to the fact that it was it was close so what the law does again is that it allows an individual that one ounce of marijuana on their person in public and up to ten ounces in their home you're allowed to have six growing plants per adult twelve per household they must be inside the house they cannot be viewed from the outside so you can't put them in with your grapevines and the likes be an increase in black lights growing and such or the state of course is allowed to get taxation in the center but the deal is is that if we do nothing then there can be as many shops as we want as they want rather and it could be within certain parameters of time we may not want and what the law did do specifically is it does prohibit fifty five hundred feet from a school we do not need to deal with that it prohibits smoking if tobacco is not allowed to be smoked it allows a landlord to prohibit smoking of it please let me remind you though that there's two ways marijuana can be taken and of course the others as adults and it's interesting that within the law it does prevent minas a pallet is from banning the sale of edibles brownies lollipops gummies you'd be amazed what they put it into so we cannot officially banned the sale of edibles we can ban t especially the sale of edible of edibles we can ban the sale of smoking however since the town has spoken fifty three to forty seven we're kind of reluctant to do that what's interesting is that the way that the state looked at it is that the goal is to treat marijuana like alcohol and as we move forward to come up with some sort of a by law for the town that may be a template transfer of licenses not withstanding exactly how that we handle this now what you need to appreciate is that january two thousand and eighteen is when things need to become effect or they're automatically going to be able to come effect and if i mean this a policy wants to control the number and further control the location it must come in front of the entire town vote because you know it's it cannot limit the number of establishment it cept by the vote of the misogynists a pallet which means we need to put it in front of the citizens in november as you well know in order to do that we need to put it in front of town meeting in april and that's why we have such a short schedule we need to come up with an article for this coming town meeting so that we then can get what we're looking for for marijuana regulation in front of the citizenry in november yes the so there has to be a referendum there has to be or a for an in order for us to control the number and the locations beyond the five hundred schools so that's what really brings us forward here today is as a we're certainly not going to compli it at the table but i need to put this on your radar that if we want to have a set number of retail shops and we want to have further restriction rather than just simply five hundred three from a school we need to be one tho how the twelve gentlemen before you how did you do alcohol because it really is a parallel of course in many ways you know the feelings that people have of the availability of marijuana and alcohol as far as schools playgrounds churches whatever your  that but just you know wasn't a mandate but in fact this community did vote for it so i think we're inclined to support you know moving forward some kind of regulation that will ensure we can control which you know that towns are allowed to add two percent sales tax you know but you must vote for it it's not automatic you have to basically asked us and within town the referendum a lot of the referendum and so that i can imagine what it's going to say no but the realise that you cannot use checks you cannot use credit cards because that brings the banks into an illegal action so there is a one hundred per cent cash does that mean and that's how colorado's been doing it to the tune of over a billion dollars you can own purchase through is that somehow it was money it's an excellent question we don't have i mean i'm going to say listen it's currently happening in colorado and other states it's others towns have already started to move forward with it as well i mean i mean the whole thing is going to be coming under question because you have states rights and federal laws coming into loggerheads i mean one of the things that bothers me about it is that although i'm fortnight voted for it but one of things that bothers me about doing something illegal even at the federal level even if everybody else is doing it is that you know we're town government and should we really be participating in that in an activity that's  on the alcohol license question we had you know we had this probation against having the two licenses of the same in one of the attorney said but gee that was absurd in in my question to him was you think us absurd but does that mean in town has to do something illegal to grant you both licenses you know so obviously we're not going to we're not going to do superficially very so i understand the will of the people and i understand the sentiment but i'm a little concerned about the town in gauging an activity that's illegal well i would say that the best answer i would have is that mr hall or someone similar should be part of this task force in some way shape or form to advise us on just such things they moratorium that gives us the year to work on that we might need and eyes and short period of time is it a task force is something we should consider i think it probably is but i think we need talents from several different departments that is looking just i think if we're going to form a committee that that we should think about it ourselves first in terms of determining a charge for the committee because they're making you know if you give a committee carte blanche you know they could then go in any direction completely agree and i would rather see them no focused we can work with the health department first decide what we want to think about it for me edibles is a problem and i know that