hello everyone welcome to the bell my journal belmont's own program for hyper local news and community affairs programming i'm your host roger cult and it's time to do the annual review of your pet licenses make sure you get your licenses for both your dogs and your cats by march th in order to avoid significantly increased fees and a fifty dollars fine levied for enforcement it's also time to register to vote in belmont the deadline to register for the april nd municipal election is march th you can obtain voter registration documents online through the town clerk's office association of armenian studies and research has reached several significant milestones here and in the last couple of weeks the topping ceremony for the new building over by the post office occurred just last new building which is under construction in the mine and we have a gorgeous design created by an architectural engineering firm of sims maney and mckee there in cambridge and their c e o s are across the end who lives in belmont so the budget for the building is six million five hundred thousand dollars and we have raised over six million in pledges and commitments so we are deeply grateful to the very very generous members of the community locally nationally who really support the building  and in particular the principal building owners who are edward and pamela of this year and they wanted in thinking about the naming of this building and the legacy rather than have the building named after them or their relatives they chose dr martin krikorian as the person who most in bodies the values that really are at the core of our mission he was the head of the new york public library and was the president of brown university and now he's the president of the carnegie corporation which is a huge international philanthropic organization he's dedicated his life to the very noble pursuit of education and knowledge and philanthropic grant making and betterment of the world community so we're deeply honored that he agreed and we're just thrilled that this will carry his legacy and really is embodied what mission is as well to advancing armenian studies had been seeing education through  experience and connecting people to these greater values throughout their lives we anticipate the building to be completed by the end of this summer early fall with our grand opening celebration in the st weekend of november ribbon cutting member st mark your calendars but we really want to welcome the entire community into the building and show you what it is going to be like hello welcome to this week in the belmont county and i have with me today franklin tucker who is the editor and publisher of the belmont tony in belmont online source for hyper local news thanks for stopping over thank you very much  have a member of the board of selectmen who announced the other night that he is not going to run for reelection so that's right it's a mark poll after three terms which is a little longer than most lukman stay on the board he's decided that he's stepping down and i and this is really changes politics and velma that's right because right now what you have is an open seat and what an open seat does is allows anybody to just come in and run for the race and everybody starts at square one you know the no one has an advantage you basically have an opportunity to express your your opinions and your and construct a campaign without really thinking about the person already has a job you know you're not trying to get rid of somebody getting a job it really is a chance where everybody has an opportunity to get that job so there's no incumbent there's no you know perceived advantage for anybody and given the other two select men who will  remain there relatively recent recently elected to the board of selectmen and you know and what that does of course is a few you're not going to be moving if you always had an ambition to become a selectman or had an ambition to really doesn't want to run it's five to six to seven years before you have an opportunity for another open seat happens do it now or you're going to be waiting do you expect a contested race oh i certainly do i know now more usual and yes it's not unusual to have resolution that declared that belmont still in that's the other night can you tell us what that was about basically what we're still in as it's called is a initiative i believe it was started by blue mr bloomberg mayor bloomberg from new york it was a way of countering the effects of the united states leaving the paris climate change chord so what what what cities and towns in court even corporations companies are doing is they're saying we're dedicated to the to the declaration that was done in paris that the united states signed at one time even though the feds backed down that's right the the local governments and corporations and educational institutions are saying we're still in we're still and the interesting thing about belmont is that what we're even ahead of what the people who are asking we're still in because we've been proactive with a number of  whether it's a stretch code or the or you know making sure that our climate making sure our carbon footprint is down to i don't even know what is that you can tell me about well it's going down in the straw disclosures i've been involved with some of those efforts that's right and it turns out that belmont is like i said we're ahead of the game so this is something that we're bringing proactive along with thousands of organisations and towns around the country so even though the country as a country has stepped away from the paris accords combine the efforts of the private and public institutions that are moving forward who knew that was going to happen that's great b so cheese eager to fund do this because right now she feels that the zoning board of appeals is prejudicial towards her b b so she's hopeful to have new regulation hello and welcome to this week in house we have with us today joanna jubal us who is the senior multimedia journalist for the citizen her oh thanks for stopping over again happy to be here happy new year roger thank you thank you you too it's the st time we've been together this  this calendar year in this a lot of news there is since we've moved into the new year we are looking at imminent town elections as election season is in full swing it's time to pull papers if you want to run the deadline is february th to pull papers just go to the town clerk's office to do that there are several open town positions that if they're from moderator to a three year selectman seat because traffic study committee for the high school project she's recently appointed to the new transportation advisory committee she's very been very active with safe routes to school her her burbank and chancery p t o s your kids go to the school she's on the foundation for belmont keisha she's got a lot on her resume she's been in town for eleven years she's been a town meeting member this is only her st term as a town meeting member but she feels very strongly about this she said she she thinks she can make a difference and what's going on with the school committee we have school and maybe even who has expressed interest there are actually three seats for the school committee ok two are three year seats and one is a one year seat and so far three people have pulled papers for that jill norton who is an incumbent she's been serving a one year seat and andrea pressed prestwich who's served almost three years and plans to run for the rear seat and then newcomer peter pan who hasn't said if he's running for the one or the three or c yet ok and is there a deadline for filing papers the deadlines february th actually one of the newcomer i want to mention who has pulled papers for housing authority which is a five year seat and that is cassandra page and tommy olson is has pulled papers to run for reelection to that seat and has lots of other positions available in town meeting members for every precinct they're looking for people  ecycling collection events there's actually going to be a th one january th and every one of them has been jam packed they had two hundred seventy five dollars cars at the most recent one traffic was backed up they had street they had to call for for help with the traffic and they filled two hundred and forty two dollars yard containers plus an additional ten yard container all with cardboard so jay told the selectmen i think it's time to look into either leasing or purchasing  cardboard compact or for the town and the significance of that it would be that they would have regular right off hours cardboard and known more traffic jams like this like these cardboard collection  effect so people may have already noticed when they shop at c v s that they have these reusable orange bags that they're selling and they're giving out paper bags instead of plastic bags even though the plastic bag ban for large retailers doesn't take effect until january th i think they just want to be ready not shock customers i don't know i haven't shopped at star market recently to see if they've started have you i have not ok well just just be ready january  larger retailers were no longer have plastic bags so they're encouraging reusable bags or recyclable paper bags to be really plan the single use plastic bags are going to be a thing of the past they are the very end your plastic bag i think will court you'll see all of the major pete and the outline of course in gold that'll be important when you see the other basketball court which we can watch you know so if that's the goal court this is the blue pass and now we're in the innovation lab which is  hope the cleanest it will ever look my vote for this is that it is full of cardboard and sort of lows at low impact on equipment that the kids can iterate with that they can come up with design challenges create things that are born on the eve of someone else and design and redesign the generation to me is an exciting prospect of what the future holds in terms of what we're trying to teach as well hala eames a young th grader recently won the young writer usa writers competition in two thousand and eighteen media as jane peters had an opportunity to sit down with belmont buddying young author tolley's parents and ordered copies of the books to be distributed through the belmont library the contest was on the theme of stranger things well it was kind of just the name of it since it was around halloween once the contract in the contest came around so they just wanted to give it a theme basically write whatever you want try to make a dramatic many saga ended up doing that and now here i am great and so is this john or that you're really interested in do you like this sort of yes science fiction interest in an interest in for a while sorry ok and so did they give you some writing prompts that you could draw from or was it can only out of your own imagination how they gave us they gave us a few prompts but i wasn't a big fan of what they gave us were decided to just start from scratch how great very creative i'm sure that helped with them picking the winner being so creative so what made you come up with the idea for the story so i actually created a character named piper at a summer camp i spent like few days drawing him because it was like shooting with my finger and made a mess but  so i created the character i was really proud of it and then i'm like i should write a story and so i had my friend help me out with it and so stranger saugus came around and then i decided to do to write the story to see if i can try and win the contest or at least get something out of it great and so you were able to use a character that you are you write in are you a writer do you enjoy writing is that when your hobby yeah yeah do you like english class what's your favorite subject probably layer chinese with this character yeah great so we're looking forward to seeing wade come up with where did you learn to write so well you have some teachers who have really good teachers over i actually it was partially the teachers some of it was self taught from like i used to write in journals great well do you think you would be willing to share some of your story today i don't know how long it is sure i can by the blackness it was so dark that the only way he could see was by the street just around the corner from the hardware store his sharp metal claws were trembling he had to do this if he wanted to get off this planet staying would mean no freedom in lab tests to be or not to be he needed to just publishing oh well that's good that's really awesome you say that you've been published there so it can people see your story on the website i think that the prompt that i just read out loud might be on a website i'm not sure but the story will definitely be guessed it was more than one hundred and fifty dollars basketballs being dribbled by children attending this season opening basketball clinic at belmont high school you'd be correct for the past decade or so the basketball season has opened in belmont by this clinic varsity basketball coaches at belmont high tell us about the clinic reported by chet master it's just kind of a fun community event for the basketball community  belmont i think it gets some you know for some kids who are nervous about starting their winter season the younger ones i think it kind of is a little bit of a warm up into a kids who want to learn a little bit who are able to who are you know at the level that they can pay attention we have amazing volunteers we have such a great amount of experience teaching and it's pretty amazing it kind of fits a lot of people and a lot of kids you know  one hundred and fifty kids here maybe over one hundred and seventy kids and grown in popularity and i think that's a tribute to the volunteers and how what a great job they did on the coaching and i also think a big benefit is not only knowing getting  adults who volunteer but the getting to know the high school kids who are all helping there's so many of them that relationship of them looking up to those kids and hopefully coming to games and that the high school kids get a chance to g something back and most of them seem to have a lot of fun with the kids too so i just thought that it was good to show a lot of the kids that come support us during our game support during their clinics and a lot of them look up to us i know when i was that age i looked up to law school captains and seniors and all that stuff so i think it was really important to come down and show support and help kids out in any way can we just feel like this sense of we do something that's bigger than ourselves i mean graf we coach me on these clinics and we have a lot of fun with it feels like you play basketball you're on jane peters to tell us about what there is to do in belmont in the coming week hi everyone i'm jamie this is your community calendar for next week it's never too early to introduce your baby to music music together belmont will be at the library on tuesday  dollars for a special program connecting babies to music sign up is required on libraries website dance and a way at the fred astaire dance studio with a master class with ko national dance director and former dancing with the stars pro tony  dovolani on wednesday at seven hundred and thirty the class is suitable for all dance levels you can register by calling the studio directly the belmont garden club will be hosting a program and monthly meeting in the library assembly room on wednesday the program titled splendor in the grass follows a brief meeting at one thousand and thirty dollars if you're interested in joining the garden club visit their website for more information joseph rosenblum former frontline investigative reporter will be at the library on thursday to discuss his book redemption martin luther king jr his last thirty one hours the book examines everything from the bomb threats against him that delayed his flight from atlanta on the morning of april rd one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight to his murder the following night this author ta place in the assembly room from seven to nine pm belmont world film presents the twenty one thousand family film festival next weekend with films screening at the studio cinema in belmont the regent theater in arlington and rattle theater in cambridge throughout the weekend all screenings on saturday will take place at the studio cinema visit belmont world film dot org for a complete list of showings and to purchase tickets but want high school takes on needham high on sunday january t his jeopardy style academic tournaments high school quiz show you can join the audience for free at the taping of the episode at one hundred and fifteen r s v p using the link on screen the belmont police department is holding a journal as we sign off let's watch what there is to see on the belmont media's community television stations in the coming week thank you for watching this is the belmont journal i'm your host roger coulton i will see you again next time