welcome once again to what's going on now you may have looked out the window and thought it was december but in fact it isn't we're pretty close to spring and there are all sorts of things going on my name is dorothy dahl and usual co host jeanette crenshaw i'm afraid will not be with us today however we have a great guest that i would like to introduce and he is a town administrator mr thomas younger interviewing mr younger and would like people to begin to think about getting out there because it is going to be a beautiful spring if you may have noticed a few little crocus isn't a few little daffodils sort of trying to work their way out of the ground that's a sure sign that good things have to come in fact on april eight and might also serve people to take a nice walk the study that was done for this sesquicentennial resulted in identification of eight hundred seventy seven people buried and fifty five people memorialized at mt often cemetery who served in the civil war and this presentation's going to recognize non combat and who went to war to render medical aid spiritual ministry and publish reports on the war brief overview of the entire project will also be presented as well as the many programs presented by the staff at the mount on cemetery so you might want to call them and sign up  there's an arctic sea bit in the beach street santa there are lots of good artists here in belmont as it has turned out i've seen some of the exhibitions there and i think it's  get news about what's going on at the beach street santa and you're not leaving your house for one reason or another i would encourage you to look at your computer and  a log in to w w w dot beach street center dot org beech street center is all one word dot org and you'll find updates and you'll find activities that you might want to participate in don't forget that town elections are on monday april fourth and take a little ride to your precinct and make sure you vote it's important to participate in our local elections let's not forget and our visitor today thomas younger  hours to listen to whatever we might wish to tell him or ask him on the first wednesdays of each month at the beach street center so he'll be there wednesday april six from two to three and if you have something on your mind i would encourage you to go again there are a series  of exercise programs there one thing you might want to consider is calling your insurance company if you have something other than medicare as a supplement to see if you can get reimbursed for any of the classes that you take because after all we're looking to stay healthy and exercise is a part of staying healthy and so some insurance companies would like to encourage you to do so because in the end it lowers their bills if you are healthy makes sense doesn't it monogamy whether ization assistance program is something else you might want to consider you can also look that up on the website that i told you about in order to consult with them regarding lowering your home heating costs that's an issue for all of us so there's spring time walks  beginning on tuesdays and fridays starting on april nineteenth that's a nice informal cheap way of getting exercise and seeing some of the beautiful spring blooms that are surely coming our way and last but not least before we go to our interesting interview we like to just talk about the fact that there's going to be a program on a state planning and investing on tuesday may third from one to t o at the cambridge savings bank this time it's not in the beach street santa but for more news about that or more details about that please go to the website that i just told you about and you can find out details we all need to begin to start thinking about estate planning  having said all that now let's get to the even more interesting part which is to talk to tom younger how long have you been in office now the town of belmont where i started this business after a fish to private school how lovely but i'm glad you're here but it would have been hard for me to leave oh profs what was different at the time i was probably young and going down there in the winter was much different than in the summer and i actually lasted a couple of years there and then you moved on to another community which ended being norton down near the what it is that actually i'd like to ask you specific questions how many unions do you have to deal with in our town  negotiate when we're talking town the school department has their own unions for their teachers a clerical staff and so forth for the town i go specifically who we have the police department has two unions  their patrol officers and one is the union for such as the tenants and such having to split into two different unions is not unusual in local government for that fire department has one union that covers all fire personnel the dispatchers belmont is very fortunate to have a centralized dispatch organization and not having fire in police separately dispatch on their own they have their own union our public works department those are the ones who do all the road work and such in parks and town have a union the library department that we only have one library in town we used to have three years ago has a union our clear or less easy to try to achieve the goals that you are attempting to achieve you generally go into negotiations with the unions and we have a very very good working relationship with our unions general government with what our goals you try to reach mutual goals i mean if things such as health care if the cost of health care increasing is hurting both the individual member and the town because of the hear now i think on many people's minds is the issue of the budget and so many of my questions are motivated by concerns that i and the rest of the people in town have about rising property taxes are and ways in which the community might help to reduce those so any ideas or any suggestions that you might ha have along the way i would really appreciate and i'm sure that's our audience would as well rental house of of property such as a skating rink or beach street santa how how does that what role of those play and get well the b street center rentals is as a new phenomenon here we never really had the opportunity to rent space in a lot of our buildings previously the big street center has a wonderful area for receptions functions and so forth we have now promoting it as a as a functional  rental area we are advertising it we are having open houses we have reviewed our rental rates that they have compared competitive with our competition and we are doing our best to provide that we are also allowing our one day licenses for rentals for alcohol if there if it's going to be a wedding reception or such that they want the caterer want to provide that we now have the opportunity to have that we're out there promoting it and we are getting functions would like to see how they now do through in the summer in the fall with a more aggressive method of getting them in there  and the skating rink skating rink i remember when the skating rink was built because i mean i grew up in belmont and i'm a graduate of elementary schools in the high school in the middle school while at the time of the junior  in the summer you had a reserve for time and you actually believe were paying to utilize the cause if you reserve the so it was never really built as a rink that was to make money because for a successful rink to operate you generally at least in my might have to operated very early in the morning too late in the evening to get the right tools we do have rentals down there we do have leagues and teams that run space but we don't have at this point the really early rentals to late rentals the issues that you really don't have parking on the site in some way and there are other amenities that other rinks have that we don't have but that is currently being reviewed as far as what the future of the rink will be but if we're looking at where we think that you may be getting for those two sites the beech tree center and the rink i think you have a a very good future of rentals with the beech tree center because it is a as a function area that could be competitive with our neighbors it's very attractive place i must say it seems very lively every time i'm there there seems to be quite a bit of activity as there's a great deal of activity yes now about services that are provided by the town for example mauling laws you might have one at the school department building side by side with the crew for the town maintenance are those services that in any way could be combined down lower costs just like it was a simple example to be very blunt it makes no sense oh yes but what we are doing and i'm very excited about that and for those individuals may watching us today or who our town meeting members who were at the in a hotel meeting there is an article on the town meeting warr which would allow us to accept the state law which would allow all of the general government in the school department to combine their maintenance facility maintenance functions into one department currently general government has won the palme in th covers their buildings and then the school department has a maintenance crew that covers their buildings what the plan is is to have town meeting approve and there's a lot of support on this from a from the board of selectmen and such and i believe the school committee to formulate this what this would allow us is during the budget cycle next budget cycle to develop one budget in to have the facilities group respond to one director so one director would be operating the entire process to how we maintain our buildings and facilities but you're absolutely right it always amaze me is when we because town hall is next to the school administration building and you would have a certain amount clearing the sidewalks up to a point in this weekend and that made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever  so what this would do would be resolve that problem which you see literally out there but what it would also do is it would allow for planning to maintain all our buildings and functions perfect example you come down to the town hall is a reasonably new parking lot from where it was built in every two years or so we need to restrike the spaces well there are popping lots at the schools that need to be restrict and so forth so instead of them going out and doing their plan to restrike and us to have the restriking you would have the one director make the plan say ok in two thousand and you'll have a plan so you won't have and should be same as my because you have one group doing that painting of that given example recently in our capital budget we have replying to any of the us i think we need to do that particularly in these economic times you drive through voters in the public or looking out what are you doing to save in what looks to make sense it's well that's good to hear you know that is good to  the discussion regarding whether or not we need a new library it would seem to it seems as if the idea of reviewing all the time from scratch as opposed to repairing something that you have of fixing it is is much more costly to somebody who may not know the subject very well but new buildings to replace ones that are already there that might be improved upon we're talking about millions of dollars of difference they could be but there is somewhat of a play in here now i mean i remember dating myself here but i remember when i was much smaller and my mom would take me to what used to be the waverly branch of the library that when we had actually had three branches of the wipers now we only have the one main library and so what they're looking at here is part of a possible plan not in the plains in the place but we have a number of buildings that  need we're gone the library plan was that they have submitted for a grant application would be for a new library to be constructed across a street where the softball right fields up  part of the discussion has been would be that the police station could possibly nothing has been made definitive could possibly move into that library site there and you would in renovations take place here from the police station and that's that's a possibility and that's where you're looking at planning of basically taking in an older building and and basically be using it for another  and then what happens to the police building or that's an interesting item when you look at that complex they're all the whole key here is first if that did occur that said it would but if it did occur it there is somewhat of a domino effect you have to build a new library not if the old library the central library was renovated that would eliminate that the police station can move there right so let's just use the scenario if the library moved there you would actually have the police station vacant you may probably will eventually have that light department building vacant because if the new substation is approved somewhere in the near  future the buildings they can but the generators are there at the generators would have to be moved that would be vacant so there's a possibility that you could dispose of those two buildings and bring revenue into the town from the sale of those buildings  bring in the revenue via making them now taxable versus they were prior icing so that's the possibility on that but as far as the library itself that will be an article on the town meeting warrant for this year and that is just to approve them to apply for the grant this is not to approve the funding for the new construction this would be allow them to  apply for the grant and accept the grant yes they receive it for state funding for the library the funding for the library and they did exclusion vote that would be down the road so tom younger the probably fifty other questions that i'd like to ask you but i'm afraid we're running out of time and i was wondering if you would consider coming back to see us but before you even answer that question is there some little pearl that you'd like to share with us now that i didn't think to ask about well i think the pearl is at this point and my intention  hopefully after july first with a new budget is i want to be more interactive i mean i think i'm very interactive with the public as it is but we are looking to improve our website to be even more interactive with the public where if you see a pothole on whole the road you can go on any time of the day click on observe pothole in front of thirty five hold and wrote in that it would go directly to our d p w back in the eighty's the interaction was that somebody would send you a hand written letter you would respond back with a hand written letter and it was all that now is more instantaneous response where somebody could at two o'clock in the morning many requests we currently do now is that would be this would even increase it but it would be create better efficiency because it would go directly to the piscean it needs it well once again thank you so much for coming to be with us today thank you it's been a pleasure love to come back anytime thank you until next time please join us on what's going on