of the events in florida which leave me somewhat speechless i would just like to say if there's anybody listening to this broadcast who think now is not the time to have a conversation about gun violence because it's upsetting i hope you will so this may be the perfect time to have a conversation about gun violence and otherwise let me just review our agenda for this evening we have minutes i have a discussion of the or and initial discussion of the projects proposed by the community preservation we should review the second quarter financials for the town and school that we distributed previously and then we have some updates from adam dash our board of selectmen representative and and the town ministry so let me begin with come tonight we certainly hope to see her by our next meeting  the in the last since the c p a was adopted which was came into effect in two thousand and twelve the warrant committee  funded outside of the regular operating budget they always had a somewhat separate existence from the other projects the other types of operating the capital expenditures that we reviewed and the major criteria that the warrant committee used in the past was assessing whether a proposed c p a project had an impact on the operating budget going forward for example if there were maintenance expenditures for ongoing maintenance as part of a project and we also introduced the criteria a number of years ago criterion a number of years ago what we call distribution or equity and what prompted that  was a community housing proposal where several hundred thousand dollars was going to be set aside and the beneficiaries would have been two or perhaps three households and the at least some members of the more committee had misgivings about that kind of distributional impact turned out to be moot because the money was actually never used there were no takers there were no homeowners who wanted to buy a property with the deep restrictions that would that would have been possible without money so it became moot but i would like to introduce or reintroduce another criterion in this year if you recall for those members who were here last year i raised the question of can i call that last year intertie parole planning because there is in my view there's no  real mechanism in the c p a as it's been administered in dominant thus far to take a multi year review of c p a spending the tax revenues raised each year and then projects are proposed and for the most part assuming that the money is not exhausted the projects are prove that they meet c p a criteria that's the savior approved by the c p c committee  and then they go to town meeting but there's not been discussion at least that i'm aware of of thinking about a longer term use for the money in particular if a particular project would require more money than would be raised in a given year you would have to save the money for a couple of years in order to do that larger project and one example that's current is the community path for example which would require more money than the c p a generates a year so that the longer run perspective on the c p a is something that i think it's worthwhile for us to consider not only because it's rational but because so far i don't see any other body in town that is taking that point if you and i think it's worthwhile for us to recommend it let me then begin with just a recap of the basic outline of the c p a because there may be members of the public and even members of this committee who are not that familiar with how it works so let me takes the form of a surcharge on property tax towns can enter into voluntarily by taking a town white vote in belmont that vote took place  in november of two thousand and ten and the tax collection started thereafter and i believe the first year that projects were considered was two thousand and twelve in belmont the  surcharge that was adopted was one point five percent on property tax which in fiscal year seventeen amounted to one point one million dollars the fact that the state would offer what's been called a match and in the beginning it was a true match in that for every dollar a town raised in c p a surcharge that would be matched by another dollars from the state but that was only the case through about two thousand and nine and then the problem that arose is that the the funding source for the match was basically fixed whereas the number of towns that voted for the c p a kept increasing and the increased demand on this quasi fixed pool of money meant that the match rate had to go down in order for every town to be able to get something and the effect of that in the most recent match period november of last year the match for belmont was seventeen point two percent so every dollar raised by surcharge and dom on the town got an additional seventeen cents from the state and it's not clear to me that the state match will rise significantly in the future there are still towns that have not adopted the c p a and so the match may actually fall but it's been in the neighborhood of well it's certainly been below thirty percent for the last couple of years  and falling given that the money is raised by the local surcharge and the state match i just want to turn for minute about to how the money is used and the way the act is written the money can only be used for certain defined purposes and i'll just read the language of the act to avoid ambiguity it says in each fiscal year and upon the recommendation of the community preservation committee and belmont having adopted the c p a does have a community preservation committee the legislative body which in belmont is town meeting shall spend or service side for later spending not less than ten percent of the annual revenues in the community preservation fund for open space not less than ten percent of the annual revenues for historic resources and not less than ten percent of the annual revenues for community housing those three categories are the three categories on which c p a money may be spent you can't spend it on projects that don't fall within those within those project definitions  initially open space was defined rather narrow lead to be acquisition of open space but then the act was subsequently revised so that open space now is also interpreted to include  recreational uses to some extent so it as i understand it in adam is actually an authority on the act but as i understand the act recreation is not a category at least i don't see that as a category in the language of the act but open space has been interpreted to allow certain recreational uses that ends up making a difference because in belmont  we have made major use of c p a for rebuilding playgrounds and also redoing the pool but as i understand it the c p a money could not be used for the hockey rink because one way to express it is that because a hockey rink has a roof it doesn't qualify as open space so you can't shoehorn it into the open space category but because the pool did not have a roof it could be treated as open space so there are major recreational assets that need work in belmont but the c p a money would not be what it would not be permitted to use a c p a money for that and then too i guess concluded these initial observations the c p a was passed in belmont in two thousand and ten the vote was very close w sixteen eggs section sixteen a at any time after imposition of the surcharge which in our case is the one point five percent the legislative body may approve and the voters may accept an amendment to the amount and computation of the surcharge so we are in principle not locked into the one point five percent forever that money that that percentage could be changed the exact mechanism of whether it's a media vote by town meeting or a vote by the voters at large i'm not sure from this language but that mechanism does exist in the town and then there's us second section at any time after the expiration of five years after the date on which the act basically was adopted you can vote to rescind the approval so the initial approval and the c p a as it's been applied in belmont this year the as i said before the the surcharge amount was one point one million if you had seventeen percent of that you get something like one point three million the total requests from the three preservation committee are just over one point five million so in fact there were unused amounts from the past which resulted in total requests being slightly larger than the tax revenues actually raised in the current year  and i'd like to discuss those requests  we don't actually have the full one point three million to work with cracked do we have to reserve ten percent for what you know the way it works is of the money raised in the particular year so just to make the number simple suppose suppose in total there was a million dollars you would have to spend at least ten percent on community housing or reserve it that would be one hundred thousand dollars of which you would either have to spend in the current year or that already got one yeah so you have to see the distributional requirement is you have to spend at least ten percent in each of the three areas either in the current year or save it and spend it in the future here and the remaining seventy percent cannot be spent however you like as long as it's in one of those three areas so in the end you could spend eighty percent on recreation because the seventy percent could be added to the damn percent minimum requirement  i hope you've all had an opportunity to review the yes read look at things before getting your rubric and before we talked about the narrower focus of the war committee's review when we start to talk about questions tonight are the general questions about the project in understanding it or at work what should we focus our questions narrowly on those things that we feel like we need in order to be able to do the warning committee's narrow assessment well that's a good question night to my mind our primary obligation here is to express an opinion to town meeting because of at least kind of meetings responsibility to both these projects up or down i should have actually said in my introduction that adam please correct me if i'm wrong when a project is presented to town meeting for town meaning can either vote the project up for voting down or vote a reduced amount for that project but pushes i guess chooses the projects and then town meeting appropriate to the money that's the role or not but if it's not a binary full amount or zero they could tell me he could also believe they can reduce so there's not hasn't happened it hasn't happened then i'm not sure how it works because if you can do is the appropriation presumably that would reduce the scope of the project then i'm not sure you would kill the project essentially intentionally jack what i'm struggling with the whole as we go into the questions tonight is do a think about this is a town meeting member who might ask questions of the sponsors during the you know league of women voters review of that what might impact how i would vote as a town meeting member are we kind of paralleling the same kind of questions that the community preservation committee would be asking is that our role or are we really looking for only questions that affect our ability to assess whether or not this has distributional impacts or ongoing maintenance which is how you kind of august the dead days with projects come in we go through them we call in the people who made the proposals they make a presentation we ask questions we get more information we usually have to ask for additional information we we get their budgets and we've coming up with a number of the projects particularly the playgrounds we've been doing we've been requiring them to bring in private fund raising as as happened with p q and as has happened with  thank you so those and then we come up with a number that we feel that should go to town meeting and we provoke to approve the project or not and we send a forward through town meeting and then they come to you i believe on february twenty eighth and they will the members of the someone from the committee will come and presumably one of the proponents will come as the committee doesn't propose them you know as proposed by someone from public works friends of p q park whoever it may be the veterans memorial group come to us we had a back in the summer fall we had information session we said if you're interested in applying for the c p a money come and talk to us the c p c and we'll tell you what you need to do i think the only people who came were the p friends to that meeting but in prior years other groups of cons so it's a lot we work on it from you know the summer until right up to town meetings a matter of fact it's a good chunk of the year i should know that you would r description of all this is true as to how things have been working i also know we i came with the c b c i met a five o'clock tonight and then i had dinner and then i came here so happy valentine's day to me but you know but the thing that we did talk about tonight was actually coming up with a policy for retaining a certain amount of the c p a money for towards future larger projects like the community path because and i know the floyd carman who sits on the c b c actually had drafted a number of years ago some kind of a really very simple draft policy it would be sort of like the free cash policy be a fairly simple thing like x percent of the funds that year would be retained for something in the future because as  don't have to spend like thirty percent or so or set it aside so that's the feeling we do have some money in the account is very sad because they're been turned back so we're just going through tonight how many of these projects came in under budget it's actually probably more than  of them did so money has there have been turned back which is sitting in the c p a account so there is some money there now but it's not in my opinion by some grand plan that it's there it's just because it happened to fall into that i think we should set i think we should set some aside i think we're going to be start after we get through a town meeting in this go around because right now we're in the thick of it talk about actually doing that and also coming up with a set of policies for private fundraising because there's been some confusion from some of the pro ponens do i need to set up a five hundred one c three why do i have to raise this or how much do i have to raise it's all kind of a case by case basis and seems to me if we had a clear a policy that that would make everybody a lot easier and i know we've talked to patrice about whether there's a better mechanism for holding charitable donations and forcing every friend group to create their own five a one c three because it's a little onerous and then there are a lot some of the money gets lost and you know filing tax returns and all the other stuff you have to do and maybe not the best use of the money so we can we're going to be talking about that but one thing as far as the questions because it goes back to what you asked initially i think this if you see actually asked me when we were meeting at five o'clock and went to war committee going to give us the questions because we're coming to see them on the twenty eighth and it's already the fourteenth so i would say i and i said i would come and bring to you if you have questions please get them sooner rather than later and if they are any question that you would ask a town meeting or around this table to understand the project or to vote for it on timing for whatever it is i would say all of your categories of questions are appropriate c p c when it's a dialogue i mean they're going to come and we we've got the projects we give the projects we don't appropriate the money  the projects and put them forward these are projects that came forward without the met the criteria we put in for the get funded on the walk and child when we did the campaign for the c p a one of the poster child for use for we could use this money for the underwood pool and the right metal bar were two of the big pictures we use the rock metal barn you know the town took it from mclean as part of the whole the whole deal we got title to it and it's got deed restrictions on it that we must maintain it and it can only be utilized for a couple i think educational purposes cemetery maintenance or something like that right now it's just got cemetery equipment in it and a part of it and it's falling apart is covered in graffiti and it's not it's water's coming in if we don't do something it's got going to exist anymore and then we would be in breach of our of our covenant with me to maintain the property so the reason why we're bringing it forward is to meet  legal obligation to be honest with you and the proposal is to stabilize the building not to improve it not to program it to just keep it from falling down so we can have a discussion about what to use it for because if we don't stabilize it it won't be there to have the discussion about so and what came in initially and this is proposed by stuart just a commission so they came up with and they went out got people to look at it some experts they came up with a budget for which came out higher than we all thought we would want to see because they were talking about putting your replacing the copper gutters on it and stuff like that and then they went back and said hey you know that's too much and they start district commission went back and reduce the scope down to what it initially was supposed to be just basically maf balling the buildings we can figure what to do with it it doesn't fall down in the meantime so which is what we're doing is putting up the copper gutters honestly some which is going to go over and steal them anyway because it's a vacant building so so some of these things we did these are conversations that we've had that is an example where we felt a number again we were uncomfortable with the materials we were given because they weren't professionally done plans and the numbers didn't make sense and there were plans from some bandshell and some other state that they wanted to build here we're going you know why don't you we said to the proponents why don't you take a relatively small amount of money here and get an architect and design a plan and then next year you can come back from money to actually build it and that's what ended up happening so when i say we just put a forward because it fit the criteria i'm oversimplifying it i mean there's  that we don't need from august till now to just say it fits the criteria i could've done that in one meeting there's a lot of back and forth we've sent there the veterans memorial is another one where they came to us with plans and we've had questions and back and forth back and forth so it's not as if we don't that in general because there is actually not a lot of discussion of these fairly sizable projects anywhere until you get except within the c p c committee or the floor of town meeting where the projects are often complex enough that it's not clear to me how many how much time how many members are really able to put in to assess them i think it's appropriate for the  whatever effort it's able to explore in these questions by asking anything that would be helpful in enabling town meeting to come to an informed decision and that th we've used in the past was at a minimum assessing impacts on operating costs because that will be an ongoing obligation for the town i think our concern distribution effects was appropriate particularly because those may not be apparent to the ordinary town meeting member but something that we might think about quite a bit and this inter course kind of saving up the money issue i have to say but it has been on my mind a lot because now for more than a year i've been very deeply involved with planning for various capital projects in town and it's been it impresses me every day the tradeoffs that we're going to have to make  where you choose one course of action another course of action may not be possible and i think that logic now also applies to c p a projects because very often they're in the nature of capital projects but they're capital projects that are undertaken outside of the conventional committees and belmont scrutinize capital projects so i think whatever we can bring that to the discussion that somebody would find helpful as is appropriate and let me try to i guess demonstrate by example the way i'm thinking about this  so starting starting with the veterans memorial let me just begin with an outline of the project the veterans memorial which  there is an existing veterans memorial at clay pit pond this is the proposal to significantly the rehabilitated this project is in the historic preservation bucket the  project cost in the application is three hundred eighty thousand dollars of which the sponsors are asking for one hundred three thousand dollars from the c so that's the project and it's bears the centrals and i have the following observations one there is essentially zero impact on the operating budget  i think this project is noteworthy for having a very high private contribution component two hundred seventy out of the three hundred eighty thousand dollars is coming from private sources i think i'm responsible for one brick out of three hundred seventy thousand dollars so that the private contributions actually seventy three percent which i think is outstanding  to my mind another positive for this project is that it is a reasonably limited scale and just to pick an arbitrary threshold i think projects that are one hundred thousand dollars or less we don't raise the same kinds of questions as projects that are a lot larger than that so that's  meet the significant positive features in my mind in terms of negatives if you if it's called a negative there are actually five veterans memorials of one form or another in belmont and i i hope this is the will of fulfill the obligations we have for veterans memorials with the claim that project my only my question for this project for the sponsors is what happens if the private funding goal of two hundred seventy seven thousand dollars is not got it was like fifteen thousand or something was a small five was a small project for the architect to do it and then you know make sure that we're not blasting people with sound or shadowing the houses and that sort of thing my bad if i l small it's just it's the smallest of them but still if you have a question still pretty good set of questions about it all and i kind of explain it but there's not a whole lot to explain we told them we're not going to give them the money to construct it because they don't have plans that we're comfortable with and this is to go get the plans they're only asking for five dollars to get it's a it's just a banjo it's a very small structure but we wanted but you know in some neighbors had some concerns about noise about shadowing blocking their views and so we want to make sure that somebody some professional has looked into these issues and tells us what the if impact will be designed it for that space it's handicapped accessible because it's raised all that stuff we need to vet that so that's what this money is to get plans to build this very small simple structure and then next year they intend to if the money gets done and they build the they get the plans will come back next year to actually construct it all right any other questions about the veterans project and if not feel free to add a question to your list and they send a spreadsheet over the next project is town field this is in their work in the open space last recreation category  the total project cost is two hundred thousand dollars the c p a request is for one hundred eighty thousand dollars and i have the following comments on the town field project one is that the effect on the operating budget should be neutral because although the town field playgrounds will require upkeep like any other playground the existing playground also require upkeep so the fact that a significant renovation of a major recreational i said and i'm glad to see that the the request is actually far smaller than the other questions one is what happens to this project of the press if the private funding goal of twenty thousand dollars is not achieved one and two given that this request is so much smaller bit from the friends of p q park the neighbors over their town field is their only real open space a fairly dense areas you probably know and that the playground if you've ever spent the time there as i have with one kid while the i was playing soccer it's a rusted out old you know kind playground to be honest with you to put up they brought us a number of different types of equipment they could do all different price values we discussed what we thought would be better or what would be you know different the range was kind of broad depending on how crazy you want to build it or not they came up with after getting comment from the c came back with what they felt was appropriate for the space and met the needs of the neighborhood and they felt that they could fund raise this money i should know p q park also had a water control component to the project was that area flooded so that's it's kind of a different animal and also it was way larger but the issue about what happens if you don't come up with all the money i guess sort of came up tonight about the p q project because there's the issue of the fence along maple street and they were going to replace part of that fence and then it was after discussions with the town was sort of well replacing part of the fence but all the fences kind of look a little ridiculous you should replace all the fence or none of the fence but the fence is kind of in bad condition so that is if you replace all the fence then they're going to go over the budget of what they've already said so what they talked about they were going to bid it with a base project and then with a bunch of alternate get the bids in and then see which of the alternate if they could do which ones they could and stay within their budget so that was so they were going to keep it from going over if these if the townsville people don't raise them i new then they don't raise the money to either scale the project out of they don't do the pro t any other questions about town now well this is why we're talking about the c p c creating a policy for private fundraising i think that's got a component of it because there's been a lot of confusion and different groups have complained that they get one message another group gets another i don't know that's even true but i think that's the perception that we need to just sort of write it all down and then everyone will be going to be held to the same written standard and will solve a lot of problems and i think it would be helpful if you made that a formal question to put to this particular sponsor and then you know the answer is that the c b c itself needs to to develop a more systematic procedure for this that would be a good result but yes i also i'm concerned about the private fund raising piece not so much in whether or not this project will raise their money but in terms of i guess equity you have a project that like the tennis courts that's posed by the town and there's no private fundraising quested although there are people in town that benefit  there's a playground which is proposed by a group of members from the community which is required to fundraise and so one community of users is required fundraisers and others not and it's very confusing for anybody who has a project in mind so we're very eager to see where that's going to go i mean i mean generally the sort of unwritten rule has been that if it's a town committee or department that they're not going to have to privately fundraise because they it's already the public money but then if you've got a private group coming in that they have to have some skin in the game i'm not saying that's my policy i'm just telling you that's what the players well i find this actually the playground issue i found  confusing for several years because the proposal typically originates with the media but it is a playground and to some extent it's handing  off playground investment decisions to immediate neighbors when it it's ultimately really a town like issue in that and i'm just not sure of the best way to handle that but in the meantime we're doing i've got one of the times so i'm not sure if this program problem it's quite it's disappear already on its own or not it's a public private partnership in the town the town departments do work with the proponents on plans you know d p w will sit with them and recreation people sit with them and talk to them about it it's not as if they're not given guidance and let to run the show but it is a public private partnership and they have all the town has a role and it's sort of one of the purposes of the c p a was to do things that need to be done that we don't have the money in the know we're not going to be able to answer this question but i'm i'm just i have to say that this issue has been bothering me ever since the first interest easier to raise fund raising for a project i don't know if that was actually the case with those but what percentage of them are easier to raise private funds for one over another dozen people i mean some neighborhoods have more people in the me people issues so it's much more expensive well again i think that needs to take not i guess is why we need to do a policy i think is i think i don't want there to be hard feelings amongst us community groups because they're doing a good thing i want to discourage them but i think there needs to be i think i agree right there need  some parameters around this and i think all these are questions that go into the policy but i'm glad that this will be a subject for a future discussion ok any other questions about town feel the requested amount of the project cost is two hundred thousand dollars and the seat requests for two hundred thousand dollars for those of you who don't know because i know there are people in town don't know where this par about a hundred yards you will see a very deteriorated barn that used to be half hidden by trees but it looks like the trees were cut down so it's much more visible from the road now that's the mar the proposal for ongoing making maine it's expected hopefully this project actually she was up the building there wouldn't be any maintenance expense for the forseeable future  let me i've looked into this part of it so let me tell you what i found on terms of the pros for the project honestly i say that i don't find any it looks like from the application that fifteen thousand dollars has already been spent for what's called scope of work and technical approach to stabilization that money was spent out of the c p a administrative fun but i thought i could say this point is that another feature of the c p a law is not a town can allocate up to five percent of the amounts raised into administrative department which could either pay for some administrative staff or handle postage and supplies and that sort of thing  and in fact the statute says the expenditure of revenues from the fund for administrative purposes shall be limited to implementing the recommendations of the community preservation committee and providing administrative and operating expenses to the committee so i was a little surprised that fifteen thousand dollars which is clearly associated with this particular project and not the general it ministration of the community preservation committee was spent in that way second the two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to me it sounds like more than stabilization i'm astonished at them when you say that they were originally proposing copper flashing for the structure for stabilization that is way over the top and even graffiti removal and so forth it just seems like this is going beyond what's needed first than for pure stabilization i looked at the in two thousand and five this firm specifically studied the barn with the proposed use as a garage specifically to store heavy equipment used at the town cemetery like  thing and they concluded that the building was too far gone to be used even as a garage because the floor could not support the weight of the vehicle which might be familiar to mr mclachlan this is the what was also revealed in the spot for thorndyke study was that the size of the structure is forty feet by seventy feet which is a footprint of twenty eight hundred square feet it's actually two stories high so that gives you fifty six hundred feet and i've been by there the building right now is it's an empty shell the it's really there's nothing in it it is a an empty former dairy barn which is what was up if you estimated the renovation poss to three hundred dollars a square foot which for a building which really has no usable interior i think is actually probably a very conservatively low number three hundred dollars a square foot times fifty six hundred square feet is one point seven million dollars to get a building out of it and then there's ongoing upkeep for such a building but i just i don't see a plausible scenario where something close to two million dollars would ever be spent to restore that building that would even with c p a money that would be very improbable to my mind in terms of the actual condition of the the building thorndyke's study also said that the steel in the framing plan is unfair to poor condition with signs of advanced deterioration and that was ten that was thirteen years ago they assessed the se floor loading at that time of thirty pounds per square foot and i can tell you that commercial codes require a minimum of forty to fifty pounds floor loading and in a building so that right now th building can't be used for anything and to spend two hundred thousand dollars to preserve at the curia a deteriorated structure with no prospect of conversion to a real live building which would require utilities and access road and parking and all that just seems like a very ill advised use of the money to me and the final question i would raise we the town did agree to a convert to a conservation restriction when the barn was conveyed to town  ownership but my question is why not renegotiate the conservation restriction before spending this money it seems like that's an option that should be explored first and those are those are my observations  you know this came up at the c b c in asking the same question we had the they have the there's a contract that the town entered into with mclean at the time i don't know why we took possession ownership of the barn but that ship sailed the second and there are it spells out what happens  there's an actual at the registry of deeds an actual restriction that's on the deed to the town so this is where the like to repair not honestly it's not really a choice in my mind the i believe your memory serves that there was a language in there that if we didn't maintain the barn and were supposed to maintain the barn i sort of read that as that they could go get injunctive relief against us and essentially force us to rebuild the barn you know that that's how i take adam and i'm not a lawyer but i read the deed restriction and i believe it said that if we don't maintain the barn which i guess means deteriorates further we would be under an obligation to restore it to the condition it was in at the time it was conveyed which is the end of it collapses would be playing there's also a contract it's not that's more expensive than the the deed restriction is or is got some language in but then there's a longer it's not huge but there's a longer look at page contract it's not recorded just as it goes whether this is a steel and concrete structure multi state project one stabilized barn to decide what to do with barn three do something with barn and that could require that could be a private partnership i think the run of the structure was education maybe some school wanted to use it or for nature education or something some sort of thing maybe we don't have to pay for all of it but there would be they could be three c p a projects they could be part c p a projects they could be c p a private or all private or whatever and we have to if foreigners and stabilize there's you know if we don't do step one there's no step two and three so i mean you probably go to mclean and talk to them i suppose but it's a long time since this happened i don't know why terms of the formal legal obligations of the contract the options to discuss with mclean and what obligations being on a list of historic places entails  we're not in position to answer those but i i would expect the detail the explanation to town meeting so that people could understand why there was no alternative to spending this amount of money at this time now to like apart from the historic things involved like squatting or people going in there and being at risk and just i mean is there a value or a liability management value that this is only as a couple of doors that there's a way to secure it without spending a ton of money i think that people take a look out for all these reasons and all of these things to me i said th ok any other questions about the barn has been just in the interest of time with the two other projects to talk about ok next project is a fund that's called a funds set aside for the housing trust that is in the community housing bucket and the amount requested is two hundred fifty thousand dollars there is no  ascertainable effect on the operating budget because there is no specific use proposed for this money at this point it's just reserving the money for eventually use for community housing  the strongest pro to my mind is the possibility that i want to project is identified that it's something that would qualify for additional state funding so you could leverage the money to some extent the con this proposal that bothers me is that it's a quarter of a million dollars that's been set aside for no specific purpose and  that is unlike any other allocation that i'm aware of in the town of belmont so my two questions would be if projects are ventura  undertaken with this two hundred fifty thousand dollars what is what kind of oversight will there be on them at that point i have no idea and secondly i didn't see any language in the proposal and i actually didn't see any language in the act about reversion so that i i have heard from the town accountant from the town treasurer that of money is not used with the thirty was but but i don't see that language in the act anywhere at any rate the the reason for this particular one that it was described to us was that when affordable projects come in properties come up for sale they can be purchased either whole or in affordable housing restriction to be purchased on it in this real estate market they need to pounce on authority or they lose it and that there are a lot of state and federal money as well that they could leverage this money to get but that the property comes up on the market and if they don't buy it from several days someone buys  they want to have money available so they're not always chasing their tail where the money of the property comes up they come for the money the property sold for get the property they come for the money they just never never get anything and that makes me even more uncomfortable because a two hundred fifty thousand dollars is going to be spent  in a day or two because something a listing just happens it just is a it's a way of spending money in this town that makes me uncomfortable all of the way to leverage the other the state you know so the money that's out there for these sorts of things well jenny there was discussion of this at the capital budget committee and my understanding is that it is through the c p c that the restriction about the reversion to thirty months and that they intend to write floyd is writing a set of i don't know regulations a set of agreement that the housing trust would have to come back to him in the community i believe or not which i think i just floyd to actually give him the with when they want the money they have to come and present what they want it for and he will be the one to ok the expenditure the release of the funds  he can describe that better than i can and he will undoubtedly come when this comes up but that is my understanding that yes it is a local restriction that's being put on and it's being governed or implemented perhaps by the treasure in the community reinvestment act requirements that they have to as i do a lot of for the housing work my private practice and you know this would be more like putting an offer down on the property to getting an offer accepted our property that you have a while to you closed and you be working with the state d c b to get that also are large organizations that do affordable housing funding and you could have they would then match money or bring in money and this money would come in at some level but you need to get the property off the market with an offer that doesn't have to be by the whole house it could be if the market is really that hot and you come along with an offer that has a huge contingency which is finding state agencies to match within sixty days before you can buy it that seems unrealistic to me but you know proposal that says that housing trusts are recommended to come up with an operating agreement between the capital to govern the use of the funds and and the list a long laundry list of things that the money might be used for just rubric that you've talked about before about the scope of how the money impact the greater percentage within the town i think when it comes to affordable housing which people have just impressionistic lee would say the law you know struggles with that and the legislation identifies that as a critical need with a set aside closing is inherently private and then the better fish ery is going to be a family for a small number of families and so if you're holding that up against a park that can be used by us was a lot of the community you will always find that housing money is the the reach of it within the community is never going to stack up against community preservation or open space and so i think we need to be careful not to get too hung up on that criteria when it comes to housing issues because i think it's comparing apples to oranges to some extent but like i would i don't think the criterion is tended to be an absolute requirement two questions one is a about their proposal but then a different one is we've had i think for a few years c p a money has there been applications from the authority housing authority for improvements to their current stock and i was under the impression they were going to continue to be making those applications so i'm just wondering if that this is like a respite from that this year are there i don't know if there's any and then i have a follow on about the other guy you know being so they did not apply this year they didn't apply with i mean my so i don't have a lot of direct experience in affordable housing but i have experience kind of kind of around the edges of it and it's pretty common to have it be like kind of a patchwork quilt type of thing where you're trying to get matt you're a lots of different sources matching for a bunch of them so it's sort of been in my mind it's like a chicken and egg problem of trying to piece together pieces of a program without having a commitment for funding so i mean i mean they have a description here which i mean they're sort of putting their credibility on the line of the housing trust saying that over the next thirty minds they're going to put together a plan or whatever so to me personally i'm supportive of this concept but you know they they would really have to follow through right on their thirty month plan because now they were giving their sort of trying to help this would be trying to help address the chicken and egg thing to a small would still be a test case i who gets paid and when because that's the only way these things ever get bought and in a way that tax overhaul thing made this problem more acute because a lot of the traditional funding sources for this for matching have lost the tax advantage that they had so affordable housing again i'm sort of on the edges rather than the inside but it's sort of a little bit in crisis right now so we're cutting the corporate tax rate is to say he said raise corporations from an artist donating from the very least that's the way it's being pla category the total cost of the proposed project is just over eight hundred seventeen thousand dollars the c p a request is for seven hundred eighty thousand dollars  as far as i can tell this project is for the construction of the path itself not for renovation of the playground the groves tree so whether there's any ongoing maintenance i don't know because the path is going to be largely a some form of thick of pavement so here are my thoughts on this one of the pros i view this as a marginal addition of a recreational opportunity it actually has a significant landscaping improvement component a landscaping budget is close to one hundred thousand dollars there is an improvement of the baseball field there that if there's a private contribution in new batting cages and something else related to baseball that in total is worth about twenty five thousand dollars but presumably those batting cages could have been installed anyway but regardless the being folded into this here in my larger concerns about this it is it's called the intergenerational walking path i  dollars i walk everywhere so i'm very sympathetic to walking this to me though seems duplicative not only of the intergenerational path that's being pit pond but there's a wonderful walking path around fresh pond that i've measured it's all of a quarter of a mile from the gro playground so this would be like the third intergenerational walking path in very close proximity of the past so i measured it out  today for eight hundred thousand dollars the path will be about three thousand feet long that's these perimeter of the park that's six tenths of a model that's about twelve minutes of walking time  that cost is equal to more than ten years of our height of our sidewalk budget so you know as one who is actually very concerned about walking in town we're taking more than ten years worth of sidewalk money and putting it into a a paper surface to surround grove street playground the next just you know if money was unlimited maybe there wouldn't be an objection but this to me really highlights the problem of opportunity cost that i referenced in my email to you all before because you know what else could you do with seven hundred eighty thousand dollars and that would be a large fraction of the upfront cost necessary to get the community past going for example in addition still within the the open space category hopefully the high school that exclusion will be approved but there will be a lot of work necessary to rework to real and rework the playing fields around the high school if this money could go into restarting a softball field or a more soccer field as part of the high school project that to me in a world of scarce resources is much more thanks for the bach but by thing you know by spending seven hundred eighty thousand dollars now i think we're getting actually i'm sure will be a very fine product from an engineering point of view but i think it actually has relatively limited utility given other things that we might be doing with that kind of money and that's that's what kind of led me to this opportunity cost framework in the first place is spending large amounts of money on things really at the expense of other projects handicapped accessible because right now you know parents grandparents want to watch kids play on the soccer field and i've certainly had my kids play there and you have to walk away so little because you can't walk through the field you have to go all the way around and you know and that this sort of level set out and makes it so that people who have trouble getting around can get around you may recall that in a prior c p a project town meeting and this committee discussed in the town meeting approve the money for the visibility study of this and this is now the construction phase out of that feasibility studies this is part two of a two part project i would say these these objections to do in the path at all might have been maybe the other week they were discussed i think actually in the feasibility money part of it it's kind of a tough in the middle of it to start saying well maybe we shouldn't do it  maybe shouldn't spent the feasibility money on it in the first place if that's that well if that's the feeling but i think it's a fair question to town meeting the taliban so these are all sort of westerns just to have a second look at this and see what they think and of but i think town meeting should be think again just in the interest of time i just wanted to flag these questions which we can pursue longer questions further on the twenty eighth and then the town meeting itself so any other discussion points about  i don't recall that i was a town meeting i got to say i can't i don't recall and i think it came in higher than i was expecting personally but i don't know but it is it they didn't add a whole bunch of stuff to what they were proposing in the first place remember they brought pictures of all everything's all vivid and falling apart and they brought all that in i mean town meeting appropriate the money for the state not to mean you have to throw good money after bad if you feel you don't want to do it but you know this is what the feasibility study came out as and this is the number that came out as a result of it we actually had the same questions at the c p c we had the proponents come in and they showed us the budget and i mean we were comfortable it was the budget i'm not saying i necessarily have to like it but that was the budget so folks and the d p w has been a lot of and they've been the neighbors so it's not just been the friends working on this it's been collaborative but you know the budget seemed like the budget i you know ok with this in the the merits of this will be his person but the trees can i ask you with how much it's my back of the envelope suggested that there was around forty five million dollars of revenue from prepayment of property tax because of  know well actually one way to do this might be to go through the line items that had a particularly large difference with the prior year so expenditures are looking at revenues now so for the motor vehicle excise was eighteen percent higher than the year before so we think there are a lot of new car sales are as i said a real changers you know it's really it from my perspective and again this is really kind of get a hold of the revenue it's really about what you budget versus what you think you're going to get in traditionally what i've seen the model for from what is is a certain percentage that's placed on something like excise tax year every year and it's just a running addition so for example state what i saw are was that an automatic you know otherwise the only other i mean just you on the other line item that's on revenues that really leaps out at me is people in that department actually jackson was an interesting seems like in many departments there was a reduction in the salary expense for example police and fire also seem to be sorry fire not the case but police in terms of dollars in terms of dollars but i was looking at percentages and a salary seems to be pretty predictable because you're paying people throughout the year the fact  and for f y seventeen it says three point eight million dollars in change of choice some less through q two and that's why seventeen that compares with three point five million in change for this year so there's a reduction of about three hundred thousand dollars in police salaries yet you know what comes in mike i mean i'd have to look into it into a little bit more but we as you have turned over and won people  it could be that that the nine ten is a trailing number so that that reflects a moment from the prior year or four year old so the reduction and then wrongness this year will only bleed in over time but it's also a percentage been but right i mean otherwise the broad picture seems to be that with the exception of prepayment a property taxes were basically tracking both from the revenue and expense actually came in six hundred seventy thousand dollars below this is seventeen capra and i and i don't i don't understand that because i think i always thought that we knew what taxes we were going to be collecting in the budget based on  for revenues but it seems to me that we estimate our revenues and the really important thing for the deal where i'm stuck at anything usually underestimate revenues so it seems to me that that's a pretty significant you know  for which is one eighty seven we spent sixty four percent of the budget this year in the past it was fifty four and thirty so we spent a nine thousand again some of its gas electricity water and things like that that might have increased over the past year it might have something to do with the taking over the school site because there are a lot of  dollars a couple different variations each did each line in which i can talk through a high level of the primary drivers though when you get it out it's not surprisingly one of our biggest hope is that we see you for a year is higher than expected special education co that expectation behavior of the district going forward isn't dissipated for sorry tom does that mean that there will be additional substitute stepping provided compared to prior years would you explain that a little more at my and probably others unfortunate experience the high school is that you know your child calls and says oh i have like five frees today because two of my teachers are out and so unless there's like a long term like maternity leave or a long illness so what's can you elaborate on what the policy changes and is it taking effect in the middle of the fiscal year is that what's happening well so we haven't yet fully ratified you know they co haven't teacher goes out on maternity leave or something longer and so when we look at the total budget for substitutes of six hundred thousand it's against a total teacher's salary so you know to do other notes i guess i'll make before we can we dive into that you know you need if you do take a look at lines one in four you know those lines are somewhat offsets explicitly are sets but with the departure of any yet helps to better serve the needs of students and hopefully should be cost effective ultimately cost history so those are the efforts to your question then what happens with the to two hundred seven tony and the special education ok tom i'd like to ask you a separate fame on the revolving accounts yes could you explain just how do one term for three the revolving account number so for example the first one is food service and it says that the the balance at the beginning of the fiscal year was four hundred twenty two thousand dollars and it says of the balance now well as of december thirty one for five hundred thirty eight thousand dollars so it actually true but what what's what's the idea for the reason for the revolving fund the things we're working perfectly should the finish of the balance of zero self sustaining for the capital expenditures expenditures such as so those of instead of things so at this point that balance as intended has actually trended up here's who services director now was in the process of actually looking at that increase and figuring out where will he stand to do kleek that get closer to sort of the zero balance through appropriate capital expenditures to keep the facilities in the kitchens  zero but something smaller anyway so it's ok if you have a rule that looks like we're going to break tonight about ending at nine thirty but thank you thank you tom for that if there are no other yes  the u s side that you have been happy valentine's day from the border so i'm probably be seeing my shining face for the next six weeks as the designee from the board of selectmen to the word committee i apologize that is not of did not expect to have to attend them but nevertheless the only thing of note to bring up is probably the trash contract if you've been following along the trash contractors up the trash contracted to come in they are not exactly what we put out for the  to be doing i'm not going to get into huge detail if you want me to but the basics are we're going to be doing automated pick up of trash we're going to be doing single stream recycling automated pickup of recycling and since trying to no longer is taking america's recycling they are in w now is we pay for the trash removal and we don't pay for the recycling because the recycling company takes our product and sells it makes money since china is not buying it anymore we're not going to be paying for trash and paying for recycling pick up as well the recycling will be cheaper than the trash because there is some market for it so it still pays to recycle but not like it used to plus that the contract the old contract that's now up the cost of doing all of this and today's world is now up so you're probably going to see when we don't have the contract decided but we have the and you're probably going to see an increase for public services purposes of the trash recycling line item yeah actually when he was replying he said a little bit we have always paid for a collection of recycling that was about four hundred thousand dollars and but it's we did not have to pay for the disposal of the recycling material and that's what's changing because the value of recycling plastics and papers and so forth this fall and so much there is now a charge to actually supposed to get this material out of here and i was oversimplifying in the interest of time but you are correct and the incremental cost of that might be in the order of seventy five thousand dollars but we'll see what the the actual it's going to also since we're going to automated pickup for both we're not sure we're just going to automated pickup for trash which involves buying everybody have been the big ben we're now going to now that this is come in that we've only received bids for dual strips for a single stream and we mean to mix everything together in one b and you recycling bins now that we're doing we've decided to be automated recycling we're also going to be having to buy everybody recycling bins you'll get two big bins one for trash one for recycling everything has to fit in there that's it there cycling bins bigger because  cycling is much lighter than trash obviously but we want to encourage the recycling we are going to have increased cardboard drop off at d p w want an ongoing basis if you can't fit your cardboard into your bin that you can take it to d p w for free and just dump it we do a want the one thing into a market says actually has a market is clean cardboard so that is something that actually they will take for free and dispose of for free because they can actually make money off of that so it actually would behoove you if you're recycling cardboard going forward to take it to d p w rather than putting in the bin where we have to pay for the pick up fee nevertheless we there's an upfront cost to buying all of these bins amortized over the length of the contract actually the automated pickup is cheaper so you will you will notice that when the numbers come in and ninety percent of the communities in massachusetts use automated single stream so it is the way if it's all there really it would put out the bids one way and they came back a different way and it's just the way the market in the for the financial management financial policy side of it and jeff levine and i will be doing the long range forecasting side this is the thirty thousand dollars that we got through the community compact with the application of the trees got funded my first week on the job through to do this planning through the college center at u mass boston to address some of these issues of to get some assistance in doing some armored planning some professional help and that's why you guys are obviously key to working on oh regarding the notebooks so this part of the whole process of getting this year's budget cycle under control the notebooks are still being physically collated and i was hoping to have them tonight but they're not tomorrow night and hopefully the designer will get to work starting next week we have already retained what's called an owner's project manager who helps us with organizing this project they are they are assisting us with identifying a designer but that is still going ahead full blast to be ready for town meeting by june but there are no specific answers yet regarding the elevator oh the other item is the youth commission that forest like when you may recall two or not in two thousand and ten two thousand and eight i'm sorry the town after several years of defunding actually town meeting just totally killed the youth commission which did programming for youth of all ages and such  financial you know times improve and ten years later nothing ever happened so i brought forward the board of selectmen my colleagues agreed to reinstitute the use commission within the health department and patrice has been looking for some money  is was never a very large line item but it was an important line item i think for a town that prides itself on how it treats its children i think it's kind of sad we don't have a youth commission pat hall so that's going to be putting the put back into the budget the idea is to not make commission so what do people want what services are being the would be needed obviously the two thousand need the opioid crisis wasn't even a conversation so things have definitely changed and we need to figure out what it is we need to do with the foot we all seem to be in agreement that the time is to