all right press either one or two and again just anybody have any problems ok seeing none thank you i have admitted previously many many people to the floor are there any further requests for admission to the floor ok hearing on i'd like not now with unanimous consent of town meeting to ask the town clerk to read only the return of the warrant helen notice of adjournment on the town clerk's official bulletin board in the town hall and at least five other places in town giving notice that the annual town meeting had not been completed and had been adjourned to meet again today monday june five two thousand and seventeen at the belmont high school auditorium at seven pm briefly stating the business to be acted upon all in accordance with the representative town meeting acts of nine hundred twenty six as amended and section three zero dash one one don't let me give you a quick overview of where i think we are in terms of town meeting obviously this is segment b the financial articles we have  the budget the operating budget the capital budget series of retirement board articles and some others but those are the three very good pick areas and we have a number of reports that we annually deliver  town meeting so i've asked people set a time limit for varying time limits depending on the particular reports for those individuals to try to stick to a strict schedule the same time i urges i did in the memo last week for you to be concise and to the point so we can try everything possible to finish in t evenings lots of people have lots of conflicts next monday and so i think we all want to finish in two nights and i think we can if we are focused and  concise what tonight we'll start with after article one there are three reports well then to the capital budget and then a series of other articles through i hope we  complete through article sixteen which is the old pav article if we have time and i hope we might roy epstein will deliver the warrant committee budget report tonight we won't debate the budget we'll do that on wednesday but if we had time for mr of side to do that that would help alleviate a little of the pressure on wednesday night so with that i'll call on mr williams for the order of the thank you mr moderator jim liam selectman chairman of the board of selectmen moved at the town meeting here the motions in the following order one fifteen twelve fourteen twenty three twenty four twenty five eleven opposed no motion is adopted i'd now like to introduce our representative in the general court dave roger you thank you very much dave rogers state representative and town meeting member at large and i always enjoy an opportunity to come in from the town meeting thank you mr moderator and i have a lot of ground to cover and only ten minutes to do it  to three point eight percent increase from last year it's over a forty billion dollars budget there's a few key features i would point out to you one is that directs the commissioner of revenue to assess a plan for imposing an assessment or a fee on employers who do not offer health insurance and i'll circle back to this in a minute we have a number of employers in the commonwealth who don't offer health insurance and their employees go on mass health and it's costing a lot of  money we put one hundred million dollars into the rainy day fund that's also called the stabilization fund we did that to preserve the state's bond rating the commonwealth has a double a plus bond rating right now it's the highest bond rating in the commonwealth history obviously that saves money on borrowing costs so we aim to preserve that many been reading about i'm sure the terrible opiate overdose epidemic sweeping the state and really the nation and we've assessed allocated more money to the bureau of substance abuse the next slide you'll see we put another twenty million into the early educator rate reserve early educators are very low lowly paid workers and we're we're trying to do more to help them more funding for homelessness an issue i've been working on ever since i was elected another key feature is more money for civil legal aid this is lawyers at the greater boston legal services and elsewhere who provide civil legal aid to those who cannot afford a lawyer and over seventy percent of people who cannot afford a lawyer are turned away from these agencies because we just don't have the funding it's more money for higher education as well the next slide there's some numbers for  that are belmont specific and we did real well on education a chapter seventy local aid an increase of almost ten percent to seven million eight hundred thousand dollars that's a big bump of course enrollments going up  but that's a very good number for belmont this year in the senate even did a little bit better than you go to conference and we'll negotiate from there general government aid is up almost four percent and then chapter ninety eight and that's aid for infrastructure for roads and that is also up modestly that tends to track fairly modest levy increases i've managed to get a few earmarks in the next slide for belmont one is one hundred thousand for to make a storm water improvements under polo road there's a culvert there that is failing and that there needs to be work that belmont and waltham need to do got one hundred thousand there and i got some money for energy conservation in town buildings and for sampling and testing of storm water systems that flow into the mystic river those have to survive conference and then the governor can veto them typically then we override the governor's veto and but the governor has something called nine sea power if the budget gets out of balance he has the authority to go in and change that i got in your mark for belmont this year that was the governor the governor lined out but these things happen  next slide is i want to talk to you something that i spoke to a town meeting about last year and that is sort of a conundrum or a dilemma that we find ourselves in at the state level we're going through a period of  economy unemployment is low we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the united states interest rates are low the price of gas is low economic growth is reasonably solid and yet at the state level we are in a terrible budget crunch and so i want to talk to you briefly about why that is one the state income tax used to be five point nine five percent voters passed a referendum to cut that to five point one five percent doesn't sound like a lot but it's almost a percentage point it cost the state about two billion dollars a year in revenue we've also cut taxes on interest and dividends it used to be across the country the state had the reputation of tax issues it's that's not true anymore if you look at nation why we're kind of in the middle of the pack and so it's created challenges in budgeting the next big thing is over and i mentioned this earlier we have a lot of employers in the state who do not offer health insurance and employees are going on mass health the state's medicaid program the state's medicaid program chews up about forty percent of the state budget for forty cents on every dollar huge number and growing and so the governor proposed to his credit and the legislature is also looking at imposing an assessment on these employers who don't offer health insurance saying if you don't want to offer in health insurance that's fine but you have to pay into the budget and we're also trying to do more to meet our pension obligations so that's a big picture on the budget as well as the local picture the next issue i want to talk about is that i've been appointed vice chair of the marijuana committee in the legislature as you know the voters approved last november the legalization of adult use marijuana we had decriminalization we had medicinal marijuana now we have adult use it passed by about fifty four forty six across the state the speaker appointed me to this committee because i supported legalization and he wanted a voice on the committee that supported what the voters approved there are a number of people on the committee who did not support it so it is really balanced committee we have to look at the tax rate we're going to preserve the will of the voters as it was passed but parts of the the law the voters passed aren't really well written how does a town opt out the process to do that  which i believe should be through all of you through through town meeting and that's more or less the way it's written but just from a lawyers perspective it's not crystal clear the tax rate what should that be we want it to be high enough to cover the cost of regulation with some money left over for schools for roads and bridges but not so high as to do what we really want to do which is kill off the the black market the underground economy tax rates too high the price too high and people will just continue to get it  e farmers came in to testify we had marathon hearings all across the state the committee's been going around the state farmers want to get into this particular small struggling family farmers so there's a lot going on there and the final thing you go to the next i want to talk about is some of the key legislation i'm working on at the state level on your behalf and on behalf of others around the commonwealth the first is the pregnant workers fairness act this is actually a bill i introduced a managed to convince ninety nine of my colleagues to co sponsor it and last month we passed it unanimously every republican every  democrat was in fishing for applause but i'll take it and the business community weighed in and whiskas played a constructive role to it's really the way the legislative process should happen and how it's not happening in washington it provides any discrimination protection for women pregnant women in the workplace and simply says employers must provide a reasonable accommodation unless to do so would impose an undue burden on the employer and that passed unanimously now it's over in the  senate working on the access bill which will ensure that if the affordable care act is repealed at the federal level women will still have access to contraceptives without a co pay another bill is the act to stand watching establishing family and medical leave about three or four states have this paid family medical leave of course at the federal level we have the family and medical leave act but it's unpaid three or four states have done this most of our g seven allies around the world have it and i'm pushing for here along with a lot of other representatives criminal justice reform is a huge focus of the legislature this and really we see criminal justice system it's a series of system it's the pretrial system it's the prison system it's what happens in  court and there are a wide number of bills being considered by the legislature on that and i've been partnering with our with our great senator senator brown's were on a lot of those issues the next item and i just have a few more i think i'm probably getting near my ten minutes is the safe communities act that would prohibit a muslim registry would one be proposed it would prevent state resources being spent on federal immigration law would prevent that from happening across the state if you go to the next slide there are some environmental legislation i'm working on one is an act protecting rate payers from a gas pipeline expansion cos there are a number of pipelines being proposed and utilities i feel and many feel should not be able to charge rate payers for the cost of those pipelines another bill that's particularly important to belmont is an act relative to energy efficiency funds generated by municipal light plants belmont as well as forty other towns across the commonwealth have a municipal plant and this would allow for reggie funds regional greenhouse gas initiative funds to be returned to these miniscule light plants in support of energy efficiency projects that's not the case now the muni's are exempted and i'm also working on a bill that will increase the renewable portfolio standard which is a legal  mandate setting the amount of renewable energy that utilities are required to purchase so that's a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short period of time there's my contact information here i always look forward to hearing from constituents square one point three million dollars is currently sitting in a reserve fun to be determined later in terms of what we're going to use that for perhaps the margins will be in the fall we affirmed again the aaa bond rating f trees the what the wood the new cross walks in the in the wider sidewalks final clothes that we have some punch list items that we have to sort of consider of course as we know as you all of you know we did make a commitment to recreational recreation strategic plan to implement strategic goals objectives and recommendations that's online but it will want to take a look at it and we're starting to implement a number of those recommendation it's going to recognize a bum out water department  the third year in a row received an award from the massachusetts department of ryan mental protection for its outstanding performance of the public water consulting peer consulting looking at alternative routes we're close folks are very close and i think they've done wonderful work i'm really excited about the possibility here and hopefully at some point in the next thirty sixty ninety days the c p i ac will come within the by union pension actuarial study we're from seven point seven five seven five adopted although the rate richer in this year was much higher than that which i think it's terrific and we're able to collab really decided to extend the funding schedule from twenty twenty seven twenty twenty nine those are some of you may know that we're statutory required to fully fund by twenty forty we're kind of on an accelerated funding schedule reason for that is that we want to turn those resources out to twenty twenty nine to our unfunded old have liability so we believe right now it's a sustainable model we'll have to see over the next few years whether in fact that would be the case it's like linde we also worked and i know of jones making a presentation on this tonight we formed an open working group makes again my colleague jim williams for pushing this and i think this is a great idea to relook at our opeth by billy are we doing everything we can lead in general to address this in fact liability that will experience over the next several years so we have to form this working group are able to implement employer group we were plan which significantly reduced our ok have liability i don't have the amount on my slide here but we were able to reduce our own fight i believe by certain amount by adopting what's called so it's twenty seconds apiece i think i can do in ten seconds apiece we'll see how it goes i hope this slide behind me says implement strategic planning process we do this every year so consider that a goal for two thousand and eighteen as well as you know we're going to hire a new town administrator we have that process well under control going to develop recommendations for providing vocational education to belmont students which is linked to the minuteman withdrawal approved by this group last year continued collaboration between the board of selectmen school warned capital budget committees in developing a fiscal two thousand one thousand operating in capital budget you know also want to add that we're going to add particular attention to the accrue balance sheet income statement so that we can understand all of our liabilities as they're incurred  next slide please fiscal year two thousand and eighteen goals of arisan franchise lines license negotiation continues green communities initiative continues all my high school building process which is really a very important in time consuming process so congratulations to that committee that continues the as mark mentioned developing a capital plan for major billings you keep hearing about this list of buildings that we need to think about how we're going to construct and fund and that's coming up in the fall we next slide we have we're reviewing recommendations based on the completed feasibility stud the community past market spoke about that that's progressing well we're finalizing decisions for solid waste contracted and that is a board of selectmen decision and we are having to public meetings the first of which is scheduled for july june twenty fifth june twenty sixth sorry to waste five minutes by not knowing our five seconds july twenty sixth put that on your calendar if you're interested in the garbage contract we are also continuing implementation of the record recreations strategic plan and mark spoke about how well the pool is worked director are working to make sure that we don't go into the third year of the contract before we before we knew it we're up updating approved personnel policies including job descriptions we're developing a capital plan for the next phase of sewer and storm water rehabilitation and we're implementing water meter replacement in advance metering of infrastructure programs number sixteen we're further refining parking management plan for belmont center you've seen some of those changes take place in apparently on leonard street that those meters are working out quite well because there's a lot of increased turnover which the businesses appreciate we're investing investigating the stormwater enterprise fund model which means that we would think about putting storm water management under an enterprise fund similar to water and sewage continue progress on a new skating rink that will be a public private partnership to continue to implement recommendations contained in the financial taskforce which was an important effort initiated by mark i think more than four years ago  know it's been a long time ok so continue to improve communications with the public continue consolidation of town and school facility budget items and development of demolition of the former incinerator and remediation of that site  evening and marie mahoney town meeting member precinct one chair of major capital projects working group when i figured out that they were going to be a lot of presentations this evening i thought gee how can i make this stand out maybe i should accompany it with some music and being a child of the sixty's and given the topic this evening i considered such hits as gimme shelter or we gotta get out of this place but then i realized that mike was not going to have any of it so therefore what i am about to present is an interim report or an overview of the work of the major capital projects working group i will not go into detail this evening on the merits or the background of any specific project but rather i will present  process our goals and our considerations the major capital projects working group is a subgroup of the capital budget committee and the group includes four members from the capital budget committee pat bruce she chairs the permanent building committee serving on belmont high school building committee and library feasibility study jenny fallon from the warrant committee serving on library feasibility study markel all from the board of selectmen also chaired financial task force myself who also served on the financial task force and joining us right epstein from the warrant committee who also has served on a number of belmont like boards phyllis marshall interim town administrator and floyd carmen town treasure some quick background which can also be found in our capital budget report since two thousand and twelve the capital budget committee and later the capital projects of a group of the financial task force have offered tools and analysis for prioritizing the four outstanding major capital projects on high school d p w the police station and the library however to date a comprehensive plan to make them a reality has not been adopted the magnitude of the high school project the lack of a suitable site for the police station the disposition of the incinerator site following happening and a decision on the location of the library have all been stumbling watts to forming a comprehensive plan late last summer mark pat and i chatted informally about these capital projects and how to address them immediately only the high school project was moving forward with the approval of state funding and a building committee that was working within the m s p a guidelines we knew that this would be a very expensive project and we worried that it would suck all the air out of the town and therefore negate the ability of the town to address the d p w the police station and the library we knew also that the library was working on their feasibility study and would really arrive at a recommendation by mid winter we also knew that the d p w and the police station always rose to the top of any priority list as being in the most immediate need but it always fell to the bottom of the to do list they had no natural constituency no cheerleaders to advocate for them we knew we had to become the cheering squad for all four projects and we had to look at these projects from a new perspective in order to form a path for the library along with the incinerator site in order to define a sound plan for building sequencing and possible financing which will lead to a successful and timely completion of all of these projects we acknowledge that there are other capital projects which need to be addressed and we are factoring their work into our recommendations however our charge is to focus on the big four along with how the incinerator site can compliment those major for what is our goal we are trying to break the twenty five year impasse of picking an order to do these projects one at a time we aim to make progress on all of these projects in a reasonable time frame and add a manageable cost we believe that we have a moral and economic obligation to provide basic and appropriate working conditions for our town employees who have languished in some of these buildings for far too long our goal is to come back to a special town meeting in the fall with a plan for addressing both the short and long term needs of the d on the police station to come back with recommendations for the incinerator sites with both a sequencing and a financing plan for all projects which will include the library and the high school we may also be looking for funding for some of these short term solutions to make both the police station and the d p w more habitable for our employees and more user friendly for our citizens we have been meeting on a very aggressive schedule we have toward all four buildings and that with the incinerator consultant to understand the available space and the capital process we have met with the police chief the library director and trustees the directors of d p w community development and facilities and the senior planner we have met with advocates for other pending projects such as the community path and affordable housing we have spent time thinking inside outside and all around the box to pose questions about every aspect of future solutions for these buildings we have utilized the services of sims many mickie associates to provide professional answers to our numerous questions as m m a is developing the scope and cost for short term improvements to the police station and the d p w they are completing site planning and cost analysis of long term solutions for these two facilities they are proposing diagrammatic solutions with cost estimates for short term improvements while creating conceptional building volumes utilizing our own previous studies in order to develop a site diagram for a long term solutions for police and  we will use the s m a information along with recently completed library feasibility study the consultant report on the incinerator site and available information on sco timing and cost of the high school project to form our recommendations further we will arrange for tours of bees for civility is later in the year so that you town meeting members and all belmont residents will have a better understanding of the need for action now we believe that all projects should move forward not just one of the time we know that the library trustees want to get started on a schematic design for fund raising and that may be a long process we see that the d p w director and the police chief finally believe that something good might happen for their facilities after years of just talking and studying we owe our employees a safe and decent place to work we will find solutions that are financially acceptable to our taxpayers we will work with the community path and affordable housing groups to ensure that all of these plans work together will identify parcels that could be sold for revenue to finance our recommendations we will have public meetings before the fall town meeting to present our work and to collect public employment we will be back before you in the late fall with a plan or we will die trying just  think all the department heads and their assistance for their cooperation with our work we appreciate the attention of both phyllis and floyd during a very busy town meeting preparations season we appreciate that the library trustees have agreed to wait for our recommendations before they go forward with their request for a schematic designs to enhance their fundraising efforts i ask you to please contact any of us with your questions your concerns and especially your ideas our names are in the capital budget report on the time website and when we were in port our recommendations in the fall i hope that i will set the presentation to either good vibrations or i'm a believer to you in the committee for your good work it's already taken place and the hard work in front of you and thanks to each of the presenters tonight i think collectively can see how much work is being done on behalf of the town of belmont remounting town meeting member precinct one chairman of the capital budget committee tonight i present to you the f y eighteen capital budget recommendations some of you may be familiar with cornelius ryan's world war two book a bridge too far which was made into a movie as we went through the process this year i began to feel like those soldiers going bridge to bridge to bridge in the netherlands trying to take them back before the germans invaded first small focus group we encountered a whole lot of obstacles including a lot of snow new grandchildren six grandchildren changing requests interface with major capital projects building committees the flu work commitments vacations missing slides and sometimes just more snow so when i saw the quote from martin luther king i thought how appropriate for our work what is our guiding principle just keep moving forward capital budget committee has seven members they include a member from the board of selectmen which changed out after the election we started with sammy baghdadi and finished up with mark hello from the school committee susan burgess cox from the warr this for new town meeting members is the following we receive requests from department heads in the form of a giant binder we interview those department heads we ourselves analyze debate and for ourselves prioritize those requests we often follow up with the department heads to clarify questions make new requests and just to chat about what they've given us we conduct a straw poll which gives us a sense of where we are on these requests we finally vote on final recommendations and then we write the capitol budget report that you have the detail for what i am presenting tonight is contained in that capital budget report which you received prior to the sessions because i know that all of you have read that in detail there will be a whiz at the end and i will be reviewing only the highlights this evening for numbers tell the whole story for us discretionary capital requests point three six million dollars is what this alike and gives us to spend on the requests from these department heads this amount is very close to what has been allocated to us in the past few years including about seventy four thousand dollars in turn max a total of two point four three two million in roads and sidewalks this is all the money that will be spent on roads and sidewalks in the coming year and i'll give you more detail on that as well glen clancy and finally out of the water and sewer enterprise money we have capital requests totaling two million dollars for each and you will see that capital portion in the enterprise funds which is a separate article overall this year in our discretionary spending we have no big ticket items no fire engines no new snowplows no huge repair projects like the belmont high school fire alarm system that's the good news this allows us to focus on making minutes every time the town prepares a new building project as we are now with the high school we hear comments about maintenance we on capital budget place a very high value on maintaining our buildings but maintaining as funds allow we do the best with what we have therefore in this budget you will see requests for maintenance at the chancery which is now twenty years old which is very hard for me to understand the don't know where those twenty years wen this includes refinishing the gym floor replacing some unit ventilators and classrooms and replacing an outdated network wiring similarly we are replacing the cafeteria floor at the bottom or the challenge capital budget committee this year has been how to balance the need to keep up with repairs with the reality that some of the building a school which we are allocating money will be replaced in the next several years the library is the perfect example we know that the library is on track to be replaced we do not know when exactly that will happen in the meantime for the sake of safety we are replacing light fixtures gutters and stairway tiles and repairing the parking lot rosen sidewalks now have a healthy stream of money which is about the maximum amount that can be spent and managed in any one construction season and the glen and again when clancy will speak to that shortly let's start with the details let me walk through our recommendations and highlight a few you will know try out the budget that there are items that are one part of an ongoing project by breaking down maintenance and replacements into a yearly allocation we can dedicate a sum of money each year to items that could not possibly be achieved all at once this is another facet of our ongoing balancing act on this list let me note two things we can afford to replace our ambulance and cardiac monitor every five years by setting aside one fifth of the cost each year we purchased the new ambulance in last year's budget and it will be delivered this september so we can start our ambulance savings account all over again this year with sixty five thousand dollars this year we will purchase the new cardiac monitor and begin the seven thousand dollars in your savings next year the spill response trailer for the fire department generated a lot of discussion among the members this item has been on our list for years and this however waiting to borrow one from another community could be the difference between this and our other ponds and streams in town remaining clean or these bodies of water becoming polluted and requiring extensive cleanup we finally opted for clean under facilities on this list i know the h p ac van for the newly hired in house h v a c technician it is anticipated that by having our own person to handle town and school age we see issues we will in the long run save money town wide security is an ongoing process of installing security cameras throughout the town and the school buildings and no i'm not going to tell you where we're installing them because then it's not secure our building envelope work is an ongoing program that maintains the exterior of all of our buildings and this year the work will be done at the bottler the library i've talked about the repairs but let me know that the quiet let me note the quiet study room build out request the original request was for fifty thousand dollars for two rooms on the upper floor of the library the best we c was thirty thousand dollars with the anticipation that other funds could be made in some other way or that perhaps just one room would be built this year the d p w has two simple requests replace their pick up truck for the parks department and replace their nine hundred ninety eight snow fighter with the conversion of an existing two thousand and ten dump truck this ongoing conversion program is saving the town a million dollars over twenty years in new vehicle acquisition expenses for the schools i t and the council on aging schools capital budget to many of use computers as the textbooks of this century or at  decade these chrome books represent some of the computers being purchased for state mandated testing in our schools we view this as a platform purchase replacements will have to be funded with in the schools operating budget other sources of funding for the full compliment of these computers and carts include p t o s and the education foundation i t network hub eight upgrade will serve the town buildings and precinct three and four area of town such as the senior center the butler fire headquarters and the town yard buildings and finally the c e o a this request by agreeing to fund twenty percent of the new benny band medici for the senior center the council on aging becomes eligible for a state grant that will provide the other eighty percent what's not to love all rights community develop this community development this is the world's money this is what everybody cares about the total figure i showed earlier of two point four two five breaks out as follows one point six four million from the two thousand and one and the two thousand and fifteen overrides plus two and a half percent every year five hundred forty two thousand six hundred and one dollars from chapter ninety state money this will vote on an article fourteen please note this is a different figure from what you have in the capital budget report that number changed in the time between when we submitted the report and when i'm standing here today two hundred ten thousand dollars from sidewalks from the two thousand and fifteen override and this includes two and a half percent interest each year thirty eight thousand dollars for safety improvements around the burbank which is why i have photographs of school st at the burbank because this small money in the context of all these roads but very important for the safety of students and families back and forth from the burbank article twelve enterprise fronts i have both glenn and jane here to answer any detailed questions that some of you might have about capital expenditures funded by water and sewer enterprise fronts let me just say that overall these are standard requests for replacement of dump trucks used by sewer maintenance emergency response van for the water division the continuation of the smart meter replacement program water main sewer and drain replacement repairs please note i would like to draw your attention to three areas that injure we with the capital budget process one take a look at the five year spread sheets of requests by department at the end of the capital budget report you will see all of the purchases repairs and replacements that the department heads anticipate for the coming years some of these dollar figures are staggering the capital budget committee is always looking at ways to better manage these expenses with ideas such as creating a technology fund or managing all building driveway and parking lot repairs through the d p w second some of the community preservation projects that we approved in may would have come to the capital budget had they not been funded by community preservation money a project a playground at six hundred fifty thousand dollars would consume half of the discretionary funds allocated to the capital budget committee many of the c p a projects for parks and recreation alleviate the stress these projects would put on the capital budget however be aware that managing these projects puts a strain on the d p w as outlined in the warren committee report am often asked about those projects that are privately funded such as those repairs and upgrades done by the friends of groups and other community oriented organizations we love that members of the community stepped forward to fund many needed assets in the town we have no place to carry that information in our budget but i want to draw your attention nonetheless to their efforts as an example throughout the summer you will see the new price spots at the harrah's football fields being erected so that it will be ready for football games in the fall this is done in part through the generosity of private donors and we thank them for that in the coming soon category as i noted in my earlier presentation please be aware that this vote tonight is not completely inclusive of the need for money to be spent on major capital projects this year we will be coming back to you in the fall with requests for additional modular classrooms possible short term improvements to the d p w on the police station and possible design money for the library at this point i'd like to thank the department heads and their assistants for their patients when we try to fly fill us in fuel floyd for telling us when to run when to walk and when to crawl and glenn and matt for keeping us moved that one million three hundred sixty six thousand six hundred dollars he raised and appropriated for the purchase of public safety equipment site improvements public works equipment equipment for town facilities and consulting services in connection there with to construct public ways and for building and facility and public works construction and for major maintenance and alterations including design work as follows such sum to be expended under the direction of the board of selectmen and the school committee under public safety you w one and number two for a total of one hundred fourteen four hundred dollars fire squad one replacement twelve thousand dollars cardiac monitor replacement seven thousand dollars ambulance replacements sixty five thousand dollars spill response trailer twenty five thousand dollars for a sub total of two hundred seventy nine hundred dollars under public facilities town wide security two hundred thousand dollars h b a sea tac van thirty thousand dollars systemwide unit ventilators fifty thousand dollars refinished chancery gym floor sixty seven thousand dollars butler cafeteria floor replacements seventy thousand dollars systemwide building and below one hundred ninety thousand seven hundred sixty dollars first sub total of six hundred seven thousand seven hundred sixty dollars library upgrade like fixtures fifty thousand dollars crack fill and seal parking lot twenty thousand dollars replace gutters thirty five thousand dollars abatement and replacement of stairwell tiling eighteen thousand dollars quiet study room buildout thirty thousand dollars first sub total of one hundred fifty three thousand dollars department of public works snow fighter conversion forty four thousand nine hundred forty dollars replace truck number one zero three forty five thousand three hundred dollars first sub total of ninety thousand two hundred forty dollars schools chrome books and carts thirty nine thousand nine hundred sixty dollars upgrade network wiring sixty five thousand five hundred dollars for a sub total of one hundred five thousand four hundred sixty dollars information technology five her network assessment mapping and testing at sixty thousand dollars upgrade speed of town network hubs thirty thousand dollars for a sub total of ninety thousand dollars at the burbank thirty eight thousand dollars first sub total of thirty eight thousand dollars total capital expenditures one million three hundred sixty six thousand six hundred dollars thank you and how does the for discussion on the first motion under article fifteen there's a separate second motion on highways and sidewalks but all of the discretionary discretionary i kevin coming in precinct for just a quick question for the library thing did you determine that that number one hundred fifty thousand or so does not trigger an eighty eight compliance question  yes michael mcnamara tommy member precinct seven i'm just wondering about the just wondering about the security system with any complaints or concerns from other people about maybe on you know sort of being observed when they're concerns of that nature voiced i will say our understanding is that those cameras while they are in town buildings and so they are observing business and activity in town buildings and they are there for security for safety purposes i just want is no way exactly we're covering but it seems like it's more the buildings in the schools as things titles are library exactly thank you welcome thank you second motion under article fifteen short move to that one million eight hundred fifty two thousand dollars be appropriated for road paving projects said some to be raised in expended under the direction of the give a brief report on the highway program haven management and smart a reader glen clancy director of community development good evening everyone i'm here to give a brief overview of the paper management program for a slide program overview yeah program was launched in  six there are seventy five miles of public roads in belmont since one thousand nine hundred six forty two and a half miles have been repaired under the program in the early years the focus was on the worst condition roads and then there was sort of this transition to major roads  the program has evolved over the last twenty years initially roads were repaired based solely on their condition and soon thereafter coordination with d p w water was introduced eventually it was decided that the focus should be on the roads that were used by the most people and so major roads were given priority this lasted until two thousand and twelve when most of the region roads were completed and the focus was then moved to the neighborhood roads and the current focus of the program is on the neighborhood roads however a handful of major roads not previously reconstructed have recently become candidates for reconstruction and are being worked into the program in fact this year you'll see the construction beginning on a portion of common street a section of cross street those are couple of the handful of major roads that were sort of holdovers that weren't quite ready before but are ready now for reconstruction program funding annual funding is approximately two point one eight million dollars it's made up of chapter ninety funds as we mentioned  already this evening five forty two six zero one is the current level of chapter ninety finding the balance of the funds then come from town obama overrides the fiscal eighteen level is one million six hundred forty two thousand the number in the motion the one million eight hundred fifty two reflects two hundred ten thousand dollars of sidewalk money and i'll talk about that in a bit of a slider to that two point one million dollars pool of money there are many demands put on that engineering design  details routine maintenance programs are some of the demands that i put on that ultimately when it's all said and done there's about a one point eight million dollars annually that is available for us to actually fix roads the evaluation process each road is inspected using specific about you ation criteria roads are assigned a pavement condition index or a p c i the p c i value can range from one to one hundred one being the absolute worst condition road one hundred being a pristine road the last full of valuation of the town's roadway system was done in two thousand and seven a partial evaluation was done in two thousand and fourteen  where the worst one hundred sixty rows were reevaluated the two thousand and fourteen evaluation was to provide updated information to make sure the worst of the worst were still getting top priority i plan to evaluate the remaining roads that were not evaluated in two thousand and fourteen this will give us data on all the roads reconstructed in the past twenty years and will also help us programme maintenance work on that pool of roads the selection process it's very simple of the worst roads are repaired first i think sometimes when i talk with people this is a sense that there's a big mystery surrounding this program but at this it couldn't be any simpler than the way i just said it the worst ro repaired first there is coordination with the public works what i mean the placement program many of the worst condition roads in belmont require what i mean we placement most years we are able to program all of the water main water main roads w can afford to work on and then also add additional roads that do not require water main work this occasionally can result in roads having a higher p c i being chosen ahead of a so called water main road for example the water department may departments not ready to replace the main in a row that has a condition of say forty two so the following year we pick up where we left off with the water main roads and we just continue to chip away at that list once again doing the worst condition roads first  coordination utility work happens first ideally what we like to see is the significant utility work typically what i mean the placement in gas main replacement done the year before we come in to reconstruct we're not always successful in that schedule but for the most part we're pretty good about that one of the one of the sort of things to be aware of is you've already got a road that's in bad condition so you've already programmed for reconstruction but before you reconstruct it you're going to go in and you're going to tear it up you're going to fix the water mains you can fix the gas mains so there was a period of time between that utility work and the road reconstruction without road is really bad and occasionally i think people have stopped sometimes i know where of what the end game is in the end they feel like ok it was bad and now you've made it worse and what are you doing there is a method to the madness i sure you and we try our best to to get the information out there so people are aware of the process that we're going through it ultimately fix that road we also coordinate sidewalk construction the two hundred ten thousand that is that has been added to the budget or that number in the in the motion that that was the result of the override a couple of years ago we don't have the budget in paper management generally to fix sidewalks but with this additional two hundred ten thousand what we do is any of the roads that we're reconstructing that are school walking routes we focus on those streets we repair sidewalks that are in need of repair on the school walking routes if there's money left over we meet with public works we coordinate with public works and try to repair sidewalks that are in the worst condition from d p w standpoint obviously on the roads that we're going to be reconstructing additional work that may be added to this is going to likely require additional staff there are also issues with the capacity of the contract and they have right now the the amount of work we give a contract to seems to be enough to keep them busy for the entire year and we have actually had occasion where they've had to go over into the next year to get their work done which then creates a conflict with the next year's contract that we're trying to execute so i think right a good point where we are with the funding right now is also a constraint that i like to refer to as construction saturation this is a term i used to recognize what it's like f resident trying to get around the town from april to november every year i believe there is a quality of life issue when it comes to how much construction one can tolerate in a given construction season  last lied post construction there was a five year moratorium value not allowed to cut a road in belmont after to be constructed for five years however there are occasionally times when a merchant sees a rise in the road has to be cut that has to be done with approval from public works and often times also with the approval of the board of selectmen after the five year moratorium any cutting of that street is permitted by the public works department they are giving out permits with a restoration requirement that is commensurate to the curb line to the centerline of that road what you're experiencing out there today is a temporary patch as is often the case with utility work there is that period between permanent temporary and permanent and grove street is still in that process community development we have a routine maintenance program we do crack sealing and patching on roads to help extend the life of that road typical life cycle of a road a major road is about twenty years neighborhood roads can go twenty five to thirty our challenge is to manage the funding manage the reconstruction so that our timing works with the major roads in the neighborhood roads to make sure that we can do everything that needs to be done given the funding that we have thank you thank you very much you mr clancy and thank you for all your good work we're now open for discussions question on the second motion under article fifteen it seven million four hundred ninety two thousand six hundred fifty three dollars the appropriated from the accounts classified as water enterprise fund pursuant to chapter forty four section fifty three aft and a half of the general laws for water service service said some to be expanded under the direction of the board of selectmen and set appropriation to be funded by a transfer of one million three hundred thousand dollars from water retained earnings and six million one hundred ninety two thousand six hundred fifty three dollars from water reserves and how does a capital budget committee vote capital budget committee unanimously recommends favorable action the discussion first motion under article  twelve of those in favor please say i was opposed now to adopted unanimously as my only the second moved that nine million three hundred twenty six thousand eight hundred eighty dollars be appropriated from the account classified as sewer and storm water enterprise fund pursuant to chapter forty four section fifty three f and a half of the general laws for sewer and storm water services said some to be expended under the direction of the board of selectmen and set appropriation to be funded by a transfer of seven hundred seventy five thousand dollars from sewer retained earnings and eight million five hundred fifty one thousand eight  clancy the town faces a serious environmental issue due to all the damage pipes and listen and illicit connections that make senator kerry waste the stormwater the town's rocks and ponds are adversely affected by sanitary waste and other pollutants e p a places these water is in a deep classification and the board of selectmen have signed a consent decree under which the town must investigate and clean up these bodies of water is in five years with yearly deadlines and i would add that obviously this is also the right thing to do i question for glen clancy who has done considerable good work to solve these issues  identifying areas that are free of pollutants and then secondly if the come in a development department had an additional one hundred thousand dollars what projects would he undertake mr mr cla moderator gwen clancy director of the development fred first question the methodology that we're using to investigate the watersheds is a methodology that who's been generated along with the e p a we're they're both fairly large watersheds each one of those watershed will have to be broken down into such catchment areas and then i think at that point once the sub catchment areas are identified we will do sort of the outside working in a method that you describe so i think i think we're on the same page there i would also stress that as i said the what our consent that we signed with the e p a is really a collaborative effort what we do how we do it will be reviewed and approved by  a a lot of the timing of all of this was part of the negotiations that we had with them we want to make certain that we as the town our consultant stand that we're all going to be able to fulfill these requirements and i think we have an agreement that we can live with certainly my intention to make sure within five years that we have satisfy the requirement the second question about one hundred thousand dollars you know we have a five year window and we know from past work that we've done that from the point where you begin sampling to the point where you finish a construction project the time in between can be three to four years so it's difficult for me to stand here in this tonight and say you know that you know i just one hundred thousand dollars will serve this purpose so that purpose i can tell you that for the f one eighteen budget i'm satisfied that i have the funds that i need to move the effort forward and i believe that as long as we continue to talk in terms of engineering work sample and work investigative work i think the funding is there i think it's there within the existing budget the real killer is the cost of construction we've been able to meet the demands of construction by taking advantage of d e p s two percent borrowing programme the debt service on the money we borrow comes out of the sewer enterprise fund is a line item in that budget that's where the big hit is but because we're borrowing at two percent over twenty years we're able to you know to mitigate that hit over that because i don't think that i do at this point thank you thank you for their discussion unanimously on a variety of things and i think that that is a testament to the hard work and faithless faithful work done by injury they ago that's why i'm no longer in public office but in and her cohorts on the capital budget committee works tirelessly you don't really understand how many hours they put in to present  cogent report like that complete with slides getting the selectmen the warrant committee the treasurer town administration the public safety department the what apartment electric department of public works get together and you keeping with being close keeping with the musical theme mick jagger was wise apparently when he said you can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you can get what you need and i think we got what we needed tonight thank you very much this committee because we really do work very hard and we do represent a really nice broad range of experience in the town and i think that's what makes this budget come together so well so i thank them article fourteen moved that the town be authorized to construct reconstruct resurface or repaired all or portions of various town ways and to authorize the expenditure of five hundred forty two thousand six hundred one dollars as may be received from the commonwealth of massachusetts through the massachusetts department of transportation for the fiscal year commencing july one two thousand and seventeen and expanded under the provisions of chapter ninety of the massachusetts general laws article twenty three mr carmen carolyn town treasurer article twenty three move that the town will vote to rescind the new borrowing authority in the amount of twenty seven thousand six hundred that was appropriate in an article to twenty seven million six i am sorry twenty seven million six hundred thousand that was appropriate in an article two of the january eighteenth two thousand and twelve special town meeting for the municipal light department substation project and to reduce the amount authorized to borrow by the same amount and the vote of the board of selectmen out of dash board of selectmen town meeting member large board is likely unanimously recommends favorable action meeting and this time would like to report that the blip on substation has been has been energized and is up and running we had  quickly reaching its capacity power was being sent over river structure that was decaying and expensive to maintain and quality of power was poor ignoring these problems was not an option for  us after much deliberation and consulting with industry experts town officials and many others there was decided the best solution for belmont was the one fifteen k v transmission line running from the not cambridge substation into belmont in february two thousand twelve remember that day very well we sought a town meeting approval for fifty three point seven million bonding capacity to upgrade and modernize our system the town meeting unanimously approved this measure for belmont repairs was the signing of the joint development agreement or g t a g t a was signed in two thousand and thirteen and i think you might all remember ralph's presentation on that was quite significant milestone  tonight it is this allows us to reduce the reduce the debt on the project by twenty eight million which is that signified by article twenty three tonight that the authorization of the long term bond capacity this agreement gives the ability to cut our two thousand and sixteen and on the transmission line in october of two thousand and sixteen fast forward to today we have a delivery we have delivered the new substation transmission line on time and on budget on may sixth we celebrate a ribbon cutting signifying a blip on substations been energized meaning it's alive and connected to the overall greater boston grid we have transferred ownership of the want to fifteen k v transmission line vicinity for approximately sixty minutes very important and ought to make the switch over from the old system to the new system this process will take place later this month will be communicating these necessary outages to all of those will be affected well ahead of time communication communicating reminders in many ways as possible we'll also be doing everything in our power to ensure that these outages a brief and unobstructed as possible once he's ours is a complete there will be some remaining road work to finish  infrastructure as we look forward to closing the park on the substation transmission line project can't wait as we have to up the like this important project we will keep the public informed throughout the remaining steps necessary to bring  jim liam's selectman chairman of the board of selectmen i just wanted to say that i hope that all of us recognize how important the substation project has been to the town as jim described and i wanted to congratulate jim the light department and all those who worked with you to get this project this one this was truly a collaborative effort and no one person could do this alone i want to thank all of the folks in this room that contributed a technical question when you do this switch or if you would be careful to secure our equipment for four against surge surges when that switchover takes place mr that the redevelopment of the like building on concrete avenue had to wait until that substation could be deactivated and so when is that is that in fact going to happen that that substation i can't get out live across in town hall next to the police station is going to be deactivated and when six i'd like to congratulate you on the work that you've done on this over the years but i have a question about the sixty minute outage will this be affecting internet access by the town of belmont businesses and individuals especially young people how will they be able to be without the internet for sixty minutes will this create some kind of public uproar mr wagner and is there  time very good question yes well at this time we haven't communicated the plan to the emergency services yet but they do have backup generations of the should be no interruption if if we were to affect one of those facilities we would be in contact with them in advance right now we are looking to have these outages occurring in off hours sometime around eleven pm and that seems to be around when everybody goes to bed so we're redo their router access with their provider i would hope not no i would i think it's just a momentary i mean we're saying sixty minutes to be conservative hoping that it's less than that  internet and how it affects people yeah i understand that's not my area of expertise pots so from my basic knowledge in the industry i don't think it's going to be a problem thank you budget committee unanimously recommends favorable action discussion three hundred fifty dollars jim williams selectman chairman of the board of selectmen move that there be paid to the elected office of the town as salaries for the fiscal year commencing july first two thousand and seventeen ninety five thousand to thirty five town treasurer one a one for thirty three chairman of the board of assessors three thousand and thirty assessors to two thousand two hundred each and the but apparently it turns out that's not the case it was discussed with mark polow and they decided to come to a conclusion that it would be ten percent of the two selectman but that is no indication of the value that you add to these proceeding bonnie friedman precinct three each year i get up here and ask for a list of what the salary was previously a couple of years previously and once again we don't have it question mr roberts paul roberts on meeting member precinct aide i wonder if it might be in the interest of the town something i really appreciate all the work you guys do for very short money and also recognize how much work and time you put in and i'm actually i really do believe particularly for some of these positions that we there might be an argument to be made to increase the some of these salaries some which are of stayed more or less the same  for many years and i wonder rather than taking a number out of the air if it might be in the interests of the town for this like men to put together a committee perhaps to look at this issue maybe look at what other towns are doing and paying structure to this conversation you had thank you thank the salaries are reviewed every year by the ten administrator and they are officials that spent a lot of time a lot of time we from their families perhaps we should either i don't know if it's a committee or we can ask our time ministries of ours or someone to really look at salaries of comparable towns for our elected officials and in particular for me and always have a running joke at school committee they give you know they get zero and we had you know forty five hundred looking at the school committee perhaps should they receive some type of a stipend exactly thank you and that's kind of the point which is if you're on these committees don't you know it's very difficult to sort of say well i think you know we should make more money and i know you don't want to raise money you do this for the money however you know a committee might independently come back and say well  actually we should be paying you more money or school committee maybe maybe school community should get paid so thank you very much further discussion under article of eleven saying not all those in favor please say i was opposed now department will receipts so that we get receipts in for each of these revolving accounts for the program supported by such revolving funds the when you see the expenditure wine immediately made from such revolving fine without further appropriation subject to the visions of that come back and ask for an increase in expenditure limits when programs are more successful so you can only take the taken receipts you have the progress conducted within each of these particular revolving funny areas and you can see the spending authority fourteen from the general fund free cash in appropriate and transfer a total of thirty thousand three hundred ninety two from the water enterprise fund the sorrento prize fund in the light at the price fund to the other post employment benefits stabilization fund for the purpose of funding of the post employment benefits as follows from free cash three hundred fifty four thousand three fourteen legal an upright sickout sixteen and mr jones has a brief report under this article he has chaired a no pad working group open funding advisory group good evening ralph jones precinct three i am currently serving also as chair of the op ed funding advisory group for those of you who may be new in town meeting is an acronym that stands for other post employment benefits that is to say is a benefit in addition to pension earned by our retirees and it consists primarily of health care costs other members of the committee are m waring chris doyle and ten learmonth our committee was appointed by the selectmen in the fall of two thousand and sixteen to gain a better understanding of the town's liabilities related to opec to determin track the annual costs of retiree health care and to explore options for addressing those liabilities and costs at our first meeting we saw information on the actual cost of these benefits and we found out that belmont and most surrounding towns did not know the actual cost of health care for retirees because that cost was not tracked separately we also therefore learned that since the town's actuary did not know what the actual cost the retiree health care was its reports for period every two years had been based on estimated costs which appeared to be substantially higher than our actual costs through communication with other towns particularly weyland we found that one of them had asked it's actually very to report on the actual cost of retiree health care using walen specific data in the projection of long term obligations in two thousand and seventeen we asked the selectmen to use the weyland approach in their next estimate for the town's long term obligations belmont issued a request for proposal or r f p for these services in april of two thousand and seventeen this r f p asked that the actuary develop not only the standard gas to be that's the general accounting standards board estimate for hope of obligations but also produce a second report one that relied on belmont's actual costs of retiring health care that second report also should use belmont's experience when developing and we look forward to this new more informative actual report coming out in late two thousand and seventeen at which time we will have more to report there's discussion of the motion under article sixteen mr sam joel samuels i'd like to congratulate mr jones in the committee on the work that was done but i have a technical question on the article printed materials and electronic materials ascent to town meeting members to talk about funding but if we go back to the article as proposed it talks about finding and i think we need to clarify whether that has a new significance can we go back to the it's finding that fit there are six words from the end does that need to be made the subject of a and amendment or does the material as sent to  town meeting members rule thank you it is correct in the materials and went to town meeting members and correct on the sly yes it should be funding thank  prepared to present he wanted committee report or not and julie is concerned that if we continue fine we will we'll conclude this is not official action under article thirteen in the budget that will take place wednesday but because we've made such good progress in the time if we do this i think it makes it much more likely we can complete action action wednesday night on the remaining a very quick background to what the work committee does little description of how the budget gets generated and then go through some of the high level numbers in the budget itself and then with some implications the where the what the future might hold we go to the next slide the budget is really a tremendous effort it's initially drafted by the department heads in into a larger budget notebook or a budget binder and if you have an interest in the real nuts and bolts of the budget at the line item level a copy of that notebook i'm sure is available from the town clerk it has all the detail you could possibly  plus fairly detailed write ups by each of the town departments of course you'll remember that an override was passed in two thousand and fifteen that's played a critical role in balancing the budget in the last two years and one of the major focuses of everybody involved in the budget process this year is been to ensure that the override monies are extended as long as possible the budget the override when it was originally passed was described as having an expected lifetime so to speak of three a possibly four years and we're doing all we can to make that for hopefully five years but that's that's a challenge  the budget was developed through the winter and early spring it was finally it was finalized in mid may the war committee report went out on may seventeenth hopefully enough time   written by subcommittees of the war committee that a functional research oversight responsibility so this week for the various town departments let's go to the next line  so the big number in the budget is the overall spending exclusive of the enterprise funds that you've heard about tonight the budget for the coming year is one hundred just over one hundred ten million dollars  that's an increase of about four million dollars over last year the bulk of the budget as i'm sure you've heard many times comes from property taxes which is that sorry my colors didn't come out on the slide as i had them on my computer but  the funny green color is a property taxes the second largest category of revenue is called the local receipts sorry  state state is a number which is called net because on the one hand the state has various allocations made to the town and at the same time there are various charges such as for the  are deducted so what we see is a net number which here is about ten million dollars local receipts which are primarily motor vehicle excise taxes and restaurant taxes and miscellaneous other categories is just over seven billion dollars  f we moved on and then there was free cash free cash is not income free cash is really drawing upon reserves of the town is built up and we draw upon free cash in the budget and hope that it gets replenished by the end of the year in a process that i'll describe in a little bit so if we move on to the detail of local receipts see you can see where it's all coming from motor vehicle excise taxes are by far the largest component  recreation programs are sizable component building permits steadily several hundred thousand dollars ambulance receipts a relatively new item a several hundred thousand dollars penalties and interest on taxes and meals tax but those are the principal source of revenue other than property taxes and state if we move on are for town departments and roughly fifty three million dollars are for the schools and there's about one point three million dollars which is the capital budget you heard about a little while ago and then there's an item called fixed costs which do not reflect operating expenses but are amounts that are incurred with regularity each year and the primary categories are a pension expense money the roads budget largely reflects the roads over ride from roughly two thousand and although as we discussed a couple of weeks ago in connection with pays you throw the roads override does not have to be spent on roads as a legal obligation now that it's some years afterwards there's still a commitment on the part of the town to dedicate the roads override money to the roads  half so there is a legal limit on revenue from property tax increasing by two and a half percent per year the reason we get to three and a half is that in a good year we have additional state aid but also there's something called new growth which comes about either from new construction or people making major improvements to their houses which subjects the improvements actually generate additional tax and that is the way that spending can actually go to three to three and a half percent even though prop two and a half is a constraint on the bulk of the property tax it would be difficult for the town to have more than three and a half percent per year though over the long haul if we go to budget in the next slide the budget by the particular article that you just been voting on you can see well are the fixed costs actually what your pension and roads and so forth that's the seventeen point two i'm sorry goals for this to be a little more visible public safety which is police and fire is fourteen million public services which are d p w community development and facilities building main building management is thirteen million and then smaller categories next slide the fixed costs are broken down us fall those the largest component by far is pension expense which is now it's going to be over seven million dollars that's what the town has to pay next year to cover the the pension expense obligation that's currently curd plus what's called amortization we have an unfunded pension obligation where we have a commitment to pay it off now by two thousand and twenty nine and the majority of the pension expense is actually money to retire that obligation on schedule other components of fix cost our debt and interest you can see the state charges our road building budget there are just under two million dollars a minute man is almost a million dollars as i mentioned before and the smaller miscellaneous categories if we go to the next slide general highlights the maze municipal departments police fire d p w general government and so forth are at level service in the easiest way to define global services the number of f t ease of the full time equivalents and the headcount is level the school department is growing primarily because enrollment in bubble in  t schools is exploding you may not be aware that in the last ten years the roman in the schools is grown by about seven hundred students it's growing at about one hundred per year and that growth is expected to continue for some times and for some time and seven hundred students is like an entire school and that's just in the last year the schools are reaching significant capacity limits as you heard before we're spending about two point four million our roads and sidewalks  health care line item for the town health care expenses increasing about nine percent that have been low for several years but there's a projected jump for next year which reflects actual experience and the pension expense is going up by seven percent as i mentioned before next line free cash which i'm sure you've all heard about we have about seven million dollars in an account called free cash which you can think of as a kind of  account the drawdown on free cash reflects the two point three million that's going to be used in the operating budget for next year the open transfer that you just voted is also funded from free cash so starting from free cash is measured and determined once a year and in the summertime it was at seven point one million last year between the drawdown for the budget and for the opec contribution free cash would be a four point four million but then there's a phenomenon called replenishment at least historically expenses of come in a little bit less than an anticipated revenues of coming a little bit higher than anticipated so there's a source of replenishing free cash to get it back up to the original level whether that will continue in the future as it has been in the past we'll see there are reasons to think it may not replenish as much in the future but what it will be will be we won't know until the summertime when the waters make that determination next slide the town has a fair number of funds in addition to free cash these are some of the principal ones the general stabilization fund which was created from the two thousand and fifteen override has almost three million dollars in it that's the amount w jones said is large it's definitely larger than that but exactly how much we're trying to figure out the town is a capital endowment fund of about four million dollars that's invested very conservatively and the income from that fund is spent by the or this is allocated by the capital budget committee we have a candle school fire fund from when this candle school had the fire a number of years ago that's an insurance settlement of about three million and we have a special education stabilization fund created several years ago that now has three thousand dollars in it so that fund has not been very useful recently next ninety four thousand and three three million ninety four thousand eight hundred twenty dollars sorry we just lost thirty million dollars pension deficit the pension obligation is paid  beyond eighteen the future is uncertain i said before we can count on budget increasing at least two and a half percent than in a good year as much as three or three and a half percent without additional revenue sources but there is great pressure from rising school enrollment special led mandated spending over which the town has very little control capital needs described to you the need to pay off the pension liability the general stabilization fund we hope will last into f y twenty but it's unlikely i would say very unlikely that it would  that well it would be depleted in f y twenty and there will be at this point an expected deficit of about four million dollars and we don't have a plan for dealing with that at the  moment that would require some hard choices you should know that belmont as a town cannot run a budget deficit a town is legally obligated to have a balanced budget so if there are things we would like to have  the choice is either to cut other things or to raise revenue comes down to that next slide i was curious to see how the town has been doing for the last couple of  so i collected some data from zillow and the the green line is the growth of town spending since two thousand and twelve but the blue line is the growth in the value of the average house so i would say that as challenging as it is to live in belmont it seems to be a pretty good investment and in that spirit i hope that we will find a way to get through  next five years but it will be a challenge thank you thank you m