mark but he may be running late so we're going to go ahead and get started so a couple things i just want to cover in terms of the approach for tonight and then the back hopefully folks found there's an agenda and there's also a handout which covers what's gone on who's been engaged how did we get to this point from a process standpoint and then also talk about the content of the proposal when she concludes will open the florida trustees to ask questions and then we will then we will open it up subsequently to to the public and would invite people to the microphone to to share their thoughts ask questions i know  there have been some subsequent meetings planning meetings where some information has come out but i think we're going to make sure that we we ask them to cover maybe some of the content that she's covered before because this is important to get the full set  facts about the process about the content and the substance of the proposal and want to make sure that all of the trustees have the opportunity to hear that information directly from so with that i'll ask folks  trustees and others here to introduce themselves and then we can move forward into the presentation all right as kathy said i want to briefly is so that there is plenty of time for questions and plenty of time for the exchange of views and answers i want to briefly cover three things first the path that brought us here second what what here actually means and to talk a little bit about the communication i believe from one of the trustees so that is kathy said we have we are there is a wonderful daniel patrick moynihan a senator of the ninety's quote everyone's entitled to their own opinion no one's entitle to their own facts and so a common set of facts will be helpful let me move ahead path first of all just to remind everyone we're talking about waverly square and to some extent south pleasant st i'm if you cared enough to come this evening the odds that you already know where waverly square is is really a really high so moving right along the path right to plan i think we've reached have we reach perfection and the path revitalization of waverly square has been something that successive planning board have taken up over and over years so it is no surprise that this planning board took it up and one of the things we did when we started looking at it there have been at least four attempts by planning boards to do something about waverly square they have all pretty much ended with waverly square being because one of the things we learned by looking at the history of attempts to improve revitalize and waverly square was that they had fallen apart because the community surrounding it did not means that we asked people to come and we listened to what they had to say as to what they wanted from way that is harder for those of you who run lots of meetings that's harder than it looks because as people speak you are tempted to just give a brief answer or change the direction of a little bit or but a true listening meeting is you ask people to say their names and number of points as to what the residents wanted to see in the way of the development of waverly square the four minutes from the meeting are available on the planning boards on the town website  what you'll see here and i'll just pas on the slide for a moment so that people can read it this is this second major points in the year by major point we met i meant these are points that were made by a number of speakers in the course of the evening at that january meeting and one of the common themes was really need something that ties this where together that gives it a sense of place that gives it a sense of community so the board went off and looked at these points for a while next discussion was really a discussion of again simply relating to how how are we going to put this together as we start to try to develop release where what are the lessons learned from other attempts to develop what are we going trying to do and we said ok any development any plan that we bring forward needs to me three tests first of all what is one of the lessons of pushing square it's better to deal with developers who have money second it is easy to find developers who want to build lots of housing in belmont but the school system is just under such pressure from the enrollment side that we said we are not interested in development plans where the developer is basically selling seats in the belmont public school and thirdly i think probably many of the people who were here came to the meeting a year and a half ago on the station saying it's really important to preserve an a station in waverly square and we would only look at play and that includes that i'm going to just pause for a moment because i know mark was at that meeting and i don't know if you want to go you know we're we look at that list of what people wanted to see for a long time and then one of our members seraphim came up with the an idea of how about a librar and we took a look at that and i started to ask the question well how about a library where there's a car wash it was not clearly the idea was not ready for prime time so we worked on it informally and on july eleventh made an initial presentation to of it of the idea to the planning board and i want to emphasize that as of this point the planning board has not voted to move ahead with the steps that would be required to try to move this ahead so this is still this is an idea  e as part of an overall discussion of planning board issues with the board of selectmen on the thirty first of july this issue was  raised and the selectmen again like you may wish to comment said you need to get with the library trustees so tonight we are i am getting with the library trustees number of them and presented this idea as well and i think our reaction to me was ok interesting idea thanks for sharing and so is just intriguing that's an idea at this point and glad that we're here today to this to sort of further explore it you know with the trustees as well  and i want to stop her not to belabor the point but i think the process we need to learn from the process so a proposal like this should never have gone come forward without any engagement from the library trustee so i'm hard pressed to understand given the transparency that we had with the feasibility study a long range plan and very open public and i personally think it was a mess not to have reached out and engaged us so i think you know that that's my fervent hope is that we learn from the process next steps because we have a lot of work to do and we need to work together to find the right solution so we're committed to that but i just want to go on record it was an unfortunate messed up from a process standpoint and we're here to remedy that tonight kathy i appreciate that and i want to add just a couple points to it the first is from a process point of view and i feel this keenly it is slightly awkward for me to be here this evening with the planning board having had the opportunity to vote on it and it is one of the one of the issues with open meeting law has everything to be said for it but it would be hard to present this to the library trustees without first presenting it to my colleagues on the planning board and it would be hard to resent this to my colleagues on the planning board except at a public meeting but if i had it to do over again would i have made sure that the trustees were there on the eleventh of july absolutely and i think i think at how do we engage collaboratively in the work that's ahead of us between now and whenever the proposal is in november so we can come back and i want to again it is an idea whether it gets to so perhaps i could move ahead to the content of the idea that in in big at five thousand feet the idea is something that one finds used across the board in boston law and many other cities which is linkage it is within town meetings power to rezone waverly square and south pleasant street if the if we zone in takes place that generates a benefit for the current property owners and one of the things that one of the things that i think we need to do a better job on is to make sure that when it happens so there is some reasonable public benefit some linkage there is some linkage between the increased attractiveness of the  to see if we could put together a package in which the result in which the linkage the benefit to the town from passing this rezoning would be a library space that the town could print at a very reasonable rate on a long term lease that would be clear and the which at least to get the discussion started was that along with the library the developer could build something your house  the the positives and i assure you i read mine email and thus i have had ample opportunity to reflect on the negatives as  see it would be an anchor for revitalization in this estate planning board but we all live in the town and have some concerns about how on earth the town is going to manage for major capital projects along with the possibly another override so that i'm not with  one of the advantages of this it seemed would be that it might allow the library to move to waverly square at least apartment given some of the structural issues could be resolved to the library building freeing up the belmont like does the old belmont like department building and the police station for redevelopment which could offset some of the costs of what would be required for  p w project and then the town had one big set from project to work on and that was the high school project  addition we felt it would add senior housing and some affordable housing and it would clearly leverage the reach st century let me just to make a couple points clear because they have in points of confusion there was never a suggestion that this land be taken by eminent domain or that it be purchased that would entirely undercut the economics of what we were trying to do i mean there it would make no sense at all would it would put only move forward if we were able to make to reach an agreement with the owner of the property providing some ability to build senior housing as an incentive so that he would build a library building that the  the town could rent for a long time at a very reasonable brecht the question of how much conversation and i'm putting the library trustees down to a special class but the question into my book there is no frigate like a book to take you miles away the question of whether we could in sent senior housing and whether the economics of that along with some other rezoning like hang together was something that i had personally taken a look at in in one of my lives i was a working economist and in another life i we had at that point ok this is this share this might share the same universe the rest of us inhabit let's put something together and see if the rest of the planning board thinks it's a good idea and again we were focused perhaps too focused but we were very focused on whether the residents in the area thought it was a good idea because that had the rock on which every previous a tempt to redevelop waverly square had floundered so i think with that that's really the essence of the idea i don't know mark anything you want ok ye spent my time and typically when you're doing corporate strategy you look at one of the key requirements and what i see missing in here is where are the requirements for the library where they're requirements for objective why are we only looking at one building why isn't there a more comprehensive plan or is there a comprehensive plan i'm not aware of that so there's not a comprehensive plan we had again there had been a look at some of the other properties because clearly this wasn't intended to stand by itself but it was intended to be an anchor that would encourage other property owners to come forward is weather and what discussions have you heard with developers if any and what type of financial modeling have you done or are you doing and let me preface all of this by saying that i'm speaking for myself and probably from my fellow trustees we're really struggling getting past the process to sort of think about an idea you know as as maybe workable idea and so you know you need to know that i mean mark you know we were in front of you on may fifteenth asking for something and were told we should postpone our fundraising and no one ever mentioned this concept to any of the six of us as people that are stewards of the library elected statutory responsibility we would really just flabbergasted is the word i would use and you didn't you need to know that then i think the town is feeling a lot of the frustration that we're feeling not the whole town but people that care about this building and the services so let me just say that but so what conversations have you had with developers and what type of financial planning have you actually done because at the end of the day maybe you say capital dollars and oversized operating oversight of a project and you wind up with a lease back that could leave the town without a building in twenty years so just kind of what have you done so that that to enable people so let me let me take a crack at the process question again because i understand as i said earlier i read my e mail and as well as the not and so when they were sufficiently frustrated with emailing they call it the there is a there is a genuine i am genuinely sorry about the surprise i care about the library as well i am a longtime supporter of the library the question of how far you need to take an idea before you make it public i think is an idea that we have wrestled with perhaps unsuccessfully i mean i personally throughout this process because on the one hand you can take every idea that comes into your head and ask for a meeting of the board of selectmen the library trustees it's your wouldn't want to at a planning board meeting hand out the desired rezoning that's clearly too far somewhere in between and let me just say one thing yet you had you had something scheduled at the board of selectmen present this as a proposal before we were contacted at all it was on an agenda for the thirty first of july and frankly i think the community outpouring along with the trustees letter to the selectmen was a large reason why the selectmen said have this me i was in a not ok so yes we we have that same risk constraint i mean and in private practice i didn't have to worry about open meetings but when what you're working on i where in the real house at the people who elected around this table what you did came across and and liz i know you didn't intend it that way it came across as nefarious and so that's that's something to deal with you know we are all really struggling with that and i hope everyone in town learns from that kind of process because it makes it really worth it you may have a terrific idea here i wait till the see poc report is out in the fall that put us back six months not sure why but not we i think we said is not we wouldn't support a building for me right i think that's the point wasn't that you co planning board meeting back and maybe the eighteenth of july you have designed your number here and you you said that you learned early on that it's critically important to have a picture so  we wanted to do was take our concept further so that it was more tangible so that we had schematic to because what we have heard from fundraisers professionals in the field is that is a fundamental requirement to the type of capital fund raising that we were planning to do and that we were asking for a building committee really we want we're asking for the mahoney she asked that we we defer to november which we acquiesced to no because we thought it was the right thing to do for the town and so that in part you know kind of the because of the location to the proximity to the library in proximity to the middle school and to the elementary schools it's the heart of the community and so the senses that that is this is the right site for a library and  back to my my point and consideration for have we looked at strategic locations what their requirements are and how are those factoring in or are only really you know kind of co mingling to many  too many idea and therefore compromising really what we want as a community well let's not make short sighted decisions and i what's best for the community fully understand the financial considerations we get it we're taxpayers i see my tax bill go up but but let's let's let's think about what we want figure out if we can get there and if not and then compromise in feels like we've compromised out of the ge let me just ask you live how many square feet is that lot of your questions liz how many square feet is the carwash lot approximately fifty five thousand and fifty five thousand square feet is there a parking the library requires more parking than we have now we have forty seven pieces right so can you have a large house how many floors are you expecting from the lot we have issues with how many floors because we don't have a large we need no more than two floors spread out good site it's a very small lot to do all  tell a couple a couple of questions and only ask you when i well remember the man in chair i'm happy to answer the questions in any order could you suggest the order in which you would like me to answer these questions as best i can understand no commitments of me what conversations have you had with developers and what type of financial analysis do you have around the operating cost of the sale leaseback as opposed to just the capital construction costs that the private developer would pick up ok so let me start with the second question then i'll do the first it's not a sale and leaseback it's a simple rental that's right because we don't know we don't need it you're correct me i know and they probably are accurate right now so it's not e what land so so my concern would be that twenty years from now you have to give the building back as you can afford the developer says that's it no more then what do you do because you know it it's tricky stuff it's really tricky stuff you know obviously you have negotiation room when you have negotiation room but it's trustees we get kind of concerned about that also a little concerned about whether it's a bill to suit who controls what the building looks like all that stuff and maybe i'm asking questions that are way too far down the line but those are the kinds of things that it's trustees would be quite concerned about absolutely s trustees you have a duty of loyalty and a duty of care and you need to observe them both meticulously as you have done let me let me give some semi technical answers to two of your questions because otherwise it gets it would be longer so to to get that and to get the modeling started what i did was assume that we would borrow the money took a look at what the debt repayment costs would be van set the annual rent at twenty five percent of the annual debt repayment costs and then said if if that and that translates into a grand per square foot because the notion was while things may get rearranged and i listen i think this to answers one of the question point you raised in your letter that nothing in the way of square footage or facilities changed the plans were given they'd have to be rearranged given the shape of the site but the square footage was the same that allowed me to back out a cost per square foot i could estimate the selling price of a condo and so was able to put together a first thirty years from now and again this is a point on which when people and now i'm going to draw on some of the e mails i got the point being well thirty years from now i'm not sure what a library will look going to what no no i mean i mean that is a good point and you know again there were many people who wrote and said you know thirty years from now we're going to look a lot want a library that looks like the library we have and therefore this isn't a good idea so but the but the answer was thirty years twenty plus ten and i think in terms of big releases that was a a reasonable starting assumption has somewhat hard put to see what was enough nefarious is a different kind of adjective yes it is and i didn't say that that was this is certainly what we all felt i said there was a little bit of a smell of that in the agendas and you know we were working forward with the foundation to begin a fundraising effort in the same thing in november we would come back to town meeting and then all of a sudden it was like yeah and that's just it's just it it just seem you know if you practiced law for forty years it didn't smell right and and i said i i hope and assume that no one that came up with this idea had that intention but it was weird it was weird when kathy had spent the last three years trying to build bridges with every stakeholder in town and we had all had public meetings that you knew about you know all those public meetings and then all of a sudden there was something in the air that stymied a lot of the effort and i just sort of hanging here now which is maybe fine i don't know but it just it and again you know and hindsight things look different than they were intended to be and i understand that and that's why we're all here tonight  but personally as a citizen as well as a trustee i just think you need to hear that that that was that it was disturbing it was real and you heard that on the whatever the august first word of the day was more on the senior center that's what you're hearing from residents project working group is that we understand that there's a major building project a front of us to live the high school i mean i'm committed to that but that's the first one of these to come out i don't know how large is going to be is going to be pretty significant configurations probably larger than one through twelve but i'm not in the believe me it's on the major cow project working group we were saying ok what do we do about a police station that is terrible somewhat and save the facilities for the female officers is terrible what do we do about the d p facilities terrible as well owns the facility for the employees there is awful and when we do by the library i mean we understand this is the site and we recognize that and when do we have a building committee for that so we're trying to solve a major issue perspective having looked at our financials we're going to be in tough shape it's a how do we folks i think that's what we want to hear from all of you in that with the major cap project working group we can have some means but as a member of the board help me understand how can we move forward because you can't tax we can't have significant debt except regions for the next twenty years plus within all of that in operating all right probably more than one and expect everyone to support all of those so we need to do we need to address all these buildings collaborate clearly d p w the police station clip course the high school and then the bridge and then roads and sidewalks in our operating budget so that's what i'm wrestling angles questions about maybe two major areas one being has you done any looks any studies into how much it would cost to renovate this building into a police station because when we did if we felt just a little more background when we did the feasibility study for the library in order to just renovate this building and maybe add a little bit of an addition it costs more than building a new building and that was of course a gas pump places for securing evidence and so i would without being an architect i would think and having but having looked at the other plans that that would also be an expensive undertaking not that the police could just move in so that i have kind of a question around that and then the other main area would be in terms of thinking about revitalizing waverley square which is certainly a good idea  i guess i'm wondering where the idea to put in a public building like the library with senior housing potentially attached when we're in a town where we have such a small commercial tax base and so the library obviously would not help with that issue and certainly senior housing where i know the first instinct is to say that's good i guess because it doesn't bring more students in i guess one question comes up you know where do we expect the seniors to come from i would think that it a lot of them would be people in belmont that want to remain who don't want to downsize who are going to sell their house and then people like me with three kids are going to mov really looking at the cost of how much the police station here would be and also is there a better use of waverly square and that's just kind of ignoring the for what for me is the main issue of moving the library out of the center of town it's outrageous to me but and so first what would it actually cost to move the police station and that is that one of the reasons that this is an idea not a plan is don't have a good answer to this question and if it turned out to be as as an economist you know we don't believe in the word prohibitive we just believe in high marginal cost but interest and that would be one of the reasons that this was not and there are many ideas that are imaginative but not good ideas and that would be one of the reasons again if this were a proposal that we were moving forward to town meeting i would have an answer to that question i don't know and that would clearly be on the list of things to look at in actually goes back to an important point the cap you made earlier but let me not let me not drift away from your second question which putting this in absolute terms but we are obviously it's a quality a quantitative issue and people now have very few good alternatives so they sell they leave belmont and they leave the community they've been in for much of their adult lives so that's the argument for senior housing and why yes new families when when people sell their houses that are now too large for them they will sell them to families that will happen in any case the question is can those people who are selling stay in belmont again you know it's not going to be zero one hundred but that's the and there is even i will not detain everyone but there is even there some evidence not just improvising on the spot and then would you like to elaborate on your third point  waverly while a great area is certainly a candidate for additional development is a very it's not in the center of town it's very busy traffic wise my understanding is that the car o i gagged when when when a friend of mine asked for a crossing guard your target audience she was told that it's too dangerous yeah so i guess my question would be why move it right are again the argument for moving up would be one revitalization second it is the most densely populated part of town geographically obviously it's not in the cent but if you did a population map because the general residence districts are so much denser then single residence and a single residence be you'd see that we were actually not not further from the center of right population he repeated may that may not line up exactly with the actual users of the library know that here being near the high school of middle school exciter or you know i don't have that data in front of me  given the fact that we are grandfathered into this place which is a wetlands the setback for a wetlands is two hundred feet which i think puts you somewhere in the middle of concord avenue and if this building becomes something other than a library then it won't be grandfather and that gas pump will be verboten if you talk to the conservation commission and all the other sustainable belloc folks will have the same argument you know we had to talk to them about having parking when we were doing feasibility of the project and basically what one of the members said well don't have any parking that's that will solve your rain water runoff into the creek so that's an extreme position but the fact is you don't know that you can really put the police station here yeah so the question of the feasibility of the police station in this location i think is one that i just answered and the the and the other issue of why not a police station there are very few examples of police stations revitalized me all of the good things that you would say about the library it's a community gathering place it gives a sense of place it gives a sense of purpose it's a wonderful amenity in a part of town where there are very few wonderful town amenities that maybe when i want to be mindful of time we should we should go through a few more question term the trustees and open it up to the public i know one thing that we've heard from the public is researching other situations like this and there and librarian i'm a medical librarian at the boston chief of the library service but that doesn't mean i don't know public libraries the public library saved my life when i was a little kid and have been my profession my vocation for all these forty four years libraries have been around for five thousand years they're not going to change substantially in the next thirty libraries manage and organize content and provide the technology drives how you get that content and that's that's going to change but the concept i have a library and let me just give you a couple of stats there are more public libraries and starbucks in the united states that should make all of  said nearly one hundred percent have wife high and no fee and no access fee computers ninety six point five million attendees at public library programs across the country and in two thousand and thirteen it's growing in times of economic trouble libraries become more robustly busy the like there are several libraries that have hired social workers to help people do job searches during the recession this is the community center the heart of dhamma and libraries are not going away they may change but one of the things we did in the feasibility study was to identify lots of flexibility and whatever building we've built so that we can move i'm speaking to the mike who lives it would be good to get actually a copy of the financial analysis that you mention because it seems to be the basis of any of this reason that we're having this discussion tonight because if it doesn't work financially why would we even be here secondly part of the magic of financing libraries in massachusetts is that there's a significant public grants for public buildings that are libraries and when you when you build a standalone library you get a lot of money from the state that can finance that building which makes it a better return for the town in terms of the financial analysis and we have actually been in line for grants in the past we haven't successfully managed or all the way through on getting that money but it should be available in the future for us to be able to get the public money which makes the financials for a public building probably better than a private building and secondly i was reading actually the mandate for the planning board online and one of the things it says is preserving the character and quality of it the town and i think that certainly economic development is also a mandate for planning board but it's not on the website actually but it is in the massachusetts act and so there's a tradeoff between community analysis and economic development and i think that we have done bent over backwards with feasibility committees hearings with the public analysis of different sites over years probably now fifteen years of feasibility committees and we have a pretty good idea of what lab where the library should be what the public wants in the library and i would urge you to go through that analysis which is available on our website but in any case it says that people want a public library with a democratically available resources i would call them democratically available which are available to anybody who might not have wife i at home might not have books at home might not have computers at home and they're able to do that in a public setting not in a private setting so i think that it is important from a financial analysis from a community development point of view and for the public access to these resources that we do have a public library and a public building probably in this let me take the questions in order for steak grants it had been my understanding and if this is not correct then obviously this would change the economics that this is the current proposal for library did government in two thousand and nineteen to see if they consider a new grant program there is no grant program currently there is no guarantee particularly given the current economic condition in the state and the support from the federal government so mark is correct there has been money in the past there are other grants opportunity and i think that's more where has  in two thousand and nineteen just a couple other things is that were to follow that through if there was money that was approved in two thousand and nineteen there would be a grant around potentially in two thousand and twenty two that  could be two thousand and twenty four twenty five twenty six we will not last without significant investment in this we have a structural engineering report that calls into dire  question the the safety and structure of the roof we've asked jerry boyle to get a second opinion because we are concerned about that so i think there's and i think that's part of the concern w defined path forward we have kicked the can down the road for over twenty years for looking at a future for the library if we don't agree to a plan that we can all get behind and figure out what one how long we're going to be in this building what investment we need to be making where we have a huge potential of being faced with a critical repair a need which would be throwing money  away need a plan we thought we had a plan and that's what we were going forward so i think you know i think what i've not heard i've heard idea what i'd like to just ask i want to make sure that we marry hasn't had a chance to a natural area in my view for all kinds of development the proximity to boston the all the excellent transportation in the area i just i'm puzzled that the planning board would just focus narrowly on this one particular area  piece of property it seems that i would just speaking for the planning board i would like to see a vision for waverly square and and also that would include a traffic study to buy we've alluded to the fact that it's not safe crossing propellor road we have about a thousand people a day coming into the library here to various stores it is so there are a lot to issues that really raised are raised with the question of waverley square i remember we had a branch library up there years ago i think there would be a great idea the sort of down the road at some point but so i'm looking at it from the context of planning for the whole town and planning for the entire waverly area which which actually could benefit from from that from that sort of a more comprehensive point of view i i think everyone on the show has a take to speak for my colleagues on some issues but i think i could say all of us agree that this is not a one that you can't have a one parcel plan of redevelopment that makes no sense but you can have a critical anchor and that is the thought here obviously you would need to do a variety of things but the point the general point a bra i would prefer something a little smaller than of the because my experience in belmont is a vision takes if you want something to happen it's best to keep the vision somewhat manageable otherwise the only thing the vision leads to is another committee five or six years down the road to have another vision and we're really trying to avoid that but to me the point is well the general point is well  that lot but one would need zoning changes to allow senior housing and without senior housing the economics of the whole thing don't work so one would absolutely need so many changes so i think  elaine raised the issue of parking and you know parking is comes up every time it came up with the center it came on pier and it has its does the plant if you're talking about senior housing you need housing parking and  union library parking thousand visitors a day and that in the building we have more people coming through the parking lot has that been considered a factor not because that is critically important as you describe a densely populated area  it is one along with the police you can't really reality really can't really relocate the police station at reasonable cost it is one of the things that might cause one to say not good read those what did you think that we had completed based on our interaction with the public land where does that stand so there is absolutely no commitment from any property owner in the area if there if we had moved this to the point of having a commitment from a property we have had a discussion under the auspices of community development we do not do one on one discussions with developers we don't even do two on one discussions when geoffrey wheeler had not realized that his duties included chaperoned but they do so the answer is it's that we didn't get to know the answer is we look at it the street and that sort of resulted in us wanted to find a replacement field because the school calf salut wouldn't replace the field now we got a full bill because of that because we were trying to put it here and pull up the hill but it resulted in this wonderful pool i think our misstep was another idea that sort of surfaced at the time was to put it on the corner of concord avenue and is that underwood street there which i think probably would have worked and find  of think more broadly about we are could be because there was support we had a grant who could raise a lot of money building costs were less then and we could have probably move the police station here and we would be having time and see a way you know you've heard me say probably since my father passed away sort of my mother takes advantage of the programs which are wonderful and you do hear loud and clear from a lot of seniors and not even that old seniors you know that we need to think about ways to sort out what's out there yeah i mean i think that's a but i think that would be a nice idea because i think there are a lot of individuals in town families in broome in windows that would love to stay in town but don't want to stay in a big house or can afford to you thank you i think people have been patient i appreciate everyone's participation and folks want to make a comment or ask a question if they could come to the mike and i would ask that you identify yourself and before asking your question property it's directly next to the car wash as well as the property that's across the street from the carwash he is a member of the planning board and he when we're time out revitalization of waverly square two years ago he told me when he bought a brick building that he was going to be putting restaurants and that he was going to be getting permission to put a restaurant down on the on the train tracks to serve breakfast to people waiting that he had all of these ideas and that sounded to me like a beautiful idea to redevelop the square wondering you know kind of where he is on that project and what kind of influence he may have had in the process  of having a library which would certainly be helping his businesses which would be located right across the street and right next door killed a stefano resigned from the board so he is no longer a member of the planning b plants which have not come to fruition again i want to emphasize that this is a project that has been going on for more than twenty years and it never quite gets there ok but but he dies just so people now have beautiful plans jobs for that waverly square section to bring business and to use that train track i am i'm pushing  ago i started working with the trustees before i joined them probably twenty years ago and i've been through i don't know three or four or five grand rounds and one of the big problems has always been that there's always been another project that was more important than a new library whether it was a q or a grid or a list scribbled on something on a piece of paper and somebody just pocket we have enough schools and one of them always needs to be fixed and we have all these other projects if you look mentioned that also need help but we remain one of the few where the only town in a large area that has never taken advantage of the money the state wants to give away and we have this old falling down building where everybody else has renovated war replacing the libraries and i can say this now because i'm not on the court anymore but we've never had the support of the  we've been i would say tricked out of something by the force like we when i was the chair of the trustees we took we put an article off a town meeting asking for a building committee and at the last minute when the sledges brought up a procedural motion that made it so that we couldn't even get to vote we were we were pretty darn sure that we had the support of town meeting that night and if it had come to a vote we would have had the bil and sounds like once again the trustees were trying to get a bill the committees of they could get a schematic so they could do some fund raising and they were turned away so i think that we need to get support from the elected town officials that matches the support that we have from library users and people in town in general and i could say a million things but i just want to say one of the thing the library of the future has always been a big question people towards it how do you know what we're going to need in twenty years or thirty years well as the land said libraries really don't change that much if we had built a library twenty or twenty five years ago we would still work right we still need books we still need librarians to help people find things the space usage changes a little bit but i think we can comfortably decide to build something and know that it will la out whether you're entitled to put it out whatever right to put it out is once the ideas out there people start talking about the merits of the idea regardless of whether it has any right to exist and we've seen that whether it has any merits and we see that our national politics and let me just use an anecdote i'm the chair of the i t advisory committee if one of my members like glenn was or phil lawrence who are very talented software application developers came to me and said paul i've built a new application new algorithm that does a much more efficient job over arranging the general residence of commercial zones in belmont much better than what we have it's highly efficient what if i were to  hold hearings about the proposition for a new zoning based on the algorithm that was developed out of my committee it's a great idea it could benefit the town my guess liz is that you would not take kindly to that because zoning is not the purview of my committee it's a purview of your committee now as a chairman i would never do that because i respect the jurisdictions of different committees and look appointed committees which mine is and yours is let alone elected committees who are answerable directly to the voters ok and mark when you said oh well we've heard the process you have a process this is as the senior executive of this town this is a huge issue for you implicit in that is that committees have to stay in their lane you can't have committees freelancing you can't have my committee start talking about zoning changes you can have the war committee start talking about the kind of principle they want to hire for the schools you just can't otherwise what you have is chaos and so what i want to hear from you mark is a clear statement that any plan for the disposition of the library has to be approved of and come from the board it's a lect it to be have responsibility over the library have their approval and come from this library board of trustees you will not accept it from another board that doesn't have jurisdiction i think we need you to say that clearly i can fully support that and you always have i understand i know that's what you meant but for people you know people do you know if they want to hear so i think what they really need to hear is listen these people who are elected they decide what happens at the library and clearly about yeah absolutely that will respond to got this idea whatever it might you know whether it's a good idea or not i haven't heard a sales and say clearly that any proposal for the disposition of the library needs to come from the labrador trustees i still hear maybe the plan works because for once i'd like to hear her state clearly that that's her understanding as well well i think any proposal that involves sony has to be approved of by town meeting and any proposal that involves a building has to be approved by the voters that's where it all stops a general residence district and one in single residency which impacts much of the town and both of those proposals were started by citizens groups who brought the ideas forward and in fact as citizens petitions deal the came to town meeting and the town the planning board noticing that this these were both really good ideas embrace both of them so again i camp said to kathy i'll say again i would do it differently if i were doing it over but i am really i think much more open to there is something as a good idea and jada listen where every comes from so if my committee comes up with some good ideas for rezoning town you're ok with me holding meetings about that and talking about rezone belmont based on an algorithm coming out of the r t advisory committee i think that would be really intriguing because what i would say is a proper order would be to take that to you on a personal basis have coffee with you and say hey listen lives is a really good idea that came up out of my committee it's not the purview of my committee it's a purview of your committee but i want you to know about it and if your committee wants to cooperate or collaborator long more than we can we can reach you do that that's kind of the way committees work in this town and have historically and and there's no impediment to doing that open meeting law you mentioned open meeting law that doesn't prohibit you from having a coffee with cathy and saying hey what do you think it all ok thank you i think the point is comment that i think that there's an opportunity you know i've heard what's their roles and responsibilities in a planning born roloson responsibility in a library we are elected officials we have an obligation and duty to ensure that we have the right building to our friend of programs and services and we have a vested interest if not a clear ownership and accountability for those decision thank s thank you this really going to say something you look like you're opposed to open your mouth only to repeat what i said a moment ago yet in the end it's town meeting and the voters of belmont who have the ultimate authority yes so my name is molly alice and i live in precinct eight and i've lived in the town for about twenty three years and i don't have any questions but i have a couple of comments number one is that i don't support the idea of moving the library out of the central location i participated in the feasibility studies for the library as well as i've lived here as i think i mentioned twenty three years i've been a town meeting member i participated in all kinds of planning feasibility studies etc etc only to see them either be shelved or at the last minute changed from what to me and as defined was and it's very demoralizing to put that kind of effort into the place where you live to have that kind of an outcome thank  judith finally town meeting member precinct six i wonder whether we might read direct the where we're coming from on this one you began liz i believe you said that this started with discussion with the residents and waverly square book and you were looking for problems i had hesitate to say project but you're looking for ways to revitalize way families where and this idea did not come up if i understood this as a way to do something dreadful to the library it came out because it appears seemed to be something that the residents of the waverly area might buy into and i wonder whether you might talk to that a little more so that we get a look at how this act you know how those payments are so it was i think it is the most popular idea that the planning board has ever floated with the residence of the who live around waverly square no question it's sort of it in terms you know with all due respect  this is maybe something that if nothing else needs to be just considered would it have been wonderful if it had come up ten years ago yes of course it worked but it's here now equally we've got four and their opinion need to be considered also even if they didn't come to you or to the meetings could i ask the most just if you could comment to kathy and when was that shared with the residents  could we get a copy of the analysis that was done on the popularity of this proposal in waverly square and because of its use if it's an important fact we would like to know what that is is there in the analysis is restudy it was your presentation or is there any data all i said i was on the feasibility feasibility committee and it was a very very good process and led to a very fine product i also when this subject came up called the state library board and there is only one town in massachusetts that has its main branch in the least building and that is the town of richmond which is next to lenox a very very small community and i didn't have an opportunity to call the director in speaking with the people have the state there did seem to be the slave that wasn't totally successful to have that kind of a situation going on with the brain franch it's quite different when it's a i mean with the main branch it's quite different when it's a branch library and i think following up on what the former speaker said we want to have a branch library in waverly square that would please the residents there and i'm not too sure they thought about of a main library maybe a branch life would be very good but the other point i want to make is that i'm sitting here tonight it just seems to me that this is another way of the library once again as the bible that's being tossed around in the town and the town but also it's a it's a just seems to me that as we talk about moving the library again ok we won't be able to do that we have to get a developer and then we have to buy the land and then we have to build the building and that we have to find a place for the larger and in the meantime we'll say well we won't do anything with the police department because we're going to wait for the library to be almost around that out and out of that and it's another way for us not to do a thing and so it just seems to me it is an idea liz i think it's a great idea to talk about ways in which we can shift everything around in the town but in frankly i think it's a bad idea and i hope that it will be just missed and i was going to ask a couple of other questions but i think i'm going to go in a different direction and liz and i think this is maybe a little bit of an elephant in the room and perhaps a little bit of a continuing down  a rabbit hole so i apologize in advance if that's the case for the mixed metaphor for the many many many mixes of metaphors and what i just said so thank you what what i guess there are a lot of animals and what i just said you know what  i what i heard you say before in answer to another question was not actually an answer somebody asked if you would say that the planning board will not will defer to the library trustees on the disposition of the library project let's call it and i just would like you to go on record as saying are you reserving the right to bring forward to a town meeting a proposal that could be and could end up being in opposition to something that the library trustees actually are recommending because i actually as i listen i'm really trying to listen here i am hearing the library trustees fairly united along with just about everybody in this room you know opposition to this idea i concerned and what i'm hearing that you're reserving the right to bring something forward that it does sound like could ultimately be in opposition to what the library trustees want to do no i am trying to be careful about the fact that i am one member of the planning board the planning board has not taken a position on this and for me to assert what the planning board's position if you think there are people in the room who think that what we've been talking about is a bad idea my colleagues on the planning board with great justice would think that for me to unilaterally assert the position of the planning board is way way out of line so i'm going to press just a bit let's come up with a hypothetical and let's say that the planning board were you know i didn't you were not speaking on behalf of the board in fact the planning board actually prefers to bring forward a library and waverley square but the library trustees do not want that to have are you saying that they want the planning board could still bring to town meeting for a vote which requires i think what two thirds of the town meeting would bring forward to town meeting something that could be in opposition to what the trustees want i am an economist and in the course of doing my daily work i exhaust my stock of hypotheticals and with that i'm done ok let's be clear selfless hi my name is the stair but i live on cross street and i've been a resident in belmont for over a decade and i have a con and i don't have a question i agree with many of the other speakers at this is just a bad idea and as inefficient person it seems like we're spending a lot of time talking about that idea but i think the most important thing that i come away from this process is that we all know there's a lot of challenges for in the next decade or  particular need to hear that from the people who just vote i elected these people i voted for them i did not vote for anybody on the plane right you guys i want them in a very nontransparent way i people move from one to the other so it's a small group of people and you don't get new voices and this new voices telling you listen you're getting e mails you're getting phone calls people are angry because they want the location it's pretty simple so listen to the people who vote listen to people who pay their taxes don't listen to us do you know what is that are just happened to be on those committees as i voted the library trustees because i believe that they are going to carry the best interest of the library for i do not believe that the planning board has the best interest of the library going forward i look at this renting option as ridiculous it does not ensure the future of the library and that is the most important thing period end of discussion stop wasting our time to put it here i was an observer in the balcony of the town hall that's where they used to me and i think it's a great place the one thing i totally support all of you library trustees i appreciate you liz coming station because you don't realize it cruises have the right of way and the reason i say that is my daughter was in an accident on route night and because a cruiser came out of no place and smashed her car  all i need to hear is one little kid gets killed over here and you have i'll be the first one to lie down in their driveway and say no police station here waverly square that didn't say anything about a library so i'm pretty certain nobody came because of the library there were about i'd say maybe fifteen people there and i know at least four of them were not waverly residents because it was me and sa so i don't have any way for the people with i know there were comments from from them so my concerns i have a lot of them and i'm not going to talk about most of them it's all of the things people talked about proximity walkability students all that stuff not to talk about that i want to talk about the finances and i you know absolutely one who is in favor of looking for alternatives i understand all the projects that we have there very expensive i understand that we will need it over at some point  those are all facts and we don't like them and we don't want to spend that money but at some point we're going to have to and i you know so looking at the finances of this of a handful of things give me concerns one liz you were asked about the financial modeling and how you came up with the numbers and you said that you looked at it and just made an assumption that it needs to be that the rent would need to be twenty five percent of what the debt service would be that seems to me a little bit of putting the assumption before the fact i think we need to build something bottom up that says how much is this really going to cost how much is it going to cost to build and what are all the costs that are going to go into this thread and i look at it and i i know that building something privately can be a little bit less expensive than building something publicly but i can't believe that it could be half the price so that's one thing i don't understand what the building costs would be secondly related to that is now you have a private owner who has to pay property taxes we don't have but he this and so that's going to become part of the rent as well because he's not just going to eat it and then a private owner needs a profit margin and so i just i haven't seen the model i would love to see the model but i just don't understand how there could be all of the savings and i would like to understand that i would like to look at that and then the conversation about the police station i know that there was a feasibility study years ago years ago right so and i know that you guys are looking at a variety of different options for what to do with it so there may be cheaper ways of doing things on the short term than that you know what that was  it is an expensive proposition so i know that there's this outhouse a shell game and i don't mean it in a negative term but it's like if we do this then that solves this problem if we do this as this problem solves this problem and i just question those assumptions because haven't seen the numbers to it and i know that you described at one point that if there's not a significant savings then there's no point in doing this but none of us have seen the significant savings and so it's very hard you know there are all the things about the proposal you know not being in the center and all of that i think are very fundamental but also there's this whole piece about what is the financial argument and does it hold up and so for me that's a big issue finally i am involved in the fund raising planning for the library and i can tell you this is it adds a tremendous amount of ambiguity to all of that you can't even talk to somebody about fund raising when there's another proposal on the table that is purported to i heard one person of interest say if we can get it for free then we definitely need to do it and it just really throws everything out but you're stymied and so i think it adds a lot of ambiguity and a big distraction as it had said and so anyway i just wanted to put all of that out there  i guess my bigger pressed is i'd love to see the numbers let me let me barry just very quickly respond to i mean they are all good they're all excellent points let me quickly respond to to what is you know of course you can't make the numbers work and the importance of getting to i think that will be a major topic of conversation when the planning board meets in september that point is well taken but the only what i would say and i think this goes to ohio state can win a lot of football games by playing three yards in a cloud of dust harvard can't do that it has to play a multiplex defense because it just isn't isn't big enough and isn't heavy enough to do three yards in a cloud of dust and belmont has because of its no commercial base knowing dust real base i just don't see how you make a first down let alone get everybody across the goal that way as i say there are the world is full of ideas this may turn out to be a bad idea but dismissing this perhaps for really good causes a bad idea does not make that fundamental problem go away and everyone who is here this evening has to recognize that  think i don't talk about why this idea should be dismissed from the planning perspective the first point which is very important is about community pride and sense of place is primarily a residential community we all know that place making perspective it would be detrimental to the community if we if we remove the library from this part which is centrally located within the community everybody has has equal access to it and we have ample parking and also different amenities surrounding the library because when you think about belmont town center you would think about that the city hall the police department the pool and the library and if you remove the library which is one of the most important in front of the library and just first across the street on the high school fields and also near the pool and i was like this is the town i want to live being we have a community prides that's that's built on took a look at the carwash site just from a plenty perspective i don't think it's feasible to do a library and senior housing on the site without was proper parking capacity and also set circulation because it's a very lean y site you would have to be very careful with circulation which i don't think you can easily achieve waste wheezed the amount of developments that's proposed in that state so from that perspective i don't think we should even consider this we can we can go tonight yeah at the structure of port to serve which i'm happy to give you a copy of and you're in your i'll do it tonight the main point of the structural report were that the roof doesn't hold the snow loading so the roof is supposed to terrible terrible suggestion so i know i'm looking at the time it's nine o'clock all say that we planned it this way but i want to thank everybody for their participation i want to thank you very much for being here and paul said being on the hot seat but engaging in a conversation with mark as well i think you know we've we've talked about the process we need to work together we need to understand the facts so a couple action items that i think we need to understand what the decision making component if they exist and i'm sure they do but i think there need they need to be shared i think we all need to see them and understand some patients that are made and look at the content of those financial considerations i said because i think that's a critical component now for selling this as a concept and that one of the key tenants or key principles is the financials and one that will do then we need to be able to look at them and ensure that is in fact one of the values that won't get from this proposal forward so i think i asked do we have a sense for what the decision making process again as i mentioned the the full planning board has not yet voted on whether it would want to move ahead with the  of the input that we've got at this meeting and again i think everyone for coming and thank you for your remarks and as well as the other public meetings as well as the considerable amount of correspondence that we've received ok good i think in closing mark all i'll make a request to us as the selectmen and a member of the major capital works i think what we have we've heard here tonight is  a few different proposals one what are we doing about the library to rezoning or the revitalization of square three a lot of conversation about how do we support i mean for capital works projects that are out there i think there needs to be a collaborative inclusive discussion looking at the strategic means for all of those considerations i don't think it's just a library we will have a very strong opinion for what we believe is right for the library based on what we need for programs and services and what we've heard from the community but i think this really is a strategic moment from leadership standpoint for the town to put forth a plan that that takes into account all of the different can different factions here so how much so you so i think you understand there are some folks do as well that  the board select been appointed to me project's working group i am the board member and that's exactly what they're charges and that is to look at all of the major building projects including the skating rink and to report out to t wants to have also public hearings as well where we've been wrestling with all of these building projects i mean i think the high school is moving along in its path so we're not looking at that as closely as we are a library d p w police station and we're looking at both short term solutions process the approach we need to take and we're trying to run some numbers so we're going to have public meetings i'm in the board is we when i was reelected that was sort of one of the things i wanted to move forward is a major bill major building projects and so we've appointed this committee and that's really i think you know like i suggested this to folks here that is really the oversight committee if you will into all of these building projects we've met with you kathy probably need to meet again to talk about the library where that sort of all stands and it's going to be short term long term and i've said this publicly we have to do something with all of them at some point in time and so i think that's where what we're looking at in the present presentation in november isn't the final solution it is