hello and welcome to the belmont journal your source for hyper local news and community updates i'm my crowley your host this week the belmont journal depends on your support if you'd like to send us news or community updates or even get involved in the production of the program please contact our producer frederick regal oh at fred at belmont media dot org welcome to this week in the citizen herald and we're so happy to have joanna jubilance fact with us again this week i don't like how did you survive the snow well there certainly was a lot of it belmont got twenty two inches with this most recent storm in less than two weeks i know we weren't supposed to get that much when you have an interesting experience with d p death i sure did i got to ride along with the public works director j marcotte during the height of the storm on march thirteenth and it really showed me firsthand what those roads are like the visibility was really difficult if you are a plow driver you actually to be really careful because there are people out there shoveling you want to hear you don't hit them kids playing in the snow luckily with this storm the the snow wasn't heavy and the winds weren't as strong so we didn't have power outages and we didn't lose as you know we lose any trees right off the tree limb here and there so i also got to visit the d p w storm center in the d p w yard i brought them home a chocolate chip cookies which they really oh who's retiring the end of this month has been doing his job as a foreman for thirty five years answering phones during snowstorms and he was also up for more than twenty four hours without a nap and he admitted to me he was tired and he's really looking forward to his retirement i can i can imagine so this snow also interfered with belmont's participation in the national school walkout what is the plan there ok so it was supposed to be march fourteenth up because we had our fifth snow day they had to cancel it it's rescheduled to march twenty first at ten am it's at the high school and at the chant however no non staff and adults or parents are allowed this is a student only event right however the good news is that a bunch of parents are having their own walk out across from clay pond on concord ave you and the democratic town committee if you're a democrat and want to participate is also having a walk out on the railroad bridge in belmont center also at ten am on march twenty first so ple and there is going to be a seventeen minute long event outside in front of the school and they are honoring not only the seventeen parklane florida victims they are honoring one hundred fifteen victims who died in school shootings since two thousand  astounding number they want to see change they want to see stricter gun laws so i know our our town officials too are thinking about changes in terms of improving school safety so what is what's the plan there ok the plan is on march twelfth the select en announced that they are they want patrice garvin our town administrator to investigate funding to add a school resource officer to the china re middle school ok which has fourteen hundred students and the belmont high school has thirteen hundred students and they have a school resource officer so i bet a lot of people don't know that but but i know that there have been conversations taking place for at least a couple of years about potentially having a school resource officer so it will be interesting to see how that plays out so i was also interested to learn that such an important community institution is the belmont food pantry which services so many people helping them with their food needs is looking for a home again right well they're not getting kicked out of their current home  they've moved to six times since one thousand nine hundred two they are currently in the basement of the mount hope church however it's very tight there at the space is very tight it's also a residential neighborhood and clients about one hundred fifty every week they were going up from five thirty am even though the pantry doesn't open till eight thirty am so that's having an impact on the neighborhood and that's that's that's an amazing sort of testament to to just how how in demand that service is so the selectmen asked patrice garvin our town administrator to investigate short term and long term solutions to finding a permanent location for the belmont food pantry and they really also want to explore possibly having it at the high school again because it's a non residential neighborhood that will probably be a long term solution because it might have to be part of the new building plan for the high school well we certainly wish them the best and and hope that  you know we as a community can make some progress in finding this important institution a more permanent home i agree all right well thank you joanna and we look forward to seeing you next time thank you mike composting is an important way to reduce household waste and it produces benefits for the environment but many people don't realize that compost is also attractive to certain pests including rats and belmont has a real problem with rats that's why a number of residents are looking at alternatives including a program run by a company in maine called garbage to garden we have a presentation for you from sustainable media bag of finished compost delivered if they requested they put in anything that's going postal on a community scale we can do meat dairy bones egg shell citrus avocado pits people actually have a pretty easy time fill out that bucket and then we pick up a restaurant schools businesses then it all goes to local farms for the press or for local farms but it gets made into compost that is certified by the manor getting farmers and gardeners association for use in our galaxy well so we give back to them they're able to grow food that they can consider to be organic because people in portland are paying for trash bags they're already being incentivized to think more about what they're throwing away to me composting is the most important issue of sustainability forty percent of municipal waste is composed of all of that forty percent just a tiny fraction is actually recycled people think of this but organic material is necessary for life you can't grow food without it and the soil it's limited if we continue to grow food and throw it in landfills that is breaking the carbon cycle and along the timeline we will be able to read  in less than five years it's gone really from zero to sixty and nationwide you know web searches for curbside composting are up like thousands of percent of two thousand products like  welcome to this week in the belmont tony and we're happy to have franklin tucker editor back with us again hi how are you doing fine hope you're surviving the snow and thinking about shoveling snow off the sidewalks i understand that this is like the man sidewalks because their site works basically run right into the street the street has been remade but there is been no curbing so glenn clancy who is the town engineer is also the director of the office of the unit of community development did a study about the sidewalks and what he found is that a small percentage of the sidewalks about ten percent of the four hundred road segments we have in town need have that sort of no barrier no curbing no medium strip grass mediums or he's discovered that when you have a grass medium strip or a curbing whether it's asphalt or granite  money in the budget for this well this is the best thing there will be no requests for added money we won't be going into free cash or anything like that what happened is that mr clancy had gone through his budget he had much better  data in terms of the streets he needed to do how bad how far is the backlog for those streets turns out to shorter than then he thought that's because of more data and we had a new sidewalk  done and it turns out that we have pretty good sidewalks in town so what he's doing is he's he'll be able to stretch that money he has for a road management and he'll be able to use he'll be able to just stretch it out enough so he can and do these do this new policy well that's good to know but also thinking about the budget i understand that looking at the fiscal two thousand and nineteen budget health care costs look like they're rising quite a bit yes it was eleven percent and that really got everybody's attention whether it was with the war committee or the school board where you saw a big change back that kind of an increase wouldn't be fully funded insurance plan and what what what what was the borders like more told is that these claims of over one hundred twenty five thousand dollars a year over the past two years increased by seventy four percent or about a million dollars and that really is something that's out of out of whack let's say you know we're talking about claims that can arise from fairly common things you know if somebody is an auto accident if somebody comes down with cancer these are things that really affected me it's not a large number of claims in fact there's a very small number of claims but these claims can eat up funds rather quickly because number one if you're in a very expensive area at what we're doing in terms of health care plans and maybe think about adjustments moving into the future yes so that's something that is going to be pursued at the next contract with both town and school  what you can do is you can start i think it would be called limiting maybe some of the options are making people pay for options like you can say i want to use local hospitals like i'm out a  be going to mass general and if you do a massive you pay a much more out of out of cost and then you can also limit the network plans so you know you have a select network good quality but you have less less options that seems to be something that has been approved in other places so i know you have some information about local sports for us yes unfortunately the girls basketball team had a great year there the coach middlesex league liberty champions they went into the playoffs with a good record  they went to the north finals which is always a great accomplishment they've done that two times in the last four years and they have gone to the semifinals the other two years but a medic as such a catholic  team was undermanned and what their coach did is they said look we're going to have to disrupt belmont because we can't just you know beat them on the way we wanted to do it so they took a sophomore young sophomore on win in the fourth quarter unfortunately i lost forty three thirty five so that's too bad too bad but there are some good news we have some all americans at the high school let's start off with the news  and our mixed relay team the four by four hundred where you have two boys and two girls they finished sixth and they got all american status and finally really quickly we have to go to jr all americans one is james the fifth in the five kilometer freestyle and good good to hear and we look forward to talking to you again next time thank you very much ari we're heading next to concord avenue to learn about a small belmont pottery studio that's raising bowls to help women in crisis my name is ned levering and we're at indigo fire studio in belmont massachusetts indigo fire is a small pottery studio we offer classes workshops private lessons and independent study at the studio and we're really well equipped for a small studio we have a tiny space but were really well built out we have good players and good glazes we actually have a chemical lab here so we're able to make the glazes here and we think they look really cool from the first class that i took i love pottery and i got very addicted to it and i built a studio in my parents basement and i sort of did it when i could throughout that whole time i went to school in virginia and i went to a business school and i graduated with a finance degree and i was doing finance in new york for a long time at some point i decided finance wasn't for me and i dropped that i basically went to open up a pottery studio so indigo fire is we're raising handmade pottery b for an event called empty bowls which is run by an organization called on the rise and they provide support for women in crisis and so they provide shelter for them they get the te passes and help them be able to do what they need to do the actual event and people gets together pottery studios in the area and we raise bowls and all the bowls go to the restaurant period and company and they along with a couple other restaurants all put together awesome soups and whoever purchases a ticket for the event gets to sample all these local soups and they get their soup with a sweet handmade pottery bowl and that's where we come in so however many tickets get bought all that money goes to on the rise and then on the rise you that money to support the women in crisis because of the balls that our studio has been able to donate for the event they're having to seedings so they're almost selling twice as much tickets for this we have a high goal of two hundred dollars so we're not being too picky about it basically as long as it's a piece of handmade pottery i think some people made balls specifically for the event and then a lot of people just have a lot of pottery from taking classes at the studio that they're happy today my favorite thing about pottery is that it's impossibly difficult honestly and just the more you look at pots and the more you make pots you become obsessed with small details and the process is equally as rewarding as it is challenging because it's so difficult when you do finally get some success at it it feels really good indigo fire is just an awesome resource for people that want to try it and get into it we just have a really welcoming atmosphere here all the potters are nice  so if you're curious at all this is the place to try out as a business owner your community is what supports you we offer a service but we rely on  the community who likes it and they keep coming back and they support us so it's nice to make it a two way street this sunday march eighteenth is the premier of the belmont world film festival the festival opener is a french film called the workshop by wrong cantero we have a trailer of that film for you following the trailer we jane peters has an interview with the festival executive director ellen good omen and that's coming up in our community calendar right after feel i'm jane and this is your community calendar for this week before we get into our regular segment we have a guest with us today is ellen gettleman she's the executive director of belmont world phil thanks for being here today thank you for having me gentle us a little bit about the belmont world film festival that you guys have going on it starts march eighteenth and goes through may fourteenth fourteen first night is on a sunday night but every week is on a monday night if you're not  we started in two thousand and two at the studio cinema and we've since expanded we've we've shown films at a number of theaters but our home base is the studio cinema and we show films from around the world paired with speakers who are not necessarily the filmmakers although sometimes we have that but someone who can speak intelligently about the culture represented in the films and or a particular aspect of the film whether it's a political or musical or theatrical or even dance related so the films we get are from the top film festivals from around the world and they're often paired with dinners so cuisine is a big part of it too we'll have a dinner that features the food from the country being represented in the film great and how do you pick the films that go into the festival is there a theme surrounding each year we actually the theme finds us we we watch i personally watch probably over one hundred films just for this fifty series we have a family festival in january and i watch probably another sixty films for that but quite a few films and then we have a screening committee who looks at the films as well and then we look for a theme a common thread through the in those films and each year believe it or not a common theme does emerge that's increase of us and is there one particular film that really stands out to you this year and you can talk a little bit al well there are two films that are there country submissions for the best foreign language film this year so one is called the wounded it's from south africa has sort of a controversial background it is about a male circumcision right a homosexual love story and that was on the short list for the oscar it's one of the ten films chosen and then there's another one called under the tree which was iceland submission for best foreign language film fantastic great so you can check week's showing for belmont world film takes place on monday march twenty sixth at seven thirty at studio cinema the film is the wound exploring the tradition and sexuality set amid south africa's exocet culture purchased tickets on belmont world films website to road cycling belmont will works is hosting a woman's road on monday from seven to nine pm this fun social evening will help you learn some of the basics of road riding as well as meet other women who ride spring blossoms are often beautiful and fleeting join mass autobahns habitat barbara beats as she explores new england's affirm rules and senses that plants use every day to prosper in a competitive world the library will be making video conversion software available to patrons would like to digitize old home movies teens interested in volunteering at the library can join this orientation on tuesday from three to five to become familiar with the process get into the spring spirit by creating a unique scene out of peeps all ages are  be judged on march twentieth come by to view the submissions and enjoy refreshments on the twentieth amy john is the author of numerous books for children her next novel the train of lost things launches on tuesday from six to seven at belmont books also on tuesday meet belmont brings talk of the town for a second year on tuesday from seven to nine pm this event is a great opportunity to meet and connect with people in the community admission is free take the mystery out of chemistry as children explore by experimenting with and observing various chemicals potions and solutions in action sign up is required on the library's website learn to see every person and their name more vividly with neil cuts in new will share his memorize best method for remembering names of the library on thursday at six thirty they'll want high school performing arts company presents nine to five the musical tickets can be purchased at the door at champions and don't want center or online if you child has difficulty sitting through library story times you can join in on a sensory story time on saturday this program is designed for children ages three and up with autism spectrum disorders sensory integration issues and other developmental disabilities three hundred ninety five thousand deaths from malaria still occur yearly in africa participate in belmont watertown united methodist churches imagine no malaria hoop shoot out on saturday from ten to four you can participate as a shooter by making as many shots as you can in two minutes or sponsor a shooter every ten dollars raise buys a life saving bed net learn more on the church's website belmont police department will host a citizens police academy this course offers citizens a unique opportunity to experience police training how the department serves the community and learn about the men and women in uniform fill out an application on the b p website and that's it for this week if you like your event featured in belmont journals community calendar email your enjoyed the program and we'll see you next time