hello everyone i'm joanna julius senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald and wicked local belmont dot com and welcome to this edition of belmont in thirty today's guest is selectman chairman marc polo now  or someone else for that matter and so we've we issued the earth p we're taking in bids and we'll make a decision sometime end of march early april in terms of who that probably later than early april but who the the consultant will be  men in and mostly what else we want to do as well so will deliberate on that in the twenty seventh of march in a point to search committee what's their role well their will is to actually assist in drive the search i think they'll work with the consultant clearly to work with our director of human resources direct reporter and together you know will do advertisements will will look for candidates for for the to fill out that position and will go through a process of interviewing the candidates i think the search committee what was helpful last time and i'm going to encourage them to do the same thing if i serve on it is to interview some of the partment had to get a sense from them in terms of the type of leader they would like to see in that role from everything i've heard in the feedback that i got not only a david's event  search not only within experienced folks within the municipal government area but outside of that we did the same before we were fortunate to find david he was the budget director and came maturity had also experience in arlington as a as a finance director there so i think the mix months that we're able to get resumes from interest to candidates to whatever due diligence we need to do interview them like we run run them through an assessment center and the search committee will make recommendations in conjunction with our director summer and just in time for september we'll see where that goes we're not there allow that timeline to dictate we want to try to stay with the time i mean we're not going to allow it to dictate in terms of who we you know qualif candidates if we're not finding that we're getting the kind of can it's you want we're just going to continue the search but the hope is and i think we will because it's a very attractive town that will attract some very interested individuals to our community that i want to serve in that capacity and well have a decision by early fall that sounds similar to when david started he started in august so that's that's right similar timing that's right so he's moving on with looking forward to their our next chapter but will the public will the big store that's going to be opening soon finally to replace the vacancy where macy's was its foods market so what do you think about that and how is that going to revive belmont center well you know that story location in this been a disruption and amps for industry and like a tele properties need to renovate the space and do what they've done their support the ideas i think you understand we met with foodies they have a beer and wine license and  what we saw in terms of what their offerings were look terrific i'm excited about the store yeah in the supermarket i know others in town are as well with looking forward to it opening hopefully soon i hear april to be on the lower left it is have you toward it recently have i have not i took a tour kevin foley was gracious enough to give me a tour of the building when the macy's vacated a wonderful building built in the one nine hundred forty s really well constructed but i i slaved over the stove for you i don't see the two so right now now let's talk about budget ok what is happening with the budget how is it looking for well well i think we're balanced remember it was two the four half million dollars over at the time we had actually projected a five year or plus deficit of around seven million we went for four and a half million dollar override so wasn't is enough as perhaps we need it but puts a strain on our school budget the overall budget and it's a strain on our physical space as well and i know the schools are looking for far more money for f y eighteen i think we're going to be ok i mean we you know we work very collaboratively david really i give david kill a lot of credit for working very collaboratively with the school department we set the tone when i first got on board to work with the school committee and you know one budget one belmont and i think that's work since then meeting over the last two fridays with today and last friday with our town department heads and there's needs there as well so we've been interested in some additional requests from them if you want to tell us what any of those well you know i've always felt that i've been saying this for a we're asking that the partner to do i don't think we've had enough resources to ensure that those by laws are being complied with yes we had some resources there we heard this morning at the library wanted to extend the children's hours so the board at least tentatively supported some additional hours there and some additional resource help there the police department had some additional need for i t support so we're looking at that as well so i mean they're not asking for a  lot and but we have been asking them that we realize that your budget is balanced and we appreciate that it's a level service please tell us what more but we can do to support your efforts and they've been telling us that and so we looked do more we just we met with the today they have wonderful programs you know that there and we have enough of an go go and marion scale his chair of the council on aging in there was a request to add some additional hours for a social worker so we supported that with see if we can continue to do that through the budget season so but the other schools clearly with the rise in a moment continue to challenge us financially well they do have a solution in mind for that for that enrollment issue and that as with the bell on high school building project they're proposing three models grades seven through twelve which will help solve the district wide overcrowding as for you then there's the grade eight through twelve which will help solve the middle school or crowding issue and then there's the nine through twelve issue which will give us a much better high school but it won't help solve that's right the other grade the grades so do you think it's going to be difficult to sell that course the first year the all right school department and wonderful to live within that you know as well but he did point out that from a space perspective we're running out of room talking about modulars you know at the burbank and at the butler school we have to for that until the fall until the building committee decides the configuration of the new high school he pointed out that a seven through twelve configuration solves all of the space issues lease right of the time being so i would advocate for that and not on the building from he right  now i think they need to decide you know what's affordable what can be done there but we have an opportunity now julianna to set the table for that campus for the next fifty to one hundred years and i think we need to sort of take advantage of that we need to build a new high school and we're running out we're out of else would you say are the major issues that you're dealing with right now as as selectman and that you will be dealing with over the next two well if you remember when i ran a mean i thought that we certainly got our financial house in order i believe and the years that i was on the board  though we balanced our books we paid our bills and were able to sustain ourselves for that for the few years out of the operating override when i ran this last time i said my focus is going to be clearly we need to continue to focus on our operated by jim we're doing that major  we have the police station the d p w facility i want to leave off the skating rink so we have major building projects that we're addressing it we recently formed a committee called the couple it's the major building in terms of our thoughts about how we move forward at some point we need to do something they're old some of them are in badly need of repair other facilities are really in disrepair and we have to address them at some point and tell me is coming up what do you see as include in the warrant for the you know all time meeting one of the major issues of course will be the budget and how we address that i don't see anything in any sort of major controversy if there is a citizen's petition there and so on that first evening of time we will will convene a special tommy you consider an article and which all licenses both retail and restaurant will be nontransferable so existing licenses like the one when we increased them that were issued with transfer but would return over the stricture to transferability would now be subject to this non transfer ability if tom meeting passes it and then the legislature the state legislature supports it right to home or petition and this it was a difficult time for the board to consider i mean star market clearly is very good and strong corporate citizen i just felt that the spirit intent of that law from the very beginning was to wore these licenses to local businesses  it was an easy decision for me to disagree with my two colleagues and you know i understand why they voted for it but i just felt that it was in the spirit intent of the the reason we established a liquor license is a moment right so we'll see what happens at this test special meet sometime in the march if we can to understand when i could take a vote on the articles probably at that point i just understand what they're about great so now do you want to give us a community path up so yeah so that's certainly coming down this is all part of the feasibility absolutely and i think they've done a great pair consulting has done a great job as well as c p i a c and look at this as an objective possible way that they can mean that they've sort of created criteria they've waited to criteria and you know from that they've looked try to create a more objective sort of the terminations what the optimal path will be so i think i know there's a least one or two if not three meetings that will mean that may be planned and i think at some point soon maybe perhaps by the end of april early may present the best option community path implementation advisory committee will likely vote on  to identify funding sources and i know they're in the process of doing that if we want to understand where there's a lot of state funding and out there they want to connect you know the path that ends at brighton street and in cambridge with the path that will be established in waltham so i think that we should be able to find sufficient enough funding to pay for that our entire stretch of path so you may have to up front some money from to do you know design and things of that nature but by not significant dollars and so we're hoping to identify through compare consulting enough funding to complete the path how important is this do you think either to this new form of support in town for community pat you've seen the meetings i mean some of the public means we've had in this issue are probably the most well attended meetings we've had and so there are a lot of individuals in town from all walks of life that support a community path so i think it's very important the number one reason would be safety people just want it's a quality of life issue it's i think it is safety there are a lot of folks in town that do cycle what they do off folks in town that jog our folks in town like to to walk so it would be for all of that community that not just the bicycle path and so i think it's a quality of life issue i feel strongly support was the proponent of forming both of these committees and so i think we will realise a path in this town at some point over the next three to five years we're going to have to wrap it up really early on but it took to close we're just going to say that sammy has decided not to rerun he served as you know almost three years and you're going to be getting a new selection and there are two candidates running it's a race between guy carbone and adam dash so what's your advice to the new select person i want to thank  service will do that on the third as well and i'm sure a server with him and hopefully he stays involved in the community and i think my advice to both of these individuals who i know and i've worked with at least i've worked with  governed and make decisions but what you think is best for the town of dhamma so that way my only advice the other thing i think is to try to listen when you get on the board is experience as you think you might be it is important it's a different role and try to it on a regular basis yeah because you can never cover everything there is to cover in just thirty minutes right so thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next time