thank you marianne and thanks to the league for putting on this forum tonight the league has a long record of belichick doing this public service and obviously an issue of this complexity of course it's critical that we have this forum tonight so thank you to the league as marianne said i might with most of you i have been invited invited by the league to moderate rules here at least the number one difference if you will is that league night his for education information the asking of questions people come to the microphone answers and be there by whatever appropriate person would come to that microphone so it's education and information it's not a debate the issue  yes and a no joggers i would resent the yes for the ballot question on week from tomorrow on the funding bill much of the funding for the minuteman he was ten minutes and he reaches ten minutes i'll let you know and then likely vincent what ten minutes on the nose so that's the difference from the normal late night and then from that moment afterward we will just turn to questions and people in the line of the microphone i would ask that we limit any questions anything from anybody initially to two it's a full house all i want as many people as i would like to answer ask questions so two questions limit and of course this is a belmont event so it's open to the public but the question should be asked by president's an observation  this is obviously a very contentious issue and the lead in the last week or two or three but i wonder a lot of pressure to go about how all of this forum should be held in one way or another i talk to the lead during this process i saw my own counsel and i think the league has come up with the appropriate forum for the the one on one hand we will hear from belmont residents on the yes and no because it is of course belmont taxpayers who are being asked to come to twenty to vote yes or no on assuming  share the funding for the new minuteman school at the same time it's a complex issue questions will arise and it's also appropriate to have the had the will and the superintendent of the minuteman here to answer those questions so i think the league and all and in addition certainly the belmont officials here to respond to questions so i think that the league has come up with a format that is fair and balanced finally i just want to set the record straight on one thing there have been public allegations that minuteman was denied the jack reed simply for the opportunity to be admitted to the floor town meeting to answer questions i granted minuteman that opportunity and they were the sitting in the front of the yacht of course and i made the announcement to that effect at the beginning of the meeting so i wanted to put that issue to rest because it has become a bone of contention respects that the contention being that somehow belmont has not given minuteman its opportunity to make its case finally i would just call for civility yes this is a contentious and emotional issue but in the fine late tradition and find the best of the democratic tradition let's try to have a civil conversation an exercise with will call on john herzog we'll have ten minutes to present the yes thank you i think i'll sit down i can see my notes better i'm rather surprised to find myself in this situation in this position rather because up till about a month ago i was not much concerned about the future of minuteman then i began reading in the newspaper that in made it even turned the bond issue had been turned down i just couldn't see understand why and i began to talk and i have to say a few people and i wrote a letter and for that reason to this citizen for that reason i was invited i think to be the person to speak to you tonight because there didn't seem to be anybody else beating up i think i don't know came as a surprise to me but i am glad to do it because i believe firmly in minot and i think that that the possibility that minute belmont may leave the minutemen group is is very unfortunate and dangerous for belmont students and even for the reputation of the town resident of more than forty years my kids went to the belmont schools and my grandchildren are going to grow months belmont schools i am also an anthropologist who's interested in education i retired from shape around the world as well as in the united states and i am aware that some form of tech book education is a very common one although not much appreciated but growing but not much appreciated i n in belmont anyway i hope i'm afraid to say i think the best place to start is was is was the pamphlet for them of the flyer i guess is the best word for that came around from the untitled a better plan for belmont with some reference to the red ramos article too but i will focus particularly on the better plan for belmont which it was put out by those people who like ali on the left toward the still certainly turn down the building project and potentially to leave the district the better plan for belmont what plan they title it that but i don't see any plan there i see only complaints this isn't right that isn't right or they don't define they say they're for high quality vocational education but what is that in their minds they don't talk about that if we're go take this giant step of leaving it center we should hear what they have in mind minutemen also as seen by some people this is not not my phrase but when i picked up as the harvard of vocational high schools in massachusetts it's got a good reputation what do you want to get out of it then it's the best one in the state and ranks i in the country i wonder too because i see no reference to it in the pamphlet or in anything other seen does it does do the people in support of a better plan for belmont or with a better plan yes for a belmont they understand the guiding concept of minutemen education i don't mean that they train for the trades and so forth i mean that they have a focus in a different way from what probably much of that all much of belmont high school does on learning styles and learning environment i don't want to get into that's that's a jargony but it's a very important difference note that in the in the in the flyer for a better plan for belmont even though minuteman is a book tech program the word tech does not appear at all i think this is was i don't know if it was deliberate or unconscious but there isn't evidence here of thinking that denigrates the technical part that says it's not necessary and the thinking that vocational tech won't take tech schools are places where  training for carpentry and manual trades all in the old way take place there's no mention either of the college prep program which center for the exact proportion forty or fifty or sixty percent each year gives you one form of buyer education or another and some members of a i've talked with some of the better plan who are shocked or surprised or disappointed by that but it's not uncommon throughout the state all actually i would like to point out that to the to the extent that there is a large group of kids who are in the college that probably helps slightly at least  contributing to the overcrowding that already exists and it is getting there and is increasing so that's one thing i do not see the end plan there for what they want to do except that there's one thing they said say they want to build a right sized school but they don't talk about it they just throw that phrase out and they don't explain it but plan building they say will be twice the size necessary that six hundred twenty plan for belmont was thought about or them or maybe they just want to decimate you know many of the sixteen current plans i don't know and if if they built a school of the district built a school for s subsidy bet he's offering to build a new school for a population of six twenty eight members but that's that's a state this isn't a rule that it will not offer money to a smaller high school  school this is an anomaly it wasn't intended or is it approved of by the present organization it was rooted in state regulations put on paper anyway have already been changed but not enacted so th the debt if it goes along with the other school will be something like three hundred thirty five thousand a year over thirty years that will be for the average household or thirty fifty seventy dollars per year on the time on the financial implications of being a member town versus being a nonmember town and the wisdom of this hundred forty four million dollars project and i was asked actually at the beginning of the for starting what's the you know the bottom line in twenty five words or less the bottom line is that belmont taxpayers should save over two hundred thousand dollars per year and perhaps as much as four hundred thousand dollars per year by being a nonmember town with the same educational outcomes for the children that we care about so when you're saving between two and let's say four hundred thousand dollars a year it's a good idea to think about what that looks like and that means being a nonmember t p the vote on september twentieth is not about these three things it's not a referendum on vocational or technology cation which i believe that virtually everyone that i know of in town feels very strongly about it is unlikely to impact whether or not this new school built there are nine towns that are remaining in the district out of the original sixteen those towns have indicated that they are committed to building this school and there are in fact that exclusions have been passed by the citizens in a number of those towns so it is relatively likely th pass amongst the sixteen towns even of belmont votes no which not only am i recommending but the word committee voted this last week by a vote of thirteen to one to recommend that we as citizens do not support this debt finally it will not impact our ability to send belmont students to the minuteman for at least seven years we will be a member of the district for the next three and any student who becomes a freshman in the third year will then be able to continue with the minutemen so just to be clear about those things this chart shows what is going on with the with enrolment in the minuteman fundamentally the problem is the minimum district is broken in its structure in that it is educating now almost fifty percent of the students that come from nonmember towns when the numbers reported earlier about around six hundred in the school and two hundred from nonmembers and that implies that there are four hundred four members that does not include the students that are in the six withdrawing towns and those students that are going away so if you remove those students there are about three hundred thirty one students from member towns out of the six hundred twenty eight that will need to be in the new schools so you're a little less than fifty percent or so are a little bit more than fifty percent are from member towns  and and that that that is a fundamental problem because it means that the nonmember towns are paying at meaningfully less to send students to the school than member towns now in the same period of time just to put it in context belmont up rapidly that is not is what is happening in the minuteman and as as you saw in the previous chart you're seeing a long term decline in the number of students that are attending the minuteman and the forecasts are assuming a forty percent increase in the number of students w go to the minuteman i don't know about you what when i look at that chart i don't forecast a forty percent increase in the next few years if you look at the minute man on that is the top red bar this is a comparison of the costs and your cost of going to the various vocational educational schools in the state is the most expensive school in the state has to be clear it's the red bar on top of the cost per student this chart shows the issue that is the fundamental problem with the way the district is structured today if you look on the left hand side you see belmont's cost per student if you soon the twenty six students and the seven hundred ninety five thousand dollars were being assessed in this fiscal year for the minuteman so that is thirty thousand six hundred two dollars per student if you instead use the for your average of the students that we've had over the last four years which is twenty nine students on average you get around twenty seven thousand four hundred thirty six that is meaningfully higher than what watertown pays for example as a nonmember town watertown send sixty three students if i'm not mistaken to the minimum and we sent twenty six all right so they send more than twice as many students and they pay one thousand thousand seven hundred two dollars per student which is a combination of the tuition which is sixteen thousand just under sixteen thousand five hundred the cost of special education surcharge they pay and the transportation they pay but when you add all those things together we are paying between roughly eight thousand and almost eleven thousand  per student today on an operating basis this is fundamentally broken and problematic and we've been talking about this is a town for quite some time with minuteman and we've offered in conversations with other communities with a minimum to try to address that issue in a serious way other communities are said we're not prepared to solve that problem with you we want to build a school and our reaction to that is that is perfectly fine if you would like to build the school please go ahead we are not going to do that i'm not going to support that this which is impossible see i won't walk you through it but i'm happy to go through in detail with anybody who would like what it does it shows you a number of different scenarios of what the world looks like in terms of debt cost capital costs two to belmont the chart on the top which you cannot read but again i can go through it basically says if the department of elementary and secondary education charges a variety of different capital charges because they are the ones that will set the capital charge they could set anywhere between the full capital charge which is just under eighty five hundred dollars too down to zero on the right hand side so if they were charged zero and the romans is remains the roman ratio were to remain the same the number of students remember town vs nonmember towns we would be paying about two hundred thousand dollars more if they were to charge zero two hundred thousand dollars more in debt costs all right per year for the twenty six students right if they were to charge between two thousand dollars and five thousand dollars per year versus the eighty five hundred which is which is what people want to charge it would be between eighty one thousand and one hundred sixty just under a hundred sixty thousand that is just for the capital charge now if you take the forecast on the bottom for what minimum is forecasting with a forty percent growth in in students you still see between a thirty thousand and sixty thousand dollars annual cost increase cost of debt that we would pay as a member town versus as a nonmember town and that's on top of the two hundred to two hundred thousand in operating cost difference so i think that from the perspective of myself and for and for that matter for the work committee i think the case for voting no for belmont is compelling the district is broken it used to be that ninety seven percent of the students came from member towns that's now just over fifty percent of students a number of towns are paying substantially less than member towns and they're getting the same outcome the belmont is getting this school is at six hundred twenty eight students is nearly twice the size of the students of what is required to educate the three hundred thirty one students that are currently from member towns right now we can assume a forty percent increase but that's still one hundred seventy students who need to come from number town so the be ample opportunity for belmont to send our students as nonmember students to the town we're basically right now being asked to re up our membership in the district for the next thirty to forty years and incur the risk that these seats will be filled and that the department of education elementary and secondary education will in fact charge this surcharge we don't believe that that risk makes good sense for belmont it is much more sensible for belmont to essentially rent seats at minuteman or for that matter at other vocational schools than to buy into this thirty year debt obligation you have to believe unprecedented enrollment gro a very large and unprecedented d s e capital charge and that nonmember towns are willing to pay this large capital charge and will not seek to go somewhere else sudbury for example is one of the six withdrawing towns they sent their twenty five students they're going to send them to ask that where they can get a cheaper rate is also closer for them but it is a cheaper rate for them and then what they would pay admin a man so there is a better plan for belmont which is to rent vs buy to send students at minimum at a lower cost and worst case scenario if we discover that all the predictions come true that d s e is going to charge amount but the school is completely full we have the opportunity to actually rejoin the district if we want which no town has done in the last thirty years if i'm not mistaken so finally i'd say that there is a strong consensus among amongst belmont leadership which i think you may have seen in that postcard a wide range of community leaders who believe that this is not the right answer for belmont the district will vote yes on the school this school will get built belmont should vote no therefore should be convened within sixty days and will vote in theory to withdraw we already voted as a town meeting by one forty one to eighty one not to support this stat and we now have this town wide vote district wide vote to try to overturn essentially that that perspective momentarily and then finally i would say that as i mentioned before the total savings as a nonmember town would be between two hundred thousand dollars a year on the lower end of that operating charge and i showed two between the two as much as four thousand dollars a year so on the operating cost insure eighty thousand dollars or savings and on the capital side we're likely to see between thirty and one hundred fifty thousand dollars or more in savings so when you add those together you see very substantial savings for the same album thank you we now turn to the main portion of the evening the questions and discussion anybody with questions please come to the microphone and wait in line as i said  two questions maximum please identify yourself if your have a question for a particular person please identify that person if not raise a question and we'll see if we can find the right person to respond so please question is to the representative from minuteman and basically if we were not a member well my nephews went to quincy vocational school and they had to put in three bids they could be what their top thing they want be which would be plumbing their second their third and they're not necessarily going to get their first choice so if we were a nonmember town would the member towns have preference for their for the children from the member towns would they have preference for their first choice over the students from nonmember towns i would think by rights they should is that true mr mcclellan he responded with you that this has had to quell any superintendent thank you yeah you're correct the and actually that's been reinforced by recent changes in chapter seventy four regulations that member town applicants must be considered prior to nonmember town applications ok thank you and then my second question if you could stay is the number is that the gentleman on the no side said with those before the changes were made now i've heard that there were changes made and non member towns wouldn't get that very cheap deal anymore the numbers referring to the per pupil costs the numbers that they were talking about saying that that exist the high savings that we get that i think that would be under the old rules but now the rules have been changed is that correct  no i have i don't have a lot of issues with michael's numbers i think in the short term belmont would say a small amount on a per pupil basis with the assumptions that i saw there there are have been changes that haven't been in acted yet in regards to the capital city and the department of that is working on that formula they have not released it but the capital fee would be applied in addition to the base tuitions that the commissioner sets and that commissioner set the rate at sixteen thousand four hundred sixty four for next year ok so that will have that's the cap in the short term i think  the analysis is correct in that belmont will save money on a per pupil basis in the short term i think there's a question about how much that is but it is a savings ok thank you  asked a question to the selectmen specifically asking them about my concerns that we're talking about burning down whether or not to support the new school but we're really were voting on was whether to leave the district and i specifically mentioned that i had concerns that we our debate was less about whether we leave the district and more about whether we are just fine tuning down the school funding or whether we're not going to fund the school and i think that there was something where i asked in the long lines of the mitt to slotman are you going to are you going to able to work with the minuteman and they sort of said well we'll try to work with the minutemen but we don't know if this can be possible to work with them and i want to ask the minutemen director or the perp representative if the force of them did make contact and did try to attempt to work something out or if there really was nothing there with regards if i understood the question sir what we said was this is a boat about the building project and then you know if in fact the community votes no on the twenty of the bourse like when is prepared to call a special town meeting like the october nineteenth to determine whether a fact would leave the district which we recommended up on time because if we don't recommend to leave the district we don't vote to leave the district as a town meeting that think it's two thirds vote against in that directly that if that would be obligated on the debt for me the point is always been the building it's not about leaving the district and never really want to leave the district but i think our he has been forced and i was hoping also hear from the minutemen about my particular question about if they had been reached out to after the fact  the town meeting had struck down or probably down the project project if they had mentioned or come in contact with again we've had ongoing discussions with the selectmen not only from belmont from other communities to try and reconcile our differences education sat through hours and hours and hours of meetings both within meeting and before hand and voted against against funding minuteman and i resent the implication that this was an interim vote and it was about against location education i think all of us took the scope very seriously we really educated ourselves i was very impressed at town meeting by members on both sides of the issue who were very well informed and very well educated and this was a thoughtful vote it wasn't casual it wasn't ignorant my two questions i don't know to whom to direct the first one so maybe mr woodward you can make the correct person right now as a member of minutemen are we obligated to send our vocational education students there or do they have other options and if we left the destroyed with that then open up a wider range of options for students i'm concerned about that because their different learning styles in different schools might suit students  more public schools i believe if our students water vocational experience that is offered by me that they're obligated to go to mit it is part of our regional agreement however if there is a program that start off with we would try to  truly events and i think there might be an easy answer i received a lot of questions from precinct two members about the specific finances i think your capital costs slide me answer those are the sites being posted right people to them really the question i'm getting is what is her worst case scenario best case scenario you know enrollment people want to know what the numbers are based on a range of options so if there is their way to make this information publicly about so i will make this material publicly available number one and number two in terms of the capital charge the best case scenario is that the department of edge of elementary and secondary education charges the full capital charge which would be eight thousand four hundred in sixty four dollars i think it is to all non member towns as well as to member towns in which case we would essentially pay the exact same amount as a member town as a nonmember sounds of the best case scenario as there were no better off or worse off as an american or nonmember town the worst case scenario is actually even worse than the in the examples that are here because these examples assume the school is fully fully utilized so in other words that the whole six hundred twenty eight person student body is filled by either member towns or nonmember towns if it were not billed which isn't even a scenario here then the member towns would have to pay for the debt that is not being funded by empty seats so you we have we pay about sixteen thousand dollars more per student or about three hundred thousand dollars overall more so the worst case scenario let me go back actually i'm sorry it's  hundred ninety seven i can read on my own piece of paper so it's sixteen thousand and fifty seven on the far right side per student or one hundred ninety seven for forty five overall if he were charged no capital charge and again if if this could be posted in special town meeting members could minuteman person i have in the first the first thing in common i want to make is this is just intuitive i have no data to back it up but i think the six hundred twenty eight seats are going to be filled so i'm not so worried about the worst case scenario however i do have legitimate questions professor kurz argue mentioned that we've always we've always talked about the the funding mechanism and you alluded to it being fixed could somebody walk us through that because we we talk about it but it seems to me that that is really at the crux of this issue i that right i'd like to call on jack weiss he is belmont's representative to the minuteman school committee and i'd like to call him jack to respond to that question jack weiss and school  committee tommy i believe although i don't know for certain because i haven't been since making the suggestions but i believe when people make that reference they are referring to some added language in the new amended regional agreement that we all voted on back in february or march and belmont pushed very hard as part of that amended regional agreement to insert a provision in the agreement itself that sa nonmember communities students will pay no less than the average of the member towns but there's a hugely important qualifier that leaves that clause it says subject to state regulations and legislation or whatever the state department of education has not to the best of my knowledge relinquished their control over the ability to set either nonmember tuition or this capital fee i was the one who drafted a letter two or three years ago that was sent on behalf of the school committee as well as other towns including belmont not only pleading with the state but articulating why the nonmember tuition rate that they were proposing to lower was already below our marginal average cost that fell on completely deaf ears and the state lowered to wish in any way so it's at least in my view a pretty risky  to bet thirty years of our town's obligation on debt service over the hope that the state is going to read a qualified clause in our regional agreement as a basis to then start to change their fee structure on both operations where does the sixteen thousand come in state sets that is that is that something we can rely on because guess i've heard a few keys object to change every year now they have just completed a three year process where they have stepped that down so that number is lower than it has been in the past we don't have any evidence that they will lower it but they can they morning committee that voted yes on so so so so put that in mind but i'm but i've but but i've spent the summer trying to understand all of these regs and i'm working with with all of all of all of the members of the warning committee on it and what what happened when i was listening to jack i heard him jump tracks between talking about the operating cost and the talking about the capital cost and so it's very important to realize we have two different kinds of tuition going on here that that that certainly member towns pay and going forward the principle is that the nonmember towns will will pay the the capital cost was the issue that mark spent so much time on and trying to make sure that that a new regional agreement provided for paying having nonmember towns paid a share of capital cost and that was not the case back in two thousand and twelve when i first started paying attention to all to all this but what what what mark and the other select and got passed this past winter was a new regional agreement that that has a  statement of policy that met nonmember towns will pay the average and that's something that dessie the state regulator has actually put into its have has actually put into its regulations now as the superintendent mentioned they have not written the final implementation rules but it's very clear in the regulations that that's what the state says nonmember towns should and should pay on on the operating cost which is which are the numbers that mike was talking about in that in that and that are still the current case yes when you take a look at the twenty nine rolling average cost the belmont chair for next there's going to be close to twenty seven thousand whereas the nonmember towns are going to pay sixteen thousand dollars that is a gap that to fix the minimum district is going to have to be closed one way or the other there are two ways of closing that either by changing the state regulations or by flipping some of those nonmember towns like watertown in member into member of status either way works with the nonmember operating costs the this you know this artificially low sixteen thousand dollars you know we have in the new up in the new i'm agreement that mark and the other selectman worked very hard to get a statement of policy there that also nonmember towns should pay the average cost that's not been written into the new regs yet but it was just signed by the commissioner in march and so i'm i've been around long enough to know that the wheels of justice turn a little slowly and then in the me even more so at the regulatory side and so i think we've got the three years to work on this to make sure that the nonmember towns either slip into membership status or that we change the state regs to take away the incentive for them to free ride on the backs of all the member towns thank you because again i'm mr i'm going to recognize and go off on he's been intimately involved in this issue for the last several years as part of the belmont team of mcglothin precinct two and one committee member and member of the so called task force that have been dealing with men and debacle for five six his this issue of about eighty five hundred dollars for nonmember times is critical it's like a thirty million dollars issue i attended a meeting of all sixteen towns like min and other people involved on june twentieth and the meeting was attended by the deputy commissioner was and he's the one d e s c who apparently is the point person on this issue of what d s e will set the norm member capital charge he was asked directly what are they going to do and the answer was absolutely double talk that he's convening minister pelleas and other interested stakeholders and they haven't done the active consideration on august twenty fourth with this vote coming i call commission deputy commissioner wilson and i get the same double talk and so i am mediately made a public records request for all of the minutes of all these meetings with always minister both people all of factors that were under consideration and i received an answer they are electing the deliberative process exemption to the public records law which means if an agency has a policy under consideration they don't have to disclose their policy deliberations until it goes mclaughlin that fair helpful the second question is it was stated that doesn't seem like there be any problem to rejoin that was a little unclear to me what does that mean after seven years theoretically we're out will we be able to rejoin because i think it's a great opportunity for kids so i don't know who technically the original agreement allows that it would have to go through all the town meetings again and the towns would have to approve belmont rejoining thank you i want to recognize some senator will brownsburg any formal declaration that they've made but i think i just want to clarify a couple things one the capitol fee the changes that might be made by dessie at best will impose a fee of the average cost the eighty four hundred bucks on nonmembers and that is the same average b that would also be added to the costs for the members so there is no way that even in the best case this new fee will reduce the difference between what members and nonmembers had so nobody should be thinking ok there's a new fee coming that's going to reduce the difference between what members and nonmembers pay in the best case that will just simply they will both go up by the same amount that is not necessarily what will happen though the possibility is that you will consider reach some kind of marginal cost of capital concept so that they would think of the member communities as still applies to pay a larger share of the capital costs per student than the nonmember community so in fact it is possible that the disparity would rise that the range that's the range of possible is there's no way that the worst case scenario of the nonmember community is paying nothing will occur there will be a capital but what it will be is in the best case something that raises the members and nonmembers charges equally some people would like to see the legislature change this and let me just emphasize that i see no movement or probability that the legislature will do that because ultimately the politics of the legislature doing that because everybody speaks for their communities that they represent roughly equals the politics of the members fixing that and that's been difficult for decades and the legislature is not going to really be able to do much better than that and lastly i know the possibility was mentioned that the town of watertown or other member towns will will will sort of see the light water come in and i can tell you that i've talked to a lot of the key people in watertown there's no immediate like kathy craig holden road so we're required by law to have a vote check option and this talk about renting i noticed very great different to ations weights that you prefer in your slide i think that's a great question that we're going to have to work out over the next three years i think it will be the time responsibility and ultimately my responsibility to ensure that twenty six to twenty seven students have a quality education experience the process by which we choose schools they have options available for them to choose schools just not been determined yet we would look to other schools where no member districts to share in those procedures and policies that they have but we have not gotten that far for that selection process  ok just part of this is you want to say something like i say so that's one of the points i didn't have time for which is that the history of towns left to themselves to a farm out their students to programs in other communities let's let other districts is a very poor one and is it indeed or even or keep them thinking they can do better in a basement somewhere is the reason fifty and sixty years ago the whole regional tech system got set up these kids that we're talking about are very glad you brought them up got short shrift from their school systems and from both sources to the they there and they were not with the placements could could not be properly supervised the sending communities often didn't want to get rid of them i'm not saying this would displease sleeve happen but it is a nightmare of supervision and they thousand shuckings charging versus twenty six minute man's charging a lot of ways to save money they're doing are driving what do you get when you get there man did you have an i my second question was i just trying to clear up the funding issue on the no side they talked about three hundred ninety five thousand per year and and letters to the editor in the herald someone said that could belong to five hundred thousand to a million i'm looking at it obviously from yes i but come in forty four million forty four million paid by the state two hundred million divided by ten is ten million three thirty five or five hundred thousand per year is like twenty eight dollars per average homeowner up to seventy dollars maybe our tax bill what i wish there were an easy answer to that question the answer to that question is nobody knows and it is the no the reason is and i'll try to keep this simple is how the debt is allocated to member towns the debt service on the bond will eventually be no but how that cost is allocated is first you take the contribution from the non use me from the nonmember communities that contribution is affected by what is the per student capital fee and it's not fixed for the life of the debt service dexie can change it every single year that her student fee is multiplied by how many nonmember students you have that's not knowable once you take that look at that nonmember contribution it's then allocated to the member towns without getting into the details of the allocation formula it very much depends on what minuteman  per student assessment will go up with no change in the enrollment the opposite is obviously true too with everybody else's in rome and his member towns goes up in our stays flat we'll get a benefit but you should shake all of that together and the answer is for the next thirty years you don't have any true idea now the three hundred thirty five thousand that is in was in the town meeting presentation that's a projection as mike said it's a projection on assuming that member town in roman grows forty percent total in a three year period that every see not filled by a member is filled by a  nonmember and that every one of those nonmembers is paying that average eighty four hundred dollars per year capital costs those are i think aggressive or as both will and  have pointed out those are the best case scenarios no one really knows what the worst case scenario could be it's own no will thank you minuteman administration has these tables that indicate what the effect of the tax rate would be on an individual homeowner and those numbers are thirty three dollars and twenty five cents up to seventy five dollars per barrel p belmont citizen per year and if they wish to comment about that that's fine but there are some numbers there from the  just a kind of real quickly in of course we can talk about what the costs are for the average taxpayer and that's a perfectly reasonable question at the end of the day you're still talking about a total increase costs of between two and four hundred thousand dollars per year nonmember town and you can divide that by the number of citizens in any way you like but that's tutor one thousand dollars a year that we're not spending on roads that we're not spending on sidewalks that we're not spending on pensions that we're not spending and that we're not spending on our own k through twelve schools for the exact same outcome we don't have to spend that money to get the exact same outcome is that ok so my first question relates to a non fiscal matter and i think there's been a lot of emphasis on the numbers and so forth but as john heard so i can indicated it's also a question of what is best for students that want to receive a vocational education and so my question is and i direct this to superintendent failand is that it's after three years that a person newly applying after three years would face a situation where they aren't guaranteed a seat at minuteman the freshmen that go in it within that three as i guaranteed four years but a person going in the fourth year isn't certainly guaranteed and so the question i have assuming that minuteman has failed or that other options are too expensive what are the options that the belmont citizens have to go to another establishment or another program that could take years to figure out what that would look like come up with a policy to practice or procedure to back it up that would enable our students to be able to have choice to go to quality programmers and if libyan was full because that would be one of the options that we would try to recognize talking to people that are voting no on this project but it seems to me it's only helpful to the voters and families that you indicate to us what some of those pacific options are you know like your graphic here you know the existing programs  are there and what what can parents expect to be open to them carol parents can expect vocational programming that's licensed by d e s c as vocational program in public schools to be able to be available for the child to attend and i would be able to provide more information when i actually had full agreements with those cities and towns that said that i think that's the answer you have a fall you speak of the real ability of vocational education it's not all one thing that many men now just for example there are sixteen very different programs that you've got to be able to offer if we're going to get abandoned every minute we're much the same or a broader range of operation of opportunities to our kids and not just say well we're not there here we have one two three program your boys could go to you make it sound that you particularly but people who want to vote go make its birth simple simply to find other places where the young people men and women of the belmont can go it is not simple if you're concerned with people they have a vocational program and yet that whole facility is going through a renovation and the other place that's been suggested is cambridge rindge and latin they have occasional system but as i understand it from second hand sources that's not an accredited program and that's my further clarification if you have a second question my second question i'm going back back to the fiscal aspects of the o and i know some of this has been already talked about but i wanted to be a little more specific about the language and jack weiss and michael even sent another has fought for and obtained a revised district district to admit out of district students only based on tuitions and try to equal or greater than the district similarly calculated average per pupil cost per interest in district communities so that language is very explicit now i know with follow up questions that it's still up to the commissioner but he's facing language that he in fact signed in this document so my question is and enough similar question relates to the capital cost when you look at the regulations that bite the capital costs the the language is very specific it says that in instances this is a regulation where the receiving district has been authorized to operate a facility that serves a higher percentage commission or that same commission of education joe used the actual expenditure influence purpose in other words they have to look at the actual expenditures for construction as reported by the district for the year which the nonresident jewish was calculated that guided by the total school enrollment now that regulation spells it out pretty carefully the question is we don't want and our legislators as well as other towns members specifically in there but there is some qualifiers for it first of all the school committee can override that by two thirds vote you know that correct and then secondly it's unclear as to what the part of elementary and secondary education will do in that they were unclear to us when we met on june twentieth operating assessments that are coming in our concern is perhaps a school committee would be forced to bow to lower the potential for watertown in other communities as well surely fred i saw us working together with other remaining nine towns so i knew we did not want to be a doctor in town and ensuring that in fact the nonmember communities either joining the district and there is a grandfathering clause if you know the revive reach agreement we did provide for three year grandfathering whereas they come in over three years and paid a much less capital fees so there's enticement there and they work with them to join the district and also eventually pay their fair share if you were going to call it out on the capital side so there is concern that fact it will be assessed by the school district i didn't want to leave the district as you know and i thought that we could work with the other nine remaining towns to readdress as we reconstituted district and we address what the capital need was to understand who in fact we could compel to join the district and then address the camp project so for me it's a principle discussion it is more money but from my point of view i think it's unfortunate there would you know a school that frankly is too big for the current roman i just have a brief follow up to that vandar heart town meeting member precinct four and i'm still trying to figure out this whole thing it's pretty complex i do want to share with you that i visited minuteman last spring and all the town meeting members from belmont were invited it was sort of last minute and during the day so many people could not make it but there were three of us who were able to go and i feel compelled to just share a little bit about that i was surprised to find out how many go to college sixty eight percent ninety eight percent graduate theirs and they alternate between academics and hands on they have a p classes each track has an advisory board from industry that help them prepare for the current workforce needs and there's a career tree poster in every area that really spells out with their high school education you can do this with two more years of college you can do this and with four plus you can do this and so many students are able to pay for college with good paying jobs and finally in talking with the students they spoke very respectfully about their teachers and had a lot of pride in the school so as you can tell i was impressed and i kind of felt like this school is one of the best kept secrets of metro west so i really want to support what many man does do you have a question i do i feel like this the new school will be a feature and will be a draw tim kaine and mike pence are both talking about this katherine clark as legislation to support the occasional ad and i think it's going to become more popular and the question is the question is if it becomes full which i think it will  what happens if we lose if we leave basically what are we giving up that's what i see the financial argument for the no for renting not buying but what are we actually giving  thank you i think that's a good question and it's hard to predict in the future what might be available and i know john's going to have his best effort forward to try and provide high quality procreational education in the schools that are near here belmont students are not in minuteman and there's no room at minimum for nonresidents it's you know the closest school to belmont just beyond minuteman it shows sheen and they don't keefe tech is forty minutes away they can't guarantee access but i think what you give up is guaranteed access and i think that's something to consider as vocational education based on some your comments is increasing in popularity and value and parents are seeing a return on investment in college for students who understand what it is they love to do and do well when they go to college i think the options are going to be they're simply not guaranteed and you're seeing that in waiting lists across the commonwealth already there are over three thousand students on waiting lists just trying to get in to vocational schools  is something more than just domo comply with the law and make vocational education available and it seems like there are options that say well you know what are the options how far they are away who's accepting who's not what's the cost seems like a doable thing and i think just a responsible way to make decisions my first question relates to the a roman there's an assumption that your argument that you know school of the proposed school is too big and that's based on i guess it seems like in belmont we like to use you know we like to use member in roland and i'm just wondering why that's a better predictor of how big the school should be versus actual so this is a chart that shows in roman the blue bars show the total enrollment number and nonmember and the yellow bars are the number in roman so this goes from one hundred seventy seven to two thousand and fourteen and i put the two thousand fifteen numbers on there just so you can see what they are so you can see that the six thirty five is the total enrollment in two thousand and fifteen dr bricklin mentioned that that number i believe is five ninety five eight five hundred four so it's five ninety four in two thousand and sixteen so it's the lowest that it's ever no not quite the lowest it's ever been it's the lowest it's one the third lowest i think that it's ever been the member in rome and then if you remove the six towns that have already declared to withdraw  at three thirty one so we have a six hundred twenty eight person school you need to have enough people ideally from the member towns that are actually going to pay the full freight now part of the challenge that has not been discussed at all by anybody thus far today is that there's a new rule that says that if you are a nonmember town and you have a vocational education in your school system in your high school you actually as ninth graders those ninth graders go to the local school and then they have the option to go later on and so part of the challenge with that in terms of getting nonmember  students to go is that if you go to your local school and you get embedded in your local school as ninth graders you may be less inclined to go in tenth eleventh and twelfth so i so there are many people that believe including the minutemen who argued against this that there that it that that is creating a challenge to get nonmember students to come so i think there is a reasonable argument to say that there will be seats for nonmember students if men it becomes a nonmember town and in addition if belmont were to discover that every single prediction which is while we're still a member town we could choose to become remain as a member town which no town has done that to the best of my knowledge in the last thirty years so when you say what's the plan b plan b is actually to remain as a member town next several years notwithstanding the fact that we had an override as well we're seeing budget starting to really tighten up in nineteen twenty twenty one to a significant degree why because a roma continues to go up in belmont we're a level one school district we don't see that abating anytime soon so we've talked about this in general and we believe that we'll have to go for ok so that means there will be a second vote then right well no see it once we're on the debt we have to we have to pay for it so it was standing whether we have a favorable debt exclusion and not we have to come up with the money every year so either we find it in our operating budget or we don't and so what we've been discussing is do we have room within our operating budget over the next let's say five years for three hundred thirty at best to upwards of four hundred over five hundred thousand perhaps up to five hundred we're finding every year based on actually what's on the ground one of the facts on the ground but just based on increasing a roman increase in our costs clearly in the out years we did the debt exclude when we did the operating override we understood that we probably needed an override the last seven years or so the override that we put we you know went to the community with so in the out years just based on projections of my change we're going to have a deficit significant deficit or not you know so there is frankly even if we were to remain town meeting and the citizens of belmont don't like surprises when it's there when they're unexpected costs with a project like this so i would have been thinking about three surprises that would disturb us now the first one was whether or surprise is what happens to cost overruns where they fund it who pays for that and if we are a member always liable on that and this number's been leg around for a while and no one fully tested ill whether or not it's an accurate number so that's a surprise that might bother some people but the third one is i remember all those town meetings when we were asked to vote an appropriation for the minuteman operating cost and we learned that we couldn't amendment couldn't amend it we couldn't ask the questions all we could do was vote yes which always kind of puzzled what may want to why would we even  worry about it all we can do is vote yes so the third surprise will come when we all of a sudden look at the huge potentially change in the operating cost that all mot town meeting be asked while and then i'll try to mr lee just on your second point regards the cost of the building we have an agreement with the m s p a that needs to be ratified september twentieth at the cost will not exceed one hundred forty four point nine million dollars total it cannot go over that we would have to look because of the delays in the costs of those delays we're going to look at cutting some things in that project that were scoped out in the m s p a process which is a very thorough and complete process scan sky is our owners project manager they've built in contingencies for the ownership and construction contingencies but any further delays will be seriously having t cut either square footage or something else because we cannot exceed that one forty fourth on your tonight committing to the town people of belmont that there is absolutely no chance of a cost overrun and we would never be enough to spend a penny the cost you not included the cost of new fields is that correct the one hundred forty four million does not include cost of new playfields the project is was submitted there are three playing fields  two of the playing fields or at alternate it's if we get through the process and we find that we have additional funds those are projects that would be incorporated into the m s p a project and they agreed with that there is a field of multi purpose feel that's being renovated as part of this one forty four point nine terms of mr magara as question if the levens and did you have any further comment in ways you know look i think we're  we're being asked as a community to accept a fair amount of risk that a whole bunch of predictions rosy predictions will actually come true and we're happy being asked to make a thirty year that that those predictions will come true in finance when you have risk you typically have a reward that you actually have a benefit for taking on that risk in this case as a member community we actually pay more rubber stamp funding of the bottom line on the operating  want i mean it is ash is a fact that when the budget comes through we have you know this year it was seven hundred ninety five thousand dollars and we have to go yes because that's what was passed by the new man school committee and you know to the extent that the school were to have operating charges that were to grow or the school and were not to be fully utilized in the operating costs were to be borne by member towns if we were to remain a member town then we would have an unpleasant surprise just for clarification more often than not by the time on time the tommy gets to vote the minimum budget the majority of towns voted before us to in fact the budget has already been approved by a majority of the member towns so we can't make a moments to the budget submitted as i have is like a cs is huge no vote campaign going on in town and it has a lot of wrong and misinformation in it in my opinion and i'm wondering who's finances know it that's beyond the rep i will simply repeat what i said before you cannot allocate the share of the debt because that's not how the debt is paid the debt is paid via the regional agreement and the allocation of belmont share of the debt service changes every single year for thirty years so you cannot do a simplistic well here's the total de students or whatever going to minutemen out of this we understood it would be twenty six so it would be would be a little less than ten percent so we're talking about right now we're taking on the capital obligation for less than ten million dollars ok just to be clear point in time yes not how you calculate it but for talking purposes that's correct mr jones alpha has precinct three i have a question financial interests to join with us and create a different kind of man my black someone to comment on that i have to select what i know selectman and working are perhaps also our state senator because we've got you know we also have a problem getting the state well i said i said exception watertown has been on the brink going back and forth they may have a few classes they are an example of the disorganized behind her second thought szell education that i'm afraid our kids will be exposed to cambridge has its own school as somebody said it's a longstanding one but it's not accredited in that it's funny and boston does have one or two vocational schools oh it's the madison park is one of them it was led launched as a with a great triumph about twenty five thirty years ago it's a real problem setting right now and i don't anybody would want to send their kid from velma to madison park all the equipment that they have or disregarded it's not as i said we do not have real options mr we were still able to send our children there but we do feel did feel as though maybe perhaps over time we could convince watertown to join the district waltham sense children as well but they have currently have an application department elementary and secondary education the other own occasional education program we actually actually asked commissioner wolfson at that mean of june twentieth why would you approve that application when we want waltham to join our district and he was not to meddle in that so we certainly i felt as though we remain in the district we do everything we can to compel nonmember towns to join the district as i mentioned we had the grandfather clause some members of boards of select and said if we would have we if we would have we could've if we could have we would have by now and it's unlikely that going to be the case any time soon so which is disappointing because again i believe over the several years we've been subsidizing significantly these nonmember it's real rob for me that we've been subsidizing for years the nonmember communities attending minuteman vocational high school at a lower operating cost and no cattle feed and so that's why we push so hard for that provision that needs to stop and i'm not prepared today to enlist us in continuing that for well brownsburg a state senator and i guess i'm kind of repeating what mark said really there is no prospect that i could detect of the nonmember communities stepping up to the plate because in fact it's so much against their financial interests and it's not just th higher membership it's that they and this is an important constraint on dusty's ability in fact in legislatures ability to to to raise those fees on those not member communities because in fact they will and can develop less expensive options and that's that is the perception that limits desis ability and the legislature is ability to say no everybody race go pay thirty thousand minimum because people say no actually i can i have other ways to develop you know something for fifteen thousand or seventeen thousand or eighteen thousand or twenty thousand and that's the way they would go and so that's the market reality that's out there that prevents dessie in the legislature from forcing the members the nonmember communities to to participate in this in this program and that that's sort of the long term problem that we have or that we have a very expensive school and other communities have other options and continue to choose those option and that should reinforce the sense of options well over the last couple years we've had great cooperation from the belmont middle school in giving us access to eighth graders to talk about the opportunities in the options and the choices they have  man will continue to do that whether belmont's a member or not and we've also revamped our recruiting and marketing process which has resulted in more activities where we've been reaching out even more last year was the first year of this whole new program running through its full cycle and it was very exciting and even though we had one hundred forty applicants that were ineligible because of the rules that have been discussed and i we still have about the same number of freshmen as we did last year and about a sixteen percent increase in the freshman from members towns so we're we're getting a great access through john and his principal and we're going to continue to do that and reach out to the community in as many ways as we possibly can we need to do a better job of that thank you thank you all so with whereas i have a final