hello everyone thank you for tuning into this special edition to belmont media centers programming meet tom caputo i'm joanna jewell is senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald and worked at local belmont dot com my my wife sarah has been involved in town government here and say for the last four or five years once we got our family well settled in town after relocation i started looking for ways to get involved and originally made a point question well first question i have i want to ask is this is what's happening today and today is of wednesday the twenty first of march the belmont school department has barred the public and the media from attending a is considering keeping the students safe from as selectman how you help protect the public's right to attend newsworthy events like this so i'm not familiar with all the specifics of what's going on previously  i was made aware of it actually last night an e mail went out to the school committee has a heads up school committee hasn't really met has met on it so i can't comment on the specifics you know my understanding is that the superintendent and the police chief are focusing on ensuring student safety i think that particularly in light of the instance of parklane has been a real concern among the community and i think they're trying to make sure that they take that into account obviously there's a need to balance that with freedom of the press and i'm very supportive of freedom of the press of the press and i think it's important that the press can cover issues like this i think it's great that the students drove this initiative i think it's fantastic that the school administration was supportive of it  i do think it's important that that it gets covered in the press and i think the challenge right now is figuring out you know how you balance that opportunity for coverage with with student safety again i'm not privy to the exact tradeoffs or to town council the police chief or otherwise but you know as a selectman i would be i think it's important that we have a vibrant press we're actually very lucky in belmont that even for a small town we have a vibrant press and i think we need to make sure that the press continues to have access to the goings on thank you tom and i actually reached out to some past selectman to see what they would want to embrace you so ralph jones said how can the selectmen improve long term financial planning so i think this is incredibly important question and i think financial planning and thoughtful strategic planning needs to be a big part of what the selectmen really drives in the coming years and it's actually one of the key reasons why i've gotten engaged in this in this process i think the some very significant decisions we're going to make as a town over the next three years i think they're going to impact the town for decades to come and i think having a thoughtful understanding of what our strategic priorities and what the underlying financial plan is key from a financial planning perspective day to day i it's an it's an iterative process right i don't think it's something you do once every five to ten years and sort of call it good it needs to be something that we into the  daily or weekly monthly or annual activities of the town and it's iterative in nature and i think there has been some really good work done of of late to try to make sure that we've got a clear plan for the next five to ten policy five to ten year plan exercise so i think that is sort of great i'm very supportive of it involved with that that effort right now i think we can look to a model that goes back to the financial taskforce efforts of five years ago worth three years ago that neely set the town up well to understand what were our priorities what were the financial considerations it built the case for the override ultimately that case was compelling to the voters the voters supported it and then we had been able to as a town operate with additional funding that has covered the budgets successfully for the last three years and even though that was only planned to be three years it looks like we're going to be able to cover at least f y nineteen its upcoming budget year and the hope is maybe even one year beyond that so that's awful planning process has created the predictability has created the efficiency and has allowed us to get to a point where you know we've gotten through the last few years and now we need to embark upon a more thoughtful process and i guess i'll close out by saying i do think it needs to be something that we do every year and that's one of things i will push for is make sure that's not just a every five years but rather you get a plan in place and you update it continuously straight thank you tom you know a recent report found that a quarter of beaumont residents pay a third of household income and rent or mortgage payment which means they could benefit from affordable housing  area that the proponents of affordable housing and it is looking at is increasing the number of units on a per lot size making more to think only homes three family homes in this in this town of homes where do you come out in actually nationally playing out in other regions as well the state if i understand correctly has got a number of initiatives in place where they're trying to both encourage and in many ways drive towns towards increasing density and trying to make sure that there is greater housing in the metro boston area for sure and i think part of that will come down to two families three families and sort of how you how you balance that you know this is an issue that i think will be picked up it is being picked up by the planning board and you know i'm keen to see the work that they're doing there i think we've got a good group that's being thoughtful about both commercial development as well as housing i know the housing trust has got a housing production plan that is now making its way through the various different steps of approval process i think there's been board selectman approval i believe or that's in the works i think the planning board is looking at it now and i think that ultimately it has to go to to the state and i think that has some sort of good recommendations that will work to address a lot of this sort of affordable housing question you know beyond the specifics in terms of supporting a supportive of which exact districts get which things like that's an issue i have to dive the coming years thank you tom well this next question is actually from a former selectman angelo for renzi and this is his exact words ok no matter how you slice it the town is facing tremendous tax increases to fund all of the important projects that must be done the new high school new police station reconstruction of the public works facility at new library and maintaining the town's existing infrastructure at least half the town residents just won't be able to afford these increased taxes what do you tell them so i think the role of the selectmen is to lay out the realities and do what we can to identify  in characterize the priorities of the town and put the best solutions forward that we can right you know as described we have a lot of capital projects we have a lot of challenges we have operating budget challenges in the long term and  it's going to be hard to balance all of all of those things i think you know the exercises that we take through the financial planning through identification of priorities and through you know the work that's being done by the major capital projects working group i think are all good initiatives to help us sort of balance those things out and give hony and her team a ton of credit you know they're taking this long list of needs they're trying to figure out how we efficiently and and the opportunity to leverage the high school project the seven through twelve project as a means to not only provide first class education to our students belmont which they deserve and i think we've all expect but also to address some of our roman challenges so you know different initiatives underway that will try to address some of these problems i think what's incumbent upon the selectmen is that we transparently present all of that information we explain what the realities are going forward we articulate a handful of solutions and then ultimately you know a set of those solutions get put on the ballot for the voters to approve or disapprove and it and my hope is that we can come with good solutions that do everything they can to minimize the costs and then ultimately you know it's something that is appealing to the voter i say that one of the piece that i'll tie into this if i might is the revenue side of it so i think i would say to you know taxpayers that all of our taxpayers that are sort of conscious of the expenses in the cost of head you know one of the ways that we defray that is revenue and adding revenue to the town and you know very quickly i can i can specifically think of sort of four ways that one want to try to tackle that you know the the first way is to make sure that we're maximizing revenue from county sources so we have assets like the pool right like  buildings classrooms fields we should be making sure that we're driving as much revenue from those town assets as we possibly can on the school committee some finance committee we specifically look for cases where we were below market on some of our poor rentals in other things we brought those up brought additional revenue and we should be doing that consistently throughout throughout the town so the second big area to focus on is various different grant so that we can that we can bring into town  the high school building project works potentially brings eighty million dollars to town through the s b a we should be making sure maximizing that the grant opportunities around the community a path that we can tap into both federal and state we should be maximizing that and even some of the smaller things like patrice garvin's work to get the community compact grant that brought thirty thousand dollars in a few weeks ago to help drive some of the planning there's grant money out there we need to make sure that we're that we're capitalizing on that i think the third piece of think about is public private partnerships so the rank i think is a really interesting example of the group trying to work together to leverage private fund raising and the operations of that rank to minimize the cost of the taxpayer of a major capital project which would be great and then finally i think community development for good economic development figuring out ways that we work with the planning board the board of selectmen to identify the areas where we can stimulate economic development moving us from the ninety five percent residential tax base to maybe something that has a bit more commercial and you know that will take time that's not enough of the directory overnight fixes but but i think that revenue piece is a big part of the drivers that we need to encourage to get us to a point where you know to the taxpayer to every taxpayer that sort of conscious of the cost to say we're doing everything we can to try to maximize both the revenue piece of it as well as to work through the costs five and it's actually really interesting because in a lot of cases when we get to tell volunteers to come together on a project they often end up unanimous right and it's very unusual to have the group arrive at kind of a key recommendation this was pretty interesting as it was split and there's a lot of sort of thoughtful arguments on both sides you know this is one you know candidly i am still working my way through i'm looking forward to hearing the discussion at town meeting i think it is an important discussion for the town know i'm not yet ready in the role yet i want to kind of get into the role and experience a little bit and form a more more thoughtful opinion on it but i think this is a tricky one i do think you highlight a key question which is what is the role of the town administrator going forward almost independent of three versus five right you know there is you know different models that exist out there you have the very powerful or influential town manager you know you also have situations where the morse like me drive everything in the town administrator does little more than the kind of day to day execution i think we're somewhere in the middle and i think we're generally in a a pretty good place i would say right now  i'm excited to work with patrice i think she seems great i think that she's got a good team there and i think deferring a lot of cases to the judgment of the professionals in that role i think is is important  i mentioned ralph jones he and i were he i was talking to ralph a couple weeks ago about historically i think the selectmen used to actually hire each individual police officer write me things like that seem like that needs to go to the department heads i'm not well positioned and figure out this patrolman or that detective you know those are the things i think we should absolutely defer i do think though that you know even if we move more and more to a town administrator with maybe more of the day to day responsibilities the selectmen need to maintain a few key areas right hiring and firing of the key of the minister in the key personnel i think that's key strategy setting in priority setting i think is something that the selectmen have to  day liquor license for a bottom it's i mean that was a thing that i it really seems like we should move that over if we can you know to a town administrator that can kind of run through a lot of that day to day and this let me can focus on more of the long term you stand on the marijuana issue do you believe that that vote last november spoke for how town residents really feel about having we film our own establishment in belmont  in support in support of it and you know i think at this point you know marijuana will be legal in this state i think you know marijuana at least at this stage will be legal in belmont i think it's important that we regulate it heavily right there's two groups that are actively looking at that right now there's the board of health which is putting together their set of recommendations talk to david alpert a couple of weeks ago about it i think they're on track to have a set of recommendations in the relatively near term  and i certainly don't speak for the board but i think that they're you know looking to make sure that we have regulation not unlike tobacco in belmont so you know let's do everything we can to keep it out of the hands of  think is an exercise that may take a little bit longer i believe planning board is going to be asking for an extension the six month moratorium to give a little bit more time to be thoughtful about that process and figure that out i personally think that makes a kind of sense and you know my my personal view on this is you know let's let's approach this thoughtfully carefully conservatively to make sure that we're doing you know we're doing we're being thoughtful as we can as a town about this as we work 're going to bring to the board of selectmen yeah i think it is important to have an element of diversity of experience i mean diversity broadly is ideal but one of the one element of diversity is a sort of backgrounds and i do think i bring a little bit of a little bit of a different background you know come from you know twenty years in the private sector a lot of what i have done is in the world of product management and financial planning so you know work in the high tech space thinking every day about you know how do we build compelling businesses and compelling products that meet the needs of customers on a on a daily basis and you know in some weird way it actually kind of translates into the selecting the role reasonably well right i'm confronted every day with you know more requests from customers and more market opportunity that we can possibly handle it's coming from a variety of different sources it requires a lot of directing gauging it with the public and the customer to understand those needs and really flesh those out and then we need to take those in to distill it down to a core set of priorities and that are the areas that we want to focus on and then i spend a lot of time working across functionally with all the departments in our company to figure out how we put that plan together and then ultimately make a recommendation to fellow executive team or the board as to sort of how to proceed some of what we do day to day looks a little bit like that that financial planning this strategic planning that that finding efficient solutions thoughtful solutions to sort of complex problems that's sort of what i do every day and it's something that i really i look forward to contributing and i think it's a skill set that will compliment the existing board i think rather well so were you surprised that no one else ran for this yeah you're in an uncontested race why do you think no one else really you know i don't know that i can answer that right it's hard for me to speak for anybody else on that on that topic you know i was candidly a little surprised i would have thought there would have been more folks in the race and i think there were you know rumors and discussions that other people might be getting into it and when it ultimately ended up being a contested race and i was i was surprised you know why others it's hard to say why others didn't didn't run i do think it's a pretty substantial time commitment i think to do the job well you have to have a certain amount of town experience going to be in the in the role i know for myself you know i certainly struggled with you know can i make can i dedicate the time is something i really want to do does it work out and ultimately decided you know it was the right decision for me but hard to hard to say what the thought process was  everyone for tuning in and please make sure you get out and vote on april third town election day very important day take the time