the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b m c or the town of dominant b m c welcomes your conversations i'm your host roger coulton today i've invited all three candidates for belmont's board of selectmen to join me we are recording separate half hour segments with each candidate the three candidates are flood the audio version of these podcasts will be available on the belmont media website belmont media dot org and the television version will be available not only on the website but will also be broadcast multiple times on the belmont media centers television stations you can review the weekly programming schedule for belmont media at belmont media dot org to find the day and time of the broadcast at the time most convenient to you to you today i'm speaking with roy epstein one of the candidates for the board of selectmen roy welcome to community conversations iraq thank you for inviting me before we really get into the meat of our conversation can you give me a brief introduction to who who you are yes very brief i am from new jersey originally and grew up in new jersey i went to college it was lean in connecticut that i went to graduate school and got d in economics from yale met joanna we moved to chicago we got married in chicago had two boys joanna got a job offer from harvard at that point and we moved back to boston so she could take up that position and i was working as an economic consultant as a damages expert in litigation cases we moved to belmont from chicago in one thousand nine hundred and four and we've been here ever since today we're going to talk about four substantive areas the budget capital expenditures the environment in town government that that's a lot to cover and a half hour i would like to ask you to keep your your answers brief into the point to as the town moderator has often told all of us when you give your answer give your headline st and then if you have an explanation that you want to provide go and twenty i don't want to talk with you about the budget generically but i do want to ask you specifically is this just a couple of years ago now boma voters approved an operating override that allowed a property tax increase at the time of the override there were folks that said there was a substantial potential for savings in the do you agree with that and if so what are two places where you believe that there can that savings can be found well i'm not sure what savings you're referring to from a number of years ago looking forward i think there's a potential for savings in potentially regionalizing or outsourcing some services and that's been a topic for quite a long time but i'm hopeful that more progress can be made that way in the next couple of years secondly i think we just have to look everywhere that means on the town side and the school side to see whether service delivery can be improved whether that means eliminating positions or changing the way we do business i'm fearful about cutting services because we've got a lot of services already but finding efficiencies is something we always have to be looking out for in its two thousand and fifteen report to town meeting so going back a couple of years the towns warrant committee which you didn't hear at the time but you know tear reported that fire suppression constitutes nearly ninety percent of department budget in contrast out of the roughly four thousand seven hundred incidents in which the fire department responded to only two four percent involved fires another fifty percent involved ambulance and another twenty and another twenty percent involved life support given that data how do you respond to the notion that perhaps it's time to move to a public safety department rather than having separate fire and police departments i'm not sure what the potential for saving some from combining the two would be because the fire and police services do are separate services there's a lot of overlap within the fire department between fire suppression and emergency response because it's the same staff often that make those calls so there's one question about whether  fire department operations could be further streamlined but whether there's a lot of potential for combining police and fire i'm not so sure ok let's let's talk about the capital budget and i'm not going to respond with questions it's not that i'm not listening to you but i i want to make these conversations as identical as possible between candidates sure but roger if i could add  given the urgency of the budget issues that are facing us i don't think we should exclude any topic from consideration so when i say i don't think it's likely i still think it should be examined and then we'll see w the intent is to build a new library on the existing location on concord have a couple years ago the cost of the life of a new library was projected to be twenty three million four hundred thousand dollars if construction began this year and two thousand and nineteen you agree with the recommendation that move forward with a new ibrary and if so when well the building committee has been formed and i believe they should present the proposals and if they're able to given the magnitude of the cost and i in the end it may be more than twenty three million dollars when this proposal is really fully developed it's something that will be required that exclusion and that's an open question about when is the best time to present a debt exclusion that has the best chances of passing i would like to see in a library but since it would probably require almost certainly require a vote from the electorate the question is how can we be most confident that that will be successful ok and you have a you know idea in your own mind of when that might happen not specifically it is unfortunately probably likely that in that an operating override will be necessary fairly near as you mentioned those calling center has identif deficit that may emerge already in fiscal twenty one i don't know that the voters have an appetite for an operating override and a significant debt exclusion for the library at the same time but i thought certainly has to be a topic of discussion the library itself as i understand it still will take some time to finalize their design on the site and there's going to be a significant component of fund raising which still has to be identified and figure out what the potential is for private fund raising so the size of the debt exclusion will be clear so you know it's not going to happen this year or not maybe not even next year so i think it's probably likely to be let me get my facts number straight probably for around fiscal twenty one or twenty two at the earliest but i think the main thing is to develop a proposal that has the greatest likelihood of success ok and let's go back to the overwrite for a minute because i did skip over that i couple years ago the town passed an override approved and operating budget override and it was projected projected to last a number of years and we've squeezed out some extra years is am i on track thus far yes when you expect that override to run out if i can use that terminology when when you expect to need to go back for another over and operating over well in it maybe as early as next spring because the original override was projected to last three years and we've gotten five we're  going to get five out of it but i don't think we're going to get six ok and you have a feel at this point is it reasonable to think about what the size of a new override might be i think we have to start thinking about it but i don't have a number in mind just yet i haven't tried to identify that yet ok one of my questions has to do with both an operating override and  capital budget debt exclusion there's really no question but that we have buildings that need to be replaced i mean the library needs to be replaced and that's unquestionably going to cost money and many of it's not in the existing budget on the other hand we have certain residents who are particularly aging i think people worry about who have lived here their entire lives  simply can't afford an increased tax bill and as a member of the board of selectmen of course you would be in the middle of balance seen those competing  considerations how do you do that what can you do when there is money that has to be had and people can afford to pay well that of course rogers one of the most difficult questions that the board of selectmen has to deal with and my own thinking at this point is to work from at least two different directions just from talking to a lot of seniors and going door to door during this campaign  it's clear that seniors are differently situated there are people who are financially well off there are people who are fans financially struggling let's say there are people who would like to stay in their own home there are people who would prefer to downsize to something that's more manageable and may be more suited given just their physical or medical conditions as they age so there are many there are many different types of requirements for different people i would like to see development of additional housing that would be suitable for people who would like to stay in belmont but in a smaller more manageable place and at the same time i'm been given a lot of thought to what possibilities there may be to make it easier for somebody stay to stay in their own home and i can tell you that i've been talking to certain banks in belmont to explore the possibility for new financing options and i'm hopeful that something will emerge from that unfortunately i don't i can't say right now how that will turn out because these discussions are still in an early stage but i'm hopeful that by later this year there will be a concrete proposal to offer in that department in a new financing option can you explain what you mean by that that sounds like a term of art so well yeah in essence it would be because there are many of the seniors have a lot of equity in their in their homes and it's but it's difficult to access that quickly what i'm thinking of is a way for seniors to borrow in a limited way and in a low cost way against the equity they have in their home that would not be an impediment to staying in the home would be something that would be manageable the existing programs say to defer property tax have the major problem that many people just don't qualify for them so i'm trying to think of a program that would actually have a pretty broad base of eligibility and would allow seniors to address the most pressing financial needs at a reasonable cost and that's but that's my project for the next few months that's great thank you let's move to talk about the environment for a couple of minutes short not too long ago the u s envi environmental protection agency released its assessment of water quality for the mystic river watershed in the e p a found that out of the twenty one communities in the mystic river watershed belmont's waterways in particular were in horrible shape one of the primary sources of defending pollution was what he called uncontrolled water urban storm water runoff nearly all state and federal programs that provide money to help local governments upgrade storm water systems require matching local dollars because belmont's current system of paying for storm waters through its rates and  rates are not considered to be viewed an adequate funding stream now might can't use its reach to obtain state and federal grant funding given this would you support the creation of a storm water utility to improve the quality of belmont storm water runoff that's one of those issues issues where i would say yes in principle and then the devil is in the details and exactly how their fee is structured and what the magnitude should be is something which to my knowledge right now is little hard to pin down because there's no the st question is let me say the st objective is that belmont if i were selectman would meet whatever requirements it's required to meet and on time and we have to do whatever is necessary to meet those requirements and a stormwater fee i expect would be part of that but exactly how large a fee is necessary that would be in the best interest of belmont in terms of qualifying for additional funding and not being in excess of financial burden but in the end meeting the requirements that's something that the next board is going to have to wrestle with and there are can you accept expand on the considerations the size of the fee and how it's structured what do you mean by that well my understanding is that the belmont will be subject to regulations from e p a and also state regulations but the full implications of those regulations is not exactly clear right now and i think as as soon as the requirements that we have to meet are spelled out in black and white and the timing is set down then we can think about the fee that's necessary to get us there ok let's talk about climate change for a minute in may of two thousand and sixteen the state supreme judicial court ruled in the case cain v massachusetts department of environment environmental protection that to state has not done enough to meet the mandates of the state's two thousand and eight global warming solutions act s j c justice robert co described the language of the global warming solutions act as an ambiguous and said it requires the state to establish limits and multiple greenhouse gas emissions sources they must decline on any unusual basis in light of this s j c decision since the board of selectmen also sits as the board of the light department do you support the recommendations of the belmont energy committee which i chair to disclose to proposal i think everybody on the light board it buys or committee wants to see belmont move to zero emission zero carbon emissions as soon as practicable the concern is that the the supply of totally carbon free emissions is limited it's growing but it's limited and every other community in massachusetts is wrestling with the same issue so it just the question is is it economically feasible to actually get there by two thousand and twenty two given the growth in the available supply and i would say i support the goal of carbon free emissions but if it meant rates rising by a factor of three or four and i have no idea what the effect would be i would have reservations about that because there are other there are other things we can do to also significantly lower our carbon footprint not looking just that electricity in isolation and that might be a better strategy as a whole and just to make sure that people don't come out of this saying really epstein suggested that rates might go up three year three or four times now was just picking a number out of the air it was worse than nobody nobody knows right now but it's clear that every community in massachusetts is under has the great interest and is under some pressure to increase their reliance on non carbon emissions and particularly with solar and wind those facilities are growing but it's not at all clear th would be able to replace all of our gas fired electricity by two thousand and twenty two and you have an opinion on what action immediate action steps maybe should occur well i can tell you that light is taking advantage of non carbon energy contracts as they become available i think we've taken all of them that i know of  right now it is still a minority of the portfolio and i don't i just don't know that it's possible to fully convert by two thousand and twenty two but the intense early is to do it as quickly as possible let's talk about county governance for a few minutes and let's stay with that belmont like last year the town meeting considered a proposal to expand the number of members on a part of that job is also being a member of the light board that governs there is some conversation now about splitting off the late poured into a separate governing board you have an opinion about whether that should be done and if so how roger you know i always try to take a pragmatic view of these governance issues and i can tell you some years ago i thought the management of belmont light was deficient enough that i was seriously considering whether it was advisable to to sell off belmont light as a whole because on i didn't think belmont was managing enough and since that time we've actually made enormous strides we've hired a new general manager who's great the board of selectmen is more involved now with light board issues and it doesn't have the same urgency in my mind that it did a few years ago so in a kind of steady as she goes policy i don't see that as a real priority now just because things are going so well ok are there either offices and county government that are currently elected that you believe instead be appointed or would you leave things elsewhere in town government the same as well thinking of a specific office then the town treasurer that it's i mean i don't want to get my biases out here but the library board the cemetery commission in general i think the elected system is working well you know that i actually spoke up maybe you know recent board of selectmen meeting about the specific issue of the town treasurer and one speaker at that meeting said that it didn't really seem to make much of a difference whether the treasurer was elected or appointed why not make it appointed and what i said at the time was it often seems that it doesn't make much difference but sometimes it really does make a difference and i can tell you that in my experience on the building committee for the d p w in the police station the independence of the town treasurer actually was a very important factor and i think if the if the treasurer was not independent the eventual scheme color scheme for financing that project made actually might have been endangered so i think the independence of an elected treasurer is actually a very important asset ok patrice garvin our town administrator recently hired a new or filled a new staff position that the town's budget director given that we now have a specific staff person devoted exclusively to the budget in addition to that can administer it or what would you envision your role not your role it's not personalize it the role of the board of selectmen to be patrice and certainly the budget director then would implement those policies so that's what i see is the major contribution of the board of selectmen then of course there's a day to day oversight that i think the board of selectmen should exercise i think the ability of the board to do that is a function of their own temperament time and training some people are more interested in some and able and some people are not and i but i hope a board would always be involved one hundred and twenty million dollars or more budget because ultimately the town administrator in the stand up is is very lean and i think it never hurts to have an extra pair of eyes or in this case six extra eyes look over their shoulder i'm wondering how to answer that question i'm not sure if poetry means making a kind of lofty statements that could never be implemented i guess i've never i'm not that kind of person i think about especially when you live in a place for twenty five years and you talk to a lot of people you think well what's good and what needs fixing and then how can you really go about it and make it happen and not just talk so for me there's actually not a bright line between the campaign and being in office because i hope one would be the logical consequence of the other that's great finally we're running out of time here but i'm going to try something i've never tried in one of these unfair baseball or football baseball the beach or the mountains and that's like a beatles stones question ok red wine or white wine red peanut butter and jelly or ham and cheese ham and cheese i would say coke or pepsi neither beer pancakes or waffles waffles of the griddle is good mac or p well i have my p c but i have regrets some days that's great that's ten thanks for doing that i think that was kind of fun and the clock indeed has run out on us it has been fun and interesting to have your community conversations today again i know you're busy you're busy with your day to day life in your busy with campaigning so i really do appreciate you taking time to come over here today well thank you roger it's always stimulating to talk to you too podcasts being taped today as well you can access the conversations with all three candidates through the belmont media centers website belmont media dot org a video of our podcast session will also be rebroadcast any number of times on the belmont media centers television stations you can find the broadcast time by looking up community conversations in the t v listings on the b a m c website two days conversations with board of selectmen candidates roy epstein jesse bennett and him flood is a special edition of community conversations i will be back with you for our regular community conversations podcast next week i'm your community conversations host roger coulton thank you for listening