don't like to call the resumption of the two thousand and seventeen annual meeting for the town of belmont to order these rallies for the pledge of allegiance are just swapping out one device all right thank you a few preliminary so no additional people admitted to the floor unless somebody has a request and haven't heard ok thank you the limits of the hall  just to review town meeting members and those admitted to the floor up front and visitors non town meeting members in the back behind the aisle midterms and the rules  good evening i ellen o'brien cushman town clerk to hear by certify that i gave notice of the in journey to session of the annual town meeting held monday may third two thousand and seventeen by posting attested copy  notice of adjournment on the town clerk's official bulletin board at the town hall and at least five other places in town giving notice that the annual town meeting had not been completed and had been adjourned to meet again today monday may eighth two thousand and seventeen at the belmont high school auditorium at seven pm briefly stating the business to be acted upon all in accordance with the representative town meeting acts on nine hundred twenty six as amended and section thirty one ten c of the general laws of the town of belmont thank you on let me give a quick overview of what we're going to do tonight first i just want to make a general observation there are obviously three more articles to consider there are all citizens petitions and i and others have made a great effort to try to ensure the discussion tonight can be as focused and this clear is possible one of the complexities with citizens petitions is that they aren't always written in the most appropriate or elegant fashion a few well and that's fine but that means we have to go to review them town council and others to put them in proper order it also means there's a greater obligation to try to plan as we have done  that is because it's outside the normal scope of the board of selectmen warrant committee and other planning board and others presenting motions where there's a whole tradition and context so  it's we have worked very hard i personally probably had at least a dozen meetings or conversations with individuals proponents and others at least fifty seventy five emails going to great lengths to try to make these as streamlined and fair and concise as possible i'll go through each of the questions of scope before each of the three articles  you to be respectful tonight of course talk about that when you get to article ten let me talk about the schedule tonight we have these three articles i think it's the f t hope of everyone certainly everyone who has talked to me that we complete action tonight  thank many many people have got one obligation or another for wednesday night and so we'll do our best a few suggestions one is let's limit absolutely  questions for coming to the microphone if you have questions why don't you lay out the two questions in advance well handle them quickly and then move on secondly if you come to the microphone and somebody has said  what you were planning to say i would encourage you not to say the whole thing again but to simply say i agree with whomever and then maybe you can have a very brief summary of what it is or what point you want to emphasize and similarly if you can say in two minutes what you're going to say in for one minute what you're going to say in three please try to do that because you want to complete action  tonight finally i'd ask you to speak into the microphone a number of people have talked about the fact in the back that they can't hear my hope is that we can begin article not scuse me article the welcoming town article no later than nine thirty and that would then allow us to complete action tonight if for some reason and i hope it doesn't come to pass and i don't see that it would need to that it's around ten o'clock i'm going to take a sense of town meeting as to whether we chilled around and finish article ten tonight or whether we adjourn to wednesdays or get the sense of town meeting but i'm hopeful that we can get to article ten no later than nine thirty with that i'll turn to mr williams and we'll begin adopted unanimously mr market we have one report under article one j market director of public works good evening and thank you i'm here tonight to give a summary of the trash and recycling presentations they were given to the border selectman on april tenth in which the border selectman heard a trash and recycling analysis of our current program from our consultant they also heard from public works an update of completed task an expectation set forth from a january twenty second two thousand and sixteen public works presentation in which we recommended a two year contract expects extension for their current hauler with the expectation that public works would use the next year to investigate potential change in trash and recycling collection and to explore the alternatives that were available for the next collection contract beginning july one two thousand and eighteen a tremendous amount of time and effort has been committed over the past fourteen months in march two thousand and sixteen a two year contract extension was approved for f i seventeen and half i eighteen this contract is posted on the public works of site had updated our recycling information making it easier and more user friendly for our residents we formed the trash in recycling working group b w had asked residents they had an interest in the town's trash and recycling collection services and they were willing and if they were willing to participate in the process of exploring alternative collection options for the next trash and recycling collection contract command members are  town staff are mary beth callan and michael santoro phyllis marshall myself and for the time he was here our former town a minister at the retail in march and april d p w stafford research for central consulting firms that had been a small trash and recycling auditing experience interrupted a scope of services that would determine the amount of trash and recycling residents had at the curb in several ways characterisations in may two thousand and sixteen we had hi s m to perform the audit that was conducted in june and september of two thousand  in june public works invested in upgrading our trash and recycling brochure that was sent through the mail to all residents in july members of the working group visited the towns of bedford wakefield in watertown to observe automated trash collection in september d s m had finished collecting all the data all the field data needed for their analysis also in september the working group heard a page through a presentation from steve in the us who is the vice president of government affairs and regional vice president of sales for the consulting firm waste the in october the working group heard from the heard from public works director rick stenson from wakefield and public works director john sanchez from birth in massachusetts both of these communities have a similar collection models that we have today and  converted to automation d p w had also implemented a sixty four gallon size car pilot program forty residents had participated the intent was to gather valuable information on their experience with the carts in december a final report from d s m was submitted to the board of selectmen in the working group sees so based on d s m support belmont is doing very well for a community that has no trash restrictions at the curb based on their analysis sixty a sixty young container would meet the needs of seventy six percent of the residents we have a low set out rate of bulky items less than ten percent ninety five percent of our residents recycle is a high recovery rate of all recyclables at the curb seventy seventy  we have low contamination rates and recyclables three to four percent belmont has excellent recycling by history standards kassam you know these are the collection options that are available today status quo which is typically called traditional and that's what we have right now automated pa it's smart save money and reduce trash and you can do both of those traditional or automated all the in collection options include dual stream recycling with presidential to convert single stream a change in bulky ways pick up a minimum five year contract and new collection vehicles the following is going to be pros and cons of those three options that i just described for the pros for status quo which is what we have right now unlimited trash place at the curb belmont does have favorable trash per household ratio for two hundred  eighty pounds per household and only there's no upfront cost for the carts and there's no additional collection fees for residents the cons it is there's unlimited trash is no environmental and sense of to continue overdoing it is the most expensive way to collect trash to workers sometimes three instead of one on truck and there's windy days or really busy potential holidays it's on tape streets and collection a collection pros and cons more efficient reduces labor costs reduces worker compensation claims controls contract cost uses wheeled carts limits trash statistically trash volumes are reduced creates an efficient organized system that promotes need in orderly neighborhoods and collection day once implemented long term savings that using contracts mean for the cons there is a upfront investment cost for the carts the carts the replacement and maintenance trash pick up is limited to the size of the wheeled car use of overflow bags optional of fee for bag depending on what direction we go in the need for another recycling truck due to volume increases pages throw save money and reduce trash the pros it is the best method to limit trash it is also the best method that has environmental incentive to reduce reuse recycle it can be it can be done traditionally or automated and it qualifies for mass t v grants depending on the program that we implement would depend on the amount of money that you would get in the grand the cons residents are required to purchase special plastic pages throwbacks stickers or purchases a description collection may not be the most of cost effective need for another recycling truck due to volume increases possible increasing this is the outlook of the options available to the town based on feedback and dialogue from surrounding communities we still have more work ahead of us in figuring out the specifics of each of the options so that we can get the most competitive  next steps we are planning to schedule community conversations led by the board of selectmen to further discuss the options for send it to you tonight from there the town put out a bid or are p for solve the waste recycling contract later in the fall of two thousand seventeen based on bidders also and taking into account budget service delivery in the environment the board of selectmen will decide best collection options for the contract to be in july one two thousand and eighteen like to think  all the participants for our pilot program the recycling working group tom personal thank you very much for expanding the board of selectmen from three members to five and then because i was to get that on the record and then read a substitute motion we will then debate the substitute motion  which is the formation of a committee to study this issue so the scope of our discussion will focus on the formation of the committee not the wisdom of expanding the board of select selectman or not that will await any report from the committee and then subsequent action in town meeting so purely focused and that's what the motion says the formation of a committee to report back by january thirty one two thousand and eighteen to put this in context i'd like our town council george hall to explain why we found the original motion on acceptable in the sense that the attorney general had ruled on a similar action in another town earlier mr hall numbers in most cases those that the composition of a board can be changed in terms of the number of people of members it can be large to reduce just by a vote of the town meeting through an amendment to its byelaws and that was also true of the of selectmen until after the passage of the home rule of it when the provision in chapter forty three b now says the town may not change the composition of the board of selectmen without either a charter or approval of the state legislature so based on that statute the attorney general has disapproved by was similar to this most recently in hamilton because they lacked the requisite approval by the legislature in order to to five members by member by amending chapter forty article two section forty days two hundred a of the town bylaws as printed in the warrant for this town meeting and then the substitute moved that article it be referred to a committee to study in recommend whether or not the board of selectmen should be expanded from three members said committee shall be appointed by the moderator and shall consist of a town meeting member from each precinct and five town residents selected at large and shall file a written report of its recommendations in the town clerk's office for distribution to all town meeting members by january thirty first two thousand and eighteen mr williams as a part of selectmen have a vote yes mr moderator the board of selectmen voted three voted unanimously favorable to substitute motion by unanimous vote thank you mr williams your presentation thank you mr moderator good evening ladies and gentleman thank you for your attention mike i think you'll be grateful to know that i practiced in my dining room in this will be under five minutes court of article eight motion proposes something other than action on the topic itself which m explained and george took about a third of my introductory remarks so for those of you who just to remind you that the the initial motion was judged that we needed to have the substitute motion because we had to go to the home rule and it was suggested to me that we move to the committee let the committee study the question for town meeting and then present you with the results report up by january eighteenth and then we can consider it again the there was an odd hoc committee formed to consider this idea in the amendment to the original motion that is before you this evening members of this julie crockett roger colton debbie do it ch laura graham and jack white's who i believe are all known to you a brief presentation has been prepared and we are before you now to hear your comments and answer your questions as we can so now we'll go to the presentation going do you have that up there good work so this is the overview we're going to tell you why the changes needed how massachusetts open meeting law affects the operation of the board of selectmen we're going to give you context for belmont amongst other communities we're going to suggest the benefit of a larger board of selectmen even though that's out of scope it's just part of the russia now and we're we're going to report out on the substitute motion which is a committee to study and report on this issue so the question is why is the change needed first of all the board of selectmen as you all probably know is the sets policy for in holds the ultimate responsibility for the town's affairs that are not otherwise governed by law this means a town budget in excess of one hundred sixty million in both revenues and expense in a three hundred fifty million dollars balance sheet we have four hundred sixty active employees we have three hundred forty eight retirees and beneficiaries this is it we're responsible for all town property and capital assets ten other elected boards and officials in sixty six appointed committees and representatives which i think is in dick live of the work it takes to make a town like belmont work that's an extraordinary number of committees and representatives that that put their shoulder against the wheel the selectmen also act as the light the word the border surveying you following me going ok we were not we're not using our signal but the board of survey the local alcohol with already in park commissioners and we also manage town employees we have seven direct reports and seven additional two down reports through the town administrator i think you can just skip this slide going let's go right to the next one the effects of the open meeting  law i think most of you know this and that is that the board of selectmen the selectmen can't talk to each other unless we're in a public session so for example no i can't talk to adam  arrangement for more than two years we can't even play golf together because of the optics of it it's terrible but i am able to speak to sammy baghdadi or you here tonight sammy i thought he was going to be of any sort even brainstorming ideas to formal meetings of the board in there simply in my opinion there's simply not enough time in the scheduled meeting to get to everything that would merit discussion and hence i decided to put this in front of you is a citizen's position so that our citizens petition so that you could decide for belmont this change has been proposed several times before for example in two thousand to two thousand in one nine hundred sixty seven and when i first considered this i started out was to bass who i'm sure is in the audience here somewhere and she where use of there you are we started out at her house and with paul solomon and she was gracious enough to update us on the two thousand turn of events the studies have supported the change but none of them have been implemented most representative town meeting now have five member boards in for example we we report arlington lexington and wellesley in this category and also based on research only five representative town meeting towns have three member boards fairhaven we know for  and i'm not sure how to pronounce the last one monica money ok so some benefits and we're not we're not selling this because what we're asking you to consider tonight is to allow mike to appoint a committee to study this and that is some benefits of a larger board of selectmen this is increased span of control but that's not really what it is it's the span of control is too large so the in my opinion in what this will do is give increased capacity for the deliberation and so you can imagine that since a if you have five selectman or more the quorum is is the guiding principle for the open meeting was so let's let's say if we used three i can't talk to mark because two is a quorum if you use five i could talk to mark and mark could talk to somebody else so it does free you up in terms of capacity to the liberate you cannot however if mark and i spoke on under a five member board mark could not tell adam what i thought and that would be serial communication so it does free things up and you all are subject to serial communication too because if somebody calls me up and asked me what i think you actually can't call mark or adam and tell them what i think that's that's a viable because you're also subject to open meeting law not just us we think that are some thinking is that there will be a more efficient and productive board of selectmen meetings addressing a greater range of pressing projects because informal discussions can be permitted outside of the board room also you can the board would be able to review and adopt subcommittee findings instead of performing that work directly the substitute motion would have had town meeting vote today to change the size of the board of selectmen i was kind of excited about that because i thought everybody in the room is over thirty five and you should be able to judge whether we need five selectman or not but i think mike made a good point once we found out that home rule petition was required that we needed more grabby ties to support the decision and then  worked out that this idea of the committee developed and i think it's a much better approach than i had a vision initially so the substitute motion provides for a study instead the committee is going to be input appointed by the moderator the study including recommendations will be completed by january thirty first two thousand and eighteen and there's a potential for this vote on the topic at the two thousand eight hundred town meeting so this is  presented for your consideration the work of the study subcommittee would be to solicit plymouth marry him put from residents and members of town government research those and other identified topics and share the findings with the community and see feedback to build the consensus and produce the final report by january thirty first glinda you have the motion to put up just so people could have that in the background the governance of the town difficult it's severely limits the depth and number of topics that can be discussed since anything is limited to formal meetings and by approving the committee to study the idea of expanding the board of selectmen will we'll have the benefit of that thought before we actually make the decision thank you mr williams i want to stress one point and you can see it in the motion  simply that the committee will study and recommend whether or not it's like me to be expanded from three members so the committee does not go in with a preconceived notion of expanding or not to how many members and so forth so it will be an open study in that respect mr going to be doing meeting member creasing for as has been mentioned i was a member of this ad hoc group i time they can meet together and how much they can accomplish because if they're not meeting together they're not sharing information they're not coming to a sense that we haven't had a big just we haven't had a big disaster in our town because we haven't had private member board of selectmen or anything bigger than three but i don't know about everybody in the audience but i've responsible for managing large complex projects and i know one of the biggest risks in doing things right is not paying adequate attention and so because of this even though i still see pros and that we're discussing and focusing on the formation of the committee or not we're not debating three to five or seven or whatever mr weissman jack weiss precinct one i too was a member of this group i think call it an ad hoc committee overstates its formality i think it was a group of town meeting members who got together to have a series of discussions to say if we're going to vote on this how we're going to get our arms around the to know what's the right thing to do and as we talked we discussed that expanding the board has a lot of implications it has implications not only on communication as people talked about but it has implications on how the border selectman works amongst themselves it has implications on how the border selectman interacts with senior town employees including the talent administrator it has implications on the dynamics of elections and our group ended concluding that there's an awful lot here to really understand before you can make an informed and considered decision on what will be a very long lasting decision this  if the board decides the boards change presumably that will last for decades we thought it was just too rushed to try to deal with it on the floor of town meeting tonight so for me the question really is pretty simple tonight you as a town meeting member believe you know everything there is absolutely needed to know to make this decision and you believe that there is no merit to expanding the  probably vote no if you believe you know absolutely everything that there is to know and you think the board should be expanded then i would submit that you should support this tonight because that's probably the most expedient path to get you what you think is best if you were like to me and i would hope that the vast majority of this group is like me and say there isn't i mean i came out much funnier than  if you if you have the same thoughts that i do about this and the greed that there are very very serious long lasting dynamics that need to be better understood then i hope i rise to oppose this motion i like to nip this in the bud and not put it to committee it's an old adage if it ain't broke don't fix may not be grammatically correct not the country and our homes are the assessors and look at your tax bill at record levels you can't keep a house on the market for more than a day the realtors are delight because people are clamoring to get here i roads may be bumpy but we're working on now when i was on the board and for all the years back in one thousand eight hundred fifty nine before that the board of selectmen met once a week we met monday every monday fifty two weeks a year seven thirty in the to when we finished the board on its own now meets every other week or where they when they meet but it's certainly not to the extent that when i was on the board in the mid ninety's everybody before me met if there's not enough time that's up to the bore the board should meet more often if they need more time we heard the open meeting law constricts the board from making decisions because there's not enough time i suggest to you that expanding it and putting it to committee even study circumvents the open meeting law if you like transparency and like being able to watch on cable t v belmont media what goes on at the board of selectmen in the open as they deliberate discuss you like you like to vote no because if you expand it to five what you're to get is everybody calling everybody else in secret making whatever deals horse trading and again this is not a slight i was a member of the but i understand it they're all hardworking people and certainly they all lied to y wants to run for selection a said don't take time because it does and it's a tremendous sacrifice and we deserve a great they deserve great credit for doing however if you want to have everybody making phone calls and talking to everybody else in secret out of the limelight and then arrive at the board meeting having everything already cut you like less transparency move it to commit finally just as a observation and i think probably a commonly held belief i've never known in a larger group in anything to be more efficient than a smaller pool with that i ask you to do what has been done thrice before now and vote no and keep it this stellar board and those before it just the way it is  one if this were to pass in this committee came to be would it be with the committee be able to set study the possibility of giving more responsibility to the town i would say that the that certainly not in compassed in the in the motion i mean the committee if foreign will decide exactly what its mandate is but the focus here now is on this substitute motion i give a fair amount of deference to the board of selectmen the fact that they all support this they work very hard tirelessly from my perspective and the amount of work they put and if they think it's worth studying and it could be of from a corporate governance perspective a sufficient and helpful change quite frankly three person boards are not always the easiest to work with if you have a larger board you can diffuse some of the responsibility from an open meeting law perspective i don't claim to be an open meeting expert i did work and have worked on open meeting the issues i work at the attorney general's office for a period of time and you can have inadvertent trip wires with respect to the open meetings law that nobody wants i was a little concerned when i first saw the original motion i know we're not debating that now about the serial open meeting law problems and those are problems that people want to evade the open meetings law i don't think that's the purpose here i think the purpose is to study it to understand how not to concern here's my trivia there is only one town in the commonwealth of massachusetts with a seven member board of selectmen and that town is wakefield so now your next cocktail party you've got something interesting to share my concern is it has been voiced by others and that is that doing this is in some way to circumvent the open meeting law i have some issues with that and i think that should be foremost in people's minds as they go forward on this i am actually fairly ambivalent about whether to form the committee or not so i'm not even going to take a position here i am however going to offer one point of clarification and that is that some of my colleagues here in iraq jones paul solman and others served an appointed committee for a number of years ago on the subject of government structure and we looked at the size of town meeting we looked at the size of the board of selectmen we looked at the role of the town administrator and we also looked at some other things like the electric light board the one of the recommendations that we made that was adopted is as noted to strengthen the role of the town administrator and that role was strengthened and expanded when david kale was hired and it also reiterated that the board of selectmen should function as a policy board and should not be into the nitty gritty day to day that's my second concern that the board of selectmen get into too much of the work of those other sixty six appointed boards and committees thank you mister fred paulson precinct one and i family i'm the town meeting member wondering on one hand i guess one argument is perhaps having a five member board is march active but i also feel like when somebody is going through a job search having uncertainty of what your manager might be here in this case whether  considering this right now from three to five numbers and looking at the committee i feel like you could actually make the job of the town administrator a little bit less attractive and some candidates might not want to apply for this job and i feel like at the moment the why now this has to the response to why now also addresses some of the points that steve bara was mentioned and that is that rather than looking back i like to look forward and in my opinion the town is facing some unprecedented times in the next three to five years and even ten years we have a new high school we have to look at the police station the library the d p w the community path we also are facing considerations around our employee benefits how we're going to manage pension benefits and how we're going to manage health care benefits in all of these risks i view them as risk because in my background all of these risk exist today and they're going to they're going to become more important in the future and if somebody told me that i was going to be a member of the three m board but i couldn't talk to the other board members and try to run one hundred sixty million dollar business with a three hundred fifty million dollars balance sheet and facing the kind of risk that we're facing in the next three to five years i'd be really concerned about it much work and time you put into this job and i would personally love to see a five member board so i'm totally in favor of this putting this to a committee and i even volunteer to be on the committee i used to work for the town of lexington for a few years and we had a five member board of selectmen and a town manager so when this came up a few years ago i was totally in support of it and it didn't it didn't pass for whatever reason but i do feel that i think we get more candidates wanting to run for portis like ben and i think it would be nice for you all to be able to have a conversation outside of being televised and having an official board meeting so i'm totally in favor of it and again thank you for all of your time and serv where thank you we're gravitating into the question of three versus five so i'd like to keep it focused on simply the formation of the committee or not has cost bigger precinct five a lot of us probably working companies with balance sheets in the three hundred fifty million range and i bet you that none of them are run by just three people especially not three people who are just part time most so i strongly endorse mr williams proposal to study the situation what could be possibly be the harm in that i also think that we are lucky with the composition we have today we've got the money and all covered pretty well which is really useful but it could be good to have say a teacher and an engineer so when my team comes to me and says hey we're overburdened and we need to consider some new options i listen to them and i'm i'm sorry when my team comes to me and says hey we're we need to consider some new options because of whatever the working conditions of change things like that i listen to them and i kind of see this as an opportunity for us to investigate that our team you know our people who we elect to help on our town of come to us and say hey we need to consider that there are maybe we need more people maybe we need to do something different and i think that they're not asking us to make a decision tonight they're asking us to to approve a committee to make it to help make this decision to get us more information on how to run this and i said in support of that i think the more information we have the better  better decisions will make and if it's been fifteen years since we last looked at this i think things have changed and it's likely that as jim said they're dealing with a lot of things now that maybe they haven't dealt with in the past and it's time to consider maybe getting a different system in place so i support the measure here yes sorry our next i read bundy precinct one just a point of clarification it's really as you mentioned that you're unable to speak with one another but what prevents you from holding a weekly open meeting meeting that you publish it maybe there's no specific agenda but it's just an opportunity for you to talk to one another and the public and i think this is moving beyond the question the formation  please say i have those oppose no the motion is adopted by more than two thirds we now move to voting on the substitute motion but one second glen one moment all right the poll is open to vote on the substitute motion yes if you favor formation of the committee no if you do not now i have to appoint a committee what i am going to do what i put together is a little one page form that i would ask anybody interested in volunteer in for the committee the town clerk in the next couple of days we'll send it out and please just it's meant to be brief to tell your interests and your background in the town  and i hope to be able to put the committee together in the next thirty forty five days and then they can get to work also if you have any suggestions on people please send me an e mail and  hope we can get a broad spectrum of diverse people who are interested in to serve and so i'm hoping that people will volunteer and then we can move forward and i that the committee would be open to all considerations and analyze the issue and then come back to town meeting in the public with pros and cons of different approaches to thank you very much mr slack and many many others and i think he and i comed and and and i hope most others have come to an understanding of what the parameters of this debate are a bo essentially what mr slack is asking town meeting to do and this is his point of view and then there are others who will he will make a presentation and then make a presentation talking about the nine hundred ninety vote and then we'll open it up to town meeting the question before town meeting that mr slack is reasoning is town meeting will you make a judgment obviously he's arguing favorably he's arguing that he wants you to make it very well you make a judgment about whether the board of select proceed with pay as you throw as an option obviously they're letting out a bid for a new contract this fall as an option in view or so that has been vote of the public and has been in existence for twenty seven years mister slack to saying yes but he would like town meetings indorsement to say that the board of selectmen should proceed with page of her as an option others will say no the board should not but that's the way it's what's the wish of town meeting in the context on pays you throw in the context of the one nine hundred ninety overwrite in essence it's a political decision in the best sense of that word of town meeting the legislative body on the wisdom or not of including pays you throw as one of the options there is no question the board of selectmen has his legal authority that is not up for debate debate and neither mr slack nor the article the motion speaks to the fact of having a debate on town meeting floor about the wisdom of pages you throw that's not before as you've already heard the discussion or earlier tonight the report by mr market it's there are many parameters to pay as you throw there are many ways to do it financial consequences and otherwise that is obviously not within the scope of the motion but it's also would be in a possibility for a town meeting to design  you throw program so that is not part of the scope of the discussion the discussion should focus on the question of encouraging the board of selectmen or not to include pays you fred paulson precinct one under radical nine at the town would empower the board of selectmen to consider all options for waste management in the town including  as part of their ongoing role as financial managers of the town by acknowledging that needs and goals have changed since the one nine hundred ninety override for waste expenses the board will be better equipped to align the town's policies for waste with current financial challenges and environmental goals such as the climate action plan passed by the town meeting in september two thousand and nine and i now introduce him slack and the moderator has given is dion chair of the warrant committee this is a little bit complicated case complicated so let me just report the vote and one word of explanation the war committee voted eight in favor zero opposed and one abstention but in so doing just to repeat i think what the moderator said this in no way indoors  adam dash member of the board a select one time meeting member of large in light of mr epstein's explanation i want to explain that the reason the board of selectmen chose not to take a position on article nine is that article nine asks is the town meeting i was asking time meeting to advise the board of selectmen on this issue and we felt it was not really appropriate for us to advise you to tell us what to do it seems sort of a bit of a circular matter thank you mr daschle mr slack oh my name is kim slack my motivation for submitting this motion is as an environmentalist and as a fiscal conservative i dislike waste and i want to leave this place a little better for our daughter's generation slide it's very simple motion for you to consider as fred just read or describe why it's important now and why it deserves your vote belmont will be signing a new ways contract this fall it probably be for five perhaps ten years before the contract will be rebid again so by providing all policy options we can give the selectmen greater freedom of choice as the moderator has pointed out the selectmen do have the legal authority to use funds in any override for any purpose they choose a year after that override passes but that doesn't happen the reason is it's because there's a sense that the overrides a commitment that needs to be honored so for for at least the last two perhaps three trash contracts folks have raised this one nine hundred ninety override saying it rules out any consideration for using fees for trial which we've honor that commitment for twenty seven years should there be no way to ever revisit how an override related services are funded seems like a fair way to move on is to show that we have honored the commitment of the original vote and have determined that it is time to reek to consider alternative funding approaches so this process of asking town meeting belmont's legislative body tonight for its vote is honoring that override and asking if the changes in twenty seven years allow us to consider all turned this next slide so in the  past now that we're in twenty seventeen we can look back over the twenty seven years and some of the circumstances of changed nine hundred ninety there were one hundred seventy nine landfills now there are seven there was the last incinerator was built twenty nine years ago we're just running out of places to store our triage also global warming was barely on the radar screen for most folks and public now there's nearly daily articles such as the one in the magazine economist last week that pointed out that in the last thirty years we've lost half of the arctic's summer ice this is the ice that reflects heat back into space and long before nine hundred ninety there was a time when water and electricity were folded into our property taxes and they were considered free resources we've since learned that that we can make a system much more efficient if we meter it  so why is it why is it important for us to consider for the selectmen to consider all options well i believe that most of us here in belmont want to see our government use funds efficiently by reducing areas of waste so what if we could cut the cost of a service by up to ten percent when the question be why didn't we do that sooner and if we can't cut an area where there's twenty five percent waste what does that mean for other areas where there's less also environmental goals are more important now today than they have been in the past look at our most successful solar rise campaign most successful in the state we've become a green community we've got a climate action plan in place due to that much of the hard work of our citizens belmont's energy committee has endorsed this petition as a way to reduce our greenhouse gases and move and accomplish some of our goals of a climate action plan anyone who's read the last work committee report can see the town is facing significant financial challenges in the next few years so shouldn't our elected officials what it is it's typically where residents buy and use special troung bags that cost more than the ones you would typically get at a supermarket in many cases communities provide discounted bags for seniors  and low income folks the banks come in different sizes but they serve as meters because they measure the volume of trash residents would buy these at local retailers increasing for traffic into their stores it provides a financial incentive for us to reuse recycle and compost this is shown to be the most effective way of reducing trash it also does away with  its cross subsidies where there where those who recycle subsidize those who don't towns like acton return bag fees to residents and lower taxes while other towns such as malden use them for town services most towns will use third party vendors to administer the program so there's no need to add staff line so let's look at this more broadly as public policy here in the state in one nine hundred ninety there were hardly any communities that had patients throw now there are one hundred forty six from urban cities like west to more suburban ones like winchester seventy two percent of communities in massachusetts have fees for their trash but get this just eleven percent of communities in massachusetts have what belmont has which is unlimited trash paid completely out of their property taxes people can put out ten barrels of trash sofas mattresses and they all disappear for the average community in the state reduces trash forty four percent when they move to pay as you throw results for belmont have been estimated conservatively twenty five percent reduction by two independent sources the state department of environmental protection and a consulting firm specializing in waste management for towns we happen to live in a state that takes global warming seriously in two thousand and eight the global warming solutions act was signed into law as part of that they adopted a solid waste master plan that call for a thirty percent reduction in community waste by two thousand and twenty belmont is halfway there the baker administration is called pay as you throw a best practice for communities and they have continued to provide from the patrick an ministration hundreds of thousand dollars in grant money to digital communities that transition to pay throw so in some this is intelligent public policy worthy of serious consideration so i think the question front of all of you is is the past more important than the future mr moderator patricia hersch town meeting member precinct two i was one of the members of the ballot question committee in one thousand nine hundred ninety the committee was basically formed of the p t a presidents from all six schools and members of the league of women voters in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine belmont faced a fiscal crisis this isn't the first year two thousand and seventeen isn't the first year we've faced fiscal crisis  hundred eighty nine we had to call a special town meeting in november to reduce our operating budget by a million dollars because the state cut state aid across the state by a million dollars or the belmont amount was a million dollars and we had no reserves and we had to reduce our expenditures by a million dollars in november we also were looking at some horrendous costs coming up for the next year trash was increasing in cost insurance costs were rising drastically teacher salaries were rising drastically and it already been contracted so there were some real problems going on here and the board of selectmen really grappled with how to deal with this and how to mitigate the issue i won't go into all of the things that they looked at but in the end the board of selectmen decided that a trash b was probably going to be the best way to handle this at that time it was not called as you throw but it was pay as you throw citizens were very very opposed to this and the board of selectmen listened and decided to put an override on the ballot it would be our first override and asked the citizens if they would pay for their trash through additional taxes in order to cover all the bases the board of selectmen also put an article on the annual town meeting warrant to institute a trash  and they were planning to do it if indeed the override failed the override ballot question which i believe is on the screen behind yes that's very specific as you can see it wasn't around a number it was two million ninety four thousand nine hundred forty six dollars which is how much the trash was going to cost us in the next year and it was for a very specific purpose our research had shown that if you used a specific reason for something it was much better it had a better chance of passing than if you use the usual school expenditures or municipal expenditures it was just a factor this was about nine years after prop two and a half went into effect the override passed and the warrant article was withdrawn from the town meeting warrant one question that we're hearing now is how long should an override be honored legally a year is what's required however many people feel that if a tax is still being collected and it is and the purpose for which it was raise still exists and people still want that service and they do then the money that's being collected should pay for that service otherwise many people including myself consider this double dipping collecting tax that would not exist if it weren't for this override but then later deciding to ask for the money again to pay for the service obviously it would make sense to supplement the override should the costs increase in our case that hasn't happened yes trash now cost us more than two million ninety four thousand dollars but an override of that amount gets two and a half percent added to it every single year and right now we're seeing four point one million dollars coming into the town for that two point zero nine six zero nine for the cost of trash which now includes recycling although it's every other week is two point five million dollars so there's an additional one point six million dollars being collected already on the trash override which is not going to trash my major concern with this article is how it can see how it's going to be seen in the eyes of the voters i am really really concerned about this mr williams mentioned earlier all of the things that we're facing including the high school the library the d p w the fire stations the community path and there are many others if we need to go to the voters for these and if we need to go to the voters for another override which we expect we will have to do the voter may take a vote of town meeting to tell the selectmen to do something they can do legally and they should do legally and they do do legally as in looking at all of the options if we now vote specifically this one and say you know forget the one nine hundred ninety override or at least take take a good look at this i see this is a real problem in the mind of the voter and the voter may wonder what the agenda is for the next request that they're being made on the ballot so so i really do have have a big concern about that one i would think it was a viable option if it was countered with something called an under ride in an under ride is exactly the opposite of an override and an under ride would mean that you would put to the town wide voters taking that money off the taxes so if you're going to be asked to pay for the trash bags fine but then you're not going to be putting that that particular money into the town coffers you know unless we choose to do it that way i don't advocate an underwriter right now and i think it would be legally complicated to see which amounted is that we would be underwriting the original amount amount of trash right now or the amount that the override is gaining us as in the four point one million dollars if it was the four point one million dollars gosh then we'd be causing even more for fiscal constraints on the town so i am really not in favor of town meeting taking a vote on this and if they do take a vote on this i'm not in favor of that folk being yes because i think it send the wrong message to the voters and i think that it could put some of our other projects in real jeopardy thinking but something i haven't heard is the fact that when you move an expense from somebody covered by the tax base to be tax deductible for those who are paying so if we're going to be collecting that money to get something that has to be done i'd rather see is a part of the tie space and and that that was a thought i had before i was aware they were actually sort of getting a little flexibility from the current arrangement that we might lose in terms of the time i saw on one of the slides presented that  maybe some of the money collected in fees could be given back to the town for generation or whatever but that would be we can actually just another way of  taking tax deductible expense that we have and turning it to one that isn't so that's just extra money coming from the people of the town separately from the question plan can you get that site under j markets reminder we can't get into the specifics of pays you her own alternatives but i wanted to offer since this was offered up for town meeting to consider i wanted to offer a perspective having worked for  recycling paper companies as a consultant and also with world recycling organizations such as a national resource defense council and i just wanted to comment on some of the studies that ha been presented that may change the presentation of a result i think that's that is beyond the scope because we're not debating the wisdom of different approaches tonight we're debating the role of town meeting to town meeting is presented with this information as part of the reports which i think needs a benefit of clarification and the reason is because they're probably based on information that's not consistent with belmont as a high and good recycling community a lot of these response have been done with communities and the estimates for cost reduction as well as the cost to the town are based on communities that have low recycling rates the change when belmont is in a high recycling community and the cost estimates  the recycling waste streams and value that we get from that are completely different and i think that would completely reverse the status quo statement for environmental from least favorable to probably most favor cost impact to the town from least favorable to most fearful and i can explain my reasoning for that if you'd like i think you made the point and i appreciate that but i don't want to get further into the details of that mr slack now if we're going to continue the charges i see this is a penalty on people who have played within the rules that been given for so long i think it's a little severe to go to charges that must be other alternatives and the argument that the guy or girl that puts  for our back trash seven people in my home a byproduct inadvertent example here is that instead of buying a kettle becomes a natural skin it's natural packaging about the cut stuff comes in plas i can just put that recycling right and forget buying a watermelon you know that's a whole two watermelons and for the kids in the summer it's a whole bag all by itself single stream we need cost savings of course we've got more money than we need so when sarah we're not debating the issue of trash we're debating the issue of that wisdom of town meeting so i'm trying to and others as well we keep coming into discussing recycling or whatever it's a very narrow question here tonight what is the wish of town meeting in terms of asking the selectmen to include pays you throw as one option in the context of  hundred ninety over right so i wish i would be against it because there are too many other things to consider first and i think our have a higher yield for the effort thank you yes sherry and bob in government town meeting member precinct and two clarifying questions one is if this if the vote is unfavorable does that actually mean that pay as you throw is executed or must be exploited by the board of selectmen or is it merely the absence of a ringing endorsement if you will and the second question which let me know if it's out of scope is regarding the second presenters point about under rides or other things that might be done  to react to concerns with the override if pay as you throw or other models are endorsed is that also within the scope of what the selectmen can consider in the in the next contract did one of the selectmen want to respond to this at least the first question i think the second question moves beyond but the first question is  selectmen town meeting member at large i believe it's our position that we can include the pay as you throw regardless of this vote however i can say that legally speaking however i can say personally i'm very interested in what the outcome is and i will take a very seriously in our consideration of the trash because having been the public services public works chair on the word committee for a number of years this question comes up every year should we charge pays you throw no we have an override recharge phase there are no in over and we never make a decision so i'm i'm very interested to finally maybe make a decision on this tonight and then we will but it doesn't preclude us from including it or not including i believe our intention from our prior discussions even though we haven't voted has been to include it as an option  we would include as many options as we can and they are of p to get as many varied responses as we can that doesn't mean we have to accept it and what was the second question again well the question of an underwriter which i i think it does go beyond the scope i mean it i think it was important point but from we get off into the underbrush and thank you mr roberts power over town meeting member precinct day i stand in strong support of this article let me say this this is not about paying for each trash packers is not paying for it this is about belmont the town having the flexibility and the agility to move into the future into the twenty first century in the most fish and cost saving environmentally friendly progressive way that we can if you wonder why it is so hard to get anything done in belmont it is because of this notion this brittle kind of school rhotic notion that any change is some violation of some great long hallowed tradition the standard that  being applied to this one nine hundred ninety override is completely unique we do not look at the many overrides we have passed in the last thirty years scrutinize every word infer from that what isn't isn't allowed as we raise revenues and plan our budget going forward we pass them we collect the money and we move on the money becomes part of the operating budget of the town and we use it to pay for our schools where roldan is growing very hard very strongly to pay for our roads and sidewalks we need flexibility to address the many challenges that piece this town mr selectman williams has spoken about many of them in in his previous article the many issues facing this town what we do not need is to put at the forefront of our mind some the stealth chick duty to the voters of thirty years ago if you're curious about what they were thinking you can go into the  so what i would say is this is a critical article to support because it's going to give us the flexibility to move forward and change and improve the quality of life for all residents and i ar embury precinct one sometime in the next few years the voters about want to be asked to pass another operating override the two thousand and fifteen override had a clock on it we're going to need another one probably to fund schools and buy the services that over i will probably occur after the passage of a very big debt exclusion to fund the new high school and will be occurring within five years of the passage of the two thousand and fifteen operating override by that time a lot of voters are going to have override the tea the la next operating over i hope you appreciate that if we pass this article and if the selectmen adopt a pay as you throw trash system it's on the other hot or cold on but if we do that then the people who oppose the next override which i plan to support  will be able to credibly assert that the purpose cited for that over i can't be relied upon because we will have just recently dissed a prior override and that won't help the next operating override to pacs i understand that not every promise should be kept if i'm promised a seat in a life raft in a child comes along i understand that i or better yet the person next to me should be thrown in the water however i don't think you break a promise unless you really need to given that many of our surrounding communities such as arlington watertown cambridge while fan melrose newton in brookline have adopted another system which i shall not name that have succeeded in reducing folks here may have better memories than me but about ten years ago they went to pay as you throw in there was controversy because a lot of folks that lesson thought they were legally or morally up or have a different doing so because there is some sort of town charter or something there that said they couldn't charge for trash  that pays a pro system unless intent was not well liked it generated a lot of anger and it was very short lived and we should consider the experience of our our neighbor washington as we consider this article thank jones precinct three i want to emphasize precinct three because john boehner noted that the last time i spoke i said i represented precinct two and he asked me if i moved again three i rise to support this article and i do speak into the microphone i do so i rise to support this article largely out of the respect i have for the energy committee in belmont and also for the solid waste and recycling committee in belmont which has devoted so much time and attention to this issue i think out of respect for them i am willing to say that i think the board of selectmen should consider all options having said that i will endorse exactly what the warren committee also said and that is take very seriously the statements made by mrs rouche about the potential impact of this action on future overrides she has more experience than most of us in passing overrides she's been very helpful in getting them done and i think you should consider town to the thirty year old over right now i have knocked on hundreds of dollars in belmont in support of different initiatives and i think that we are wildly overestimating how much people care if not they would really vote at a greater percentage they the people who are really engaged in town a lot of them are sitting in this room and i think the rest of them are really looking to us to manage the town's affairs so i think with the right forum to to address this and we're not making decisions about this it's just to allow an option how can that be so bad i would also say that there was a meeting in watertown recently on this topic and getting information really is powerful i went there opposed to it because i figured hey it's a hundred bucks a year we would save so why the bother but seeing meeting all these people who had actually implemented that really changed my mind you will save money it's not going to be extra cost and there's a lot of other benefits i don't want to go into here since it's off topic but let's do our duty and represent our community and i'm going to vote yes for this i don't see the h market block at precinct seven i really appreciate the fact that have bruce stood up and gave us some dollars and cents about previous override what it what she believes that it was earmarked who are and kind of what we're raising today in the name of the two million whatever that was initially identified and i don't understand why these values have to wait until like it feels like an eleventh hour to hear here that comparison i think they're very real and i think if we've made a promise to the voter about what an override means and stands for we can we need to be responsible and stand up and say what are we collecting what is it for how if we used it how is life changed and this is why we want to change it but not to not talk about it ok because that then feels like i've had the wool pulled over my eyes and i really start to get irritated i really think that the selectmen should have all options available to them presented to them with all of the information not some of bed not from one little special interest group but all of it i am an environmentalist through and through and i don't see as much recycling as we should be doing i don't see a lot of things that we should be doing and i think the selectmen need to have all of the information i rise in favor of this to have the selectmen recognize and hear all of the options and i also want to be have come back when there is some kind of a decision why it was made with all of the information like we need to hear that we do want them to look at all options i think we should not be fearful of we can't honor and override that happened twenty seven years ago i think we have more than one social contract here with our commitment to the environment and reducing our carbon footprint and yes some of the questions are come up how do i deal with my trash are questions that should come up if you have this kind of restriction on you and that is the point we are  not diverting as much as we could in every other capacity we are striving for zero and this is a capacity we also need to strive for zero new context is here the biggest health issue facing our community is hoarding that is not w had twenty seven years ago there are grants that can help us fund this it doesn't have to cost necessarily it can be revenue neutral but we need to be able to look at those things lastly i just want to say that when i look around my own neighborhood i see a lot of infiltration of recycling the folks who i see who are abusing the trash social contract if you will i see people putting out you know ten twelve barrels for one household that is a clear subsidy i also see home businesses putting out their trash and it's not metered it's just you're paying for it so i support this for many many reasons town of belmont is doing every thing it can looks like to recycle so i really think that we need to look at the trust that we are establishing with the voters looks to me like the town is still receiving the benefit from the override so i don't know why we would then go ahead and say oh well we're just not going to abide by that anymore so i urge you to vote no thank you yes ma'am hi jenny marissa precinct sex i'm going to change what i was going to say i'm going to address what this lady just said we are not as a town doing everything that we can we are being quite irresponsible with the amount of trash that we produce and that we get rid of people laughing chuckle when a joke to about having ten barrels picked up for free but that is not free that is embedded in your property taxes and the people who like seniors who barely generate any trash or families like my family of four we do like a two thirds of a barrel a week we are subsidizing and we're paying for everything else so i think that what you need to explain to voters if you don't vote for this is how is it responsible if you know there's there's a system out there that is more cost effective and more environmentally responsible how is that responsible to voters to not allow that to even be looked at as an option thank all the great ideas have already been expressed at rock n roll how many people remember the coasters i will paraphrase them to take out the papers had their track y right is there a second so glenn wait one minute so this is the motion to terminate debate it takes two thirds so voting is open this is the motion to terminate debate debate is terminated then we'll turn immediately to the motion itself if not we'll continue the discussion thirds right on post to cling to forty two to twenty two obviously it's more than two thirds so the debate is terminated we now vote on the motion itself as presented nine o'clock let's take our five minute break we'll come back and complete action