i'm the executive director of the water tom bowman chamber of commerce and i'm thrilled to be here and today is our one of our marquee events it's the state of the towns and we're very excited to be here and learn some of the happenings in both communities as you all know there's a lot happening in both watertown and belmont right now so today this morning should be very interesting again thank you all for coming and at this time i want to just call up mike driscoll who's the town manager for water town he's worked in watertown since one nine hundred seventy seven some about thirty seven years ago and he's on his twenty third year is the town manager of water so thank you m morning thank you meagan and it's a pleasure to be here interesting it's quite a lengthy speaking they told me that i had a kind of down from forty five minutes to thirty i don't know how long everyone else is going to speak but but clearly very very get right into it there's a lot of good things going on in watertown i got ten minutes i want to kind of speak on some of the highlights going on in the community the very first one is the town financial condition you've heard this before that we really used five basic tenets moving forward to provide the highest level services to the citizens in the community we ensure that annual cost of operations are budgeted within the but within the each budget not defer remain inside and recognition of cost of capital equipment remain focused on achieving long term goal financial management and fiscal stability and prevent a budget each year in sound business practices one of the town council budget policy guidelines and  related to financial policies is very regarding the un reserve fund balance one of the things town council has strive for in you'll hear a lot theme today about a lot of the town councils of budget policy guidelines one of them is regarding  respond to emergencies and unanticipated needs preserve financial fiscal stability look to have an reserve fund balance of seven to ten percent this year as of july one town council we had a  our free cash is ten point two million dollars when you add a stabilization of dollar amount to that we come up to eleven point four million dollars so that's actually over our target of seven to ten percent what town council is now doing is looking to sit down to figure out how best to utilize the money above our seven to ten percent but not spending at all one time but you know clearly moving and looking to determine how best to move forward with that free cash monies and that would best serve the community of watertown the next thing i want to talk to about is tax classification since fiscal year two thousand and two town council has voted a shift of  hundred seventy five percent from the to the commercial industrial personal property from the residential class which results in a lower tax rate for the residents of class additionally in fiscal year two thousand and fifteen town council voted a twenty percent residential exemption to within the property classes thus giving a discount to the folks that live in their home on the occupied home one of the things town council looking to do is perhaps  considering filing a homo petition to increase that above the twenty percent some of the other communities have thirty or even thirty five percent that will be coming up for discussion town town of watertown the average tax bill in fiscal year fourteen is fifty one hundred dollars that compares very favorably to town of mountain which is sixty six hundred dollars needham is newton is eighty one hundred dollars in belmont is ten thousand five hundred dollars now the issue about half the dollar amount is because we have almost twenty percent of our tax levy is related to commercial industrial personal property where as a bomb on it's only less than five percent the next item i want to talk about is bond market watertown a bond upgrade we went from double a to aaa which is the highest bond rating that standpoints put out and they cited several items one was a very strong economy very strong budgetary flex flexibility very strong quiddity strong management conditions and lastly very strong debt and contingent liability position driven mostly by the low  in direct that in and this is a key issue which i'll speak to in a few minutes and the plans to address the unfunded pension liability in the opeth liability in fiscal years two thousand and fifteen and sixteen will be continue to go to the bond market to provide infrastructure improvements it's critical that we continue to move forward with financial management and fiscal stability the next item we talk about the bond market cap pullman programs town councils budget policy guidelines one point one b alludes to are looking to spend seven and a half to eight percent of our budget each year on capital improvement program we submitted a cap and a five year eight related to fourteen town buildings one of the things it's doing is the savings on the energy will actually help provide for the improvements in moving forward in reducing twenty two percent of electricity in twenty two in over thirty two percent of our natural gas the other i am i talk to when the cap and print programs at st sidewalks to number one budget policy guidelines for many years has appropriated in the last seventeen years within the budget ten point three million dollars for street and sidewalks which is an average about six hundred thousand dollars june of twelve town council appropriated two and a half million dollars june of fourteen april for it two and a half million dollars within the next month another two and a half million dollars and then the next five fiscal years two and a half million dollars for street and sidewalk improvements ladies and gentlemen that's twenty million dollars in eight fiscal years all within the confines of two and a half but the two a proposition two and a half very quickly retirement benefits you know peg want to talk about we talked about stand a poor as working with the watertown contributory retirement board town council has put in and stablished an unfunded pension liability account in july of twelve july thirteen they appropriated one point five million dollars into this account the restructured the pay down of the retirement where we will be fully funded our unfunded pension liability as of january want to fourteen is fifty three million dollars fiscal year two thousand and nineteen will be paid off in full and the thousand appropriation would be seventeen point seven million dollars in fiscal year twenty it drops down to a little over two million dollars that's a savings of fifteen point six million dollars we'll look to move that to the other post employment benefits which currently sits it's one hundred sixty three almost one hundred sixty four million dollars group insurance commission i've told you before we were in one of love and communities back in july of one of two thousand and nine to join the group insurance commission we have a new three minutes mike i get it the that we have where we've got a new growth we're joining the group insurance commission and now we have we have that stability we've got an agreement all the way to june of twenty twenty one so again you know our health insurance costs from fiscal year zero nine to fifteen went up point seven five percent each year us which is really dramatic very quickly in the schools town councils work very closely you got to budget policy guidelines last year town council appropriated within the confines of two and a half nine point almost nine point six zero percent for the school children of this community additionally we're looking to provide minimum of five percent for fiscal year sixteen seventeen and eighteen i'm going to skip the school building items division of local services the financial management of you division local services community told us that we hadn't been had provided what a town has established on financial management practices the town manages his budget well has tight financial controls in place we found that department heads and their staff are capable experienced it was a long term planning that is currently updated as information becomes available the two key recommendations there were to appoint a deputy town manager and to establish a finance department town council decided they really at this point couldn't here with us today he's also been signed as the assistant talmage of finance we're very very fortunate to have both of those individuals serving the community last last two items i want to talk to a be remiss in not bringing up well i want to personally thank chief deveau was here today who's gone to the federal trial every day every day getting to the air staying the whole day supporting his police consider a transfer of over a million dollars deficit which would bring the spending to two point two million dollars which is the highest in town's history our governor baker last week had filed a request for a federal declaration for some federal monies we're hoping to point to me in dollars over a million dollars deficit town council consider voting that tuesday night we don't want to have that come up in fiscal year sixteen budget just by way of comparison last year we spent one point six million dollars two years ago was one point two million dollars and three winters ago we spent four hundred dollars so in closing the goal of this administration in the town departments to provide the highest level services to the watertown while utilizing the taxpayers dollars is officially impossible i look forward to working with town council and continue building on the progress we've made thank you at this time i'd like to introduce mr david camm who's the town administrator for belmont thanks to you thank you mike you don't have to hold up fingers when i hear the music is like the academy awards on now to get off the stage and by the way mike you took so long so i had half your french toast so that's ok thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning a lot of things that i'll be touching upon are in process and hopefully when we meet again next year they will be completed in terms of the economic development front as you aware and october thirteenth officials broke down on the problem wrote reconstruction project which is funded by the  fourteen point five million dollars project and is expected to be completed at the end of this construction season at the board of selectmen meeting on monday night the board approved a request by new poor construction to begin work at five thirty am instead of seven am and to do saturday work and that is an effort to make sure that the work is completed this calendar year so that the project will be completed on schedule so that just an update on  that just as a reminder about the scope of that project the town of belmont provided one point five million dollars in design services and work closely with the town of watertown on elements of design that fall in the town of watertown that require the approval of three hundred property owners a buddy in the project and it was required to be executed before the project could move forward the project is a full reconstruction of two and a half miles of to palo road and belmont expanding from mill street to the cambridge city line this project involves upgrading the overhead wire system that provides power to the m b t a buses reconstruction of the existing street and sidewalks which you've already seen some of take work take place flash season improve cycling accommodations for cyclists and new or upgraded traffic signals in thirteen intersections so it's a major project the project overall will allow us to have the opportunity to address longstanding concerns around roadway conditions including congestion as well as concerns are surrounding the mixing of buses motor vehicles cyclists and pedestrians so again it will be a much more efficient transportation mode  completed this project allows for the reconfiguration of the roadway so that all modes of transportation can share the corridor in a safe and efficient manner and also provide improvements to the cushing square and waverly business sticks districts in addition to that center brownsburg was instrumental during the process and making sure that it got approved and to make sure that any snags that we've had he's been able to intercede so thank you center brownsburg in addition to that i think at the end of the project we're probably going to have a facial picture of going clancy who is our director of community and who's done blood sweat and tears to make sure this project is got done and is moving forward and i think he will be very pleased with the outcome of his how work at the end of the cycle secondly smith legacy partners received approval from the belmont planning board for the construction of cushing village located in cushing square as you all know the town of the developer in the process of executing the sale of the cushing square miscible parking lot which is a component of this development and the rojas will speak a lot more in detail about the status of the project and the components on nov seventeenth  belmont held a special town meeting and authorized the funding for the reconstruction of belmont center town meeting approved two point seven five million dollars which will provide funding for new payment sidewalks ornamental lighting project also will include curb extensions new crosswalk systems additional parking and bicycle lanes the board of selectmen is scheduled to vote the contract at its next meeting it is intice appended that construction will be completed by late fall two thousand and fifteen and again and you will have who's been intimately involved in the design details will give you some of the highlights in addition to that through home rule petition that was shepherded by representative rogers the town expanded its retail all alcohol license by one bear and licenses by two in two thousand and fourteen we currently have eight beer and wine licenses for restaurants and seven full alcohol licenses for restaurants i'm know you've heard about that and lastly again and you will talk a little bit about i think you've heard a little bit about the macy's project in the reconstruction and reconfiguration of that site and he has some details to share with you in terms of financial  investor services assigned a aaa rating to our bond issue that what took place in april fourteen of twenty nine million dollars for general obligation bonds primarily to fund the new belmont light substation that's under construction the town is scheduled to go for another thirty million dollars in gio bonds in april and fifteen i will point that in the certification of our free cash as of july one it was certified at seven point five million dollars which is the highest free cash amount in the town's history one point three million dollars of that free cash balance was used to fund the belmont center reconstruction project again one time money for one time capital projects and unfortunately as mike mentioned  force to develop a long term financial capital program plan financial task forces comprised of thirteen members which includes members of the board of selectmen school committee or a committee or financial committee budget cap a budget and contains several recommendations based on five working groups that work comprise as part of the task force the poor can be found on our web page the working groups included working groups that dealt with a topics around education revenue opportunities town government operations capital projects and financial modeling and again there were several recommendations that came out of this report the most immediate was a recommendation from the task force to the board just in terms of what does a four point five million dollars override comprise and how it will be used over the next three fiscal years it will be used if if resources are available based upon the override passing one point seven million dollars to cover a school budget shortfall based primarily on increased special ed costs and english language learner in roman increases it will allow for the increase of seven teaching positions belmont public schools has has seen increase of over three hundred students over the last three fiscal years we expect to have an increase of another three hundred in the upcoming three years so clearly it will help deal with some enrollment issues that are facing the district in addition to that there is five hundred thousand dollars in the recommendation is part of the override that will be used for in addition five hundred thousand dollars for roadways and sidewalks this will allocate of the five hundred thousand dollars three hundred thousand dollars for roads in addition to the million eight that we current appropriate and we'll provide two hundred thousand dollars as predictable funding for sidewalk repair we currently don't have a predictable funding source for sidewalk repair and it's a major need in town in addition to that it will allow us to increase our debt service budget by one hundred twenty thousand dollars that will allow five hundred thousand dollars to be bonded for capital projects and that will take place over two fiscal years five hundred thousand fiscal seventeen sixteen and five hundred thousand dollars in fiscal seventeen to deal with capital projects and in the out years basically based upon the additional roll meant it would add additional teaching positions in the out years facilities just a touch upon them april of two thousand fourteen the town of belmont approved a debt exclusion which allowed for the new underwood pool which you currently see under construction on concrete out of the total cost of the project is five point six million and is funded from bond proceeds community preservation act funds and private donations and again we're expecting the pool the open sometime in july and august of two thousand and fourteen the town completed major invitations to the harris field complex and concord avonex the high school which included the installation of a new athletic  synthetic turf to the football field and included the renovation of the running track and new fencing the town is in the process of working with the cam division of capital management and  maintenance to execute the conveyance of the property located on concord add that would serve as a form incinerator site to the town which will then be used for public works uses missile uses or recreational uses we're in the process of working at the camp to execute that conveyance again with the help of our state delegation which was beneficial we're able to get legislation approved to direct the camp to negotiate with us to get that property back in the town's hands and he can describe the process that the board is underway department which allows residents to share important from asian with first responders so basically you do a nine one one call information you've given to us helps us provide better service to you whether you have children or dogs or medications or medical conditions weeks back made a major drug bust that took sixty eight grams of heroin off the street and also involved the newest officer which is officer graham which is our canine officer and i just want to thank chief mclaughlin his department for doing that because i think that helps the whole community to have those kind of things taken off the street and it was designated a green community in december we've implemented our advanced life support ambulance service and we're in our second year and i just like to announce that we as you don't know we have a new superintendent john fail megan good morning first of all i'd like to apologize for all the signs they're temporary until next tuesday nobody's more upset about them than me but there are a necessary evil in this business david mentioned pushing village while working directly with the developer to make sure that we can first of all convey the parking lot that municipal parking lot is in trouble to his development were on the final stages of vacuum bantz and that should be moving forward shortly pushing village will include one hundred fifteen residential units about thirty eight or thirty nine thousand square feet of retail commercial total development of about one hundred sixty one thousand square feet with two hundred twenty five parking spaces mostly underground the town will get back to fifty spaces that we lose in the parking lot vance we will have fifty dedicated underground parking spaces at our disposal in that development very good for the town where we're excited about it he mentioned david mentioned the belmont center project our commitment to small business this is part of it we really feel that reconstructing belmont center will increase the livelihoods of the businesses that are there and also attract new business that being said macy's owner locatelli properties kevin foley the representative has announced that foodies a south end market that also has one on the south shore i  think is moving into a piece of macy's macy's that old block of about seventy thousand feet has been broken up into four spaces the biggest space will be this one that he signed the lease on now with foodies it will be an exciting new component the belmont center i think that he's also attracting another good new restaurant we've seen that because of our liquor license you know the kind of imperatives that we've directives that we've you know put in place as well as with the reconstruction of belmont cent seeing increased retail activity and interest in belmont's and it's very important to us it's our town center the other thing about belmont center is going to increase green space we're going to have a much larger green space right in the middle of belmont center it's also going to increase trees by about forty five new trees in belmont center chapelle road project one of the things that david mentioned was the state project d o t it's going to provide also about four hundred to four hundred twenty new street trees along the triple road corridor that's important that's what makes communities feel good what makes businesses thrive what makes pedestrians want to be here the where after all of that we're really following on that the incinerator site him david mentioned incinerators that week working on the conveyance from the state from the can  it's a large parcel a lot of it's one however it's got amazing amount of property there that we can use it's going to be limited to municipal use the state conveyance is going to limit us we cannot sell it we can use it for commercial purposes however we can use it for a whole into municipal uses d p w currently has a facility there that will remain however there are many other facilities second go that we've been talking about the police station possibly being you know located their new police station recreation fields lots of solar farm work sporran all kinds of opportunities for that incinerator site with one public form on the post closure uses of the site we will have others this is an ongoing community discussion about how to use this major parcel and we're very excited about it i think it will take some pressure off other parcels the transmission and substation construction project by municipal out you know we have a municipal like company the board of selectmen is also the municipal life board and we're working on a big new substation that's going to really allow belmont to have predictable stable energy resources in the future we're going to be able to absolutely control our destiny in terms of electricity and power and that was the goal this new substation is going to be the biggest thing that's happened to our infrastructure in many many years a big project that's fifty story point seven million dollars project thank you we expect that it's going to be one of those projects  where may not be as visible as others but it will provide services to our residents beyond many other projects we're doing the grove street master plan is a grocery park where the ten acre park we're doing a master plan for it is approved by town meeting the design propos working on that intently right now in addition to that we are now if you followed any of our town meeting actions there's two big citizens part to the petitions on the floor for the main town meeting one  is really trying to control mcmansion and you know belmont townhomes we don't have the commercial development of other towns we have about ninety four percent of our property taxes from residential the so we have small commercial development which means that as the town homes we really need to preserve that character because that's what drives our property values really controlling the size of new development where the neighbors and residents are really ticked off about tear downs and then putting up these gigantic homes that block like air open space it really changes the character of neighborhoods where determined to really take a look at that very seriously and halt that so that we can preserve our neighborhoods is one going on in our g r district which is general residents and another petition  citizens petition for a single family residential district we expect that the residents are going to demand that this type of action get expanded throughout time it's very important to preserve the character we're also going to be looking at some sort of other subdivision controls because one of the things that's happening in beaumont we have large lots particular on bomb on hill there being there's a lot of pressure to subdivide our zoning allows them to do it again all that's going to do is increase traffic density and imp and future impacts on our services and changed inexorably the character of the town where including the citizens this is driven by residents would determine to work that and to make sure that we don't lose the benefits that belmont offers we have a aaa credit rating he was meant to have a level one school district the towns in great shape who want to keep it that way thank you very much some of the projects that are going on in towns and development projects and then talk a little bit about some longer range more comprehensive planning projects that that we're working on  another residential project of one hundred seventy units within a pleasant street corridor all three of those projects were recently completed and fully occupied you know tremendous response to thirty seven thousand square feet of retail space including a grocery store and bacon howard between bacon and howard street project called river park loss which is another sixty six unit residential project with ten thousand square feet of retail and a restaurant those two are under construction currently and and on the way also approved by the planning board but not yet under construction thirty three mount auburn street right in watertown square twenty four unit residential project with twelve inner square feet of retail space five seventy arsenal which is  store obviously retail space although that has been appealed but was recently approved by the zoning board of appeals pending currently before the board's but not yet approved  of a form around excite insect class a office space of one hundred fifteen thousand square feet it's forty eight or four eighty arsenal which is the former verizon contract  yard again a proposal for a class a office space of one hundred eighty five thousand square feet and also irving an arsenal street parolee brick yard is proposed for  a project they've called a lawn which would be two hundred eighty two units and ten thousand six hundred square feet of retail space all told all these projects are approximately twelve hundred units of residential space and two hundred forty eight hotel rooms and three hundred and seventy thousand square feet of commercial space obviously some pretty significant investment in our community and some pretty significant economic development as you might imagine that does generate a little bit sore in the community so some of the other things when working on from a perspective of conference of planning is you know to really address some of those those issues and our conference of plan an effort that has been underway since two thousand and thirteen is is finally coming to a conclusion we're hoping to schedule a joint hearing with the council and planning board we've done in response to some of the concerns expressed about a lot of development activity but also in relationship to the direction the conference of plan is recommending is to to move forward with the design guidelines one of the things  that the communities express a lot of concerns about some more to it indian decayed in terms of the the form of development not just so much that there is development but how does it really interact with its neighbors so we've developed some design guidelines working with a design consultant to really look at not just you know zoning creates a box that you can build within and says what you're allowed to put in that box and we really decided to take a take a take it a step further and look at how that what you put within that box of your allowed to build  thank you very much for morning everybody it's good to have an opportunity to be here to report back to you on our work and also to get to get your ideas that input i'm going to talk about just a couple of things and then i know my colleagues are als going to speak and hopefully they'll be some time for questions if there are some things we haven't addressed do you want to hear from us on those i'm going to talk first of all about the state budget the state budget we're working on right now over the next two to three months we'll be debating in finalizing the state budget and the bottom line is that it's going to be another tight state budget the governor has proposed increasing the budget overall by about four percent but of that four percent about two thirds is going to go to health care so there's going to be relatively little in terms of additional resources available to address  all of the other things that are important to our communities and to our residents we're going to be working very hard doing all we can to to see what we can do to at least achieve a modest increase in  local aid the governor has proposed in the case of watertown an increase of about two hundred fifty thousand dollars of local a between education assistance and general government assistance we're certainly going to work to do at least that well in the legislature when the budget comes to us and for a lot of the other programs around our communities that do receive state funding whether it's work of our police department with respect to people with mental illness our early childhood programs the boys and girls club programs our seniors through through spring well we're going to do our best to preserve the funding that the state provides to those programs because they make a huge difference in the quality of life of our neighbors i have to say we're very fortunate to have an administration in watertown i'm sure it's true in belmont as well that has really been remarkably creative over these last now seven or eight years of tight budgets in finding ways to spite the constraints that we have at state level to meet the needs of our communities and i have to say also that the community groups including many of you in the business community have been just a tremendous help in sustaining these programs that make such a huge difference in our community so i want to thank you for that the second thing i want to talk about very quickly is transportation transportation is something that's been on everybody's minds for the last few months as we've been dealing with this very tough winter as you know a lot of the focus has been on public transportation in particular the tea was shall we say impacted by the bad weather you may know that the governor appointed a special task force to look at the issues with the t we expect to get their report back within the next few days we expect that that's going to look of course at some of the problems with current operations of the t their maintenance issues state of good repair issues their particular meant practices a number of other issues with current operations but it's certainly my hope that if not this commission itself then in the subsequent debates we're going to talk generally about what we're looking for in a public transportation system and  what we need to meet the needs of our economy and of arc of our communities i think all of you have personal experiences with what problems in our transportation system a particular public transportation system have meant for you and i would love to hear your thoughts we course know that many businesses were seriously impacted many people were unable to get to work that's something we just absolutely can't tolerate we have to find ways to deal with  that we've been working on this issue of transportation long before we got to this winter and i again want to thank there many people in the audience today who've been part of the efforts that we've been making to look at the arsenal carter in particular and how to improve transportation in that area as development in the arsenal corridor picks up steve was talking about what's happening with athenahealth but there are many other businesses boylston properties and the others who are bringing very valuable development in terms of  business and residential development in that area and we have to make sure transportation keeps up with that so that it works overall for the for the community and for the people who work and live in that area not something that we've been working on for quite some time and i appreciate all the help we've been getting from you i'm going to stop there again i would really welcome your thoughts and your suggestions i'm sure my colleagues will have other things that they want to have as well thank you that the tough job that it is that we all go through in municipal government and expression during these very difficult budget years i represent the west and a watertown mostly half of wall fa and three precincts of newton as well so i cover three communities one issue that i would like to speak about today that i'm currently working on my office is a collaboration between watertown wealth  newton and then also from the river street in waltham up to moody street this area as maybe you are already well aware has gone through an enormous amount of change over the last fifteen years  development of both residential and commercial properties has taken place is a constant reminder as we as local and state officials must work together to improve the quality of our life i taxpayers and also make sure that we work with the business community to provide them with the necessary resources so that the businesses can grow and prosper our goal of working together is to call this a district the chiles river a mill  district with a name and identity we feel will be able to promote the sea area for the business for business and for a strong voice on state in assistance with traffic mitigation and bta service will be able to hopefully bring things like the hub way by program and take advantage of the charles river bike path this year where the three communities in the sex can sometimes be seen as no man's land being the state representative for watertown newton waltham allows me to work with both the local and state officials to make a strong voice for these services senator brownsburg for instance represents the watertown section of pleasant street cynthia cream represents sen cream represents the newton piece and sen barack represents the waltham peace so right there we have three senate is that to invite all you on wednesday may twenty eighth this is going to be a kickoff it's going to be from six to eight pm we'll be reaching out to the businesses in the pleasure street cart of the waltham newton areas and invite all residents to come and share their ideas of how we can make this corridor better for everyone i would also like to invite the belmont community as well it's going to be held at the chapel bridge park at fifty fifty five chapel street in newton so again that's on may twenty eighth it will be from six to eight pm so this will be our kickoff event and hopefully you can come and share your ideas and how we can you know improve the stretch area that has been severely changed over the last fifteen to twenty years with a lot of development both residential and commercial so that's one of the big issues i'm working on in my office and i thank you again for having me here today and  you thank god he clapped was enormous there so i always speak up for a minimum of fifteen to twenty minutes so i was getting another cup of coffee relax but i had to be roger's i represent arlington dominant and cambridge and i'm in my second term i love public service and it gives me an opportunity to make a difference in the communities i represent and in the commonwealth and because many of you may have never met me before it's the first time  ever appeared rather than delve too deeply into policy i thought maybe i'd tell you just a little bit about myself as it relates to what you do because i spent my whole life in the private sector before i got elected i got elected in tw business lawyer i started at a firm downtown not in mclennan and fish and i've been a corporate and business lawyer and employment lawyer for almost twenty years and so i grew up in a family where my father was an entrepreneur he started off selling insurance eventually got to the point that he started his own business and by the time he was done had two hundred employees working for him and so i'm very open to your ideas i believe that you know as goes the business community goes our entire society in many ways you know and those of us who care about poverty you know poverty is worst enemy is a good job we can come up with every great program at the state or federal level but without a thriving economy we can of good repair is the term of art people use in the transportation sector and it just means getting the switches the mechanical engineering the electrical engineering up to a state of good repair the estimates had always been about three billion dollars that the t had a state of good repair debt if you add interest payments the t's debt is eight billion so if you have the state of good repair projects to the the debt that's fourteen point five i've billions and now i think  the governor has appointed a task force they're going to be a lot of reports coming out and so we'll i think it's something we're going to tackle in this session hopefully we're not going be able to solve it overnight obviously it's a problem decades in the making it'll be some time to to rectify it the problems and then we're going to do a huge energy bill i think in the legislature this year that's from listening to the speaker the senate president and others i think we're going to be doing a really big energy bill windpower hydro power expanding transmission lines the the the coal burning plants in salem and somerset are going offline so we we're going to have energy challenges in our state so that's a big bill to be looking for as the session unfold and then our last speaker today is our state senator for the second suffolk and middlesex district center will  thank you megan i think all of you in the room can see the high quality of leadership that these two communities are blessed with the town management the town political leadership board of select belmont city council watertown our highly committed highly intelligent ighly experienced completely dedicated professionals and i think we're very blessed i feel blessed to have  represented a fact representative rogers and representative law and three partners who each are equally committed to serving their communities and to deliver high quality projects high quality legislation on a range of issues and the only thing i'd like to add to what has already been said is that i want to underlined what representative fact said about this being a difficult budget year and from the standpoint of the the state's high growth rate and health care costs are relatively limited growth rate in revenue even given the economic recovery that's been going on this is of it's a very tight squeeze and i've been pleased with governor baker has made an effort to budget realistically for some things we've tended to budget unrealistically for in the past mass health being the biggest but other things like public council services and so that's a good sign but even with that and partly it is a result of that realistic budget in this budget so serious signs of strain we have a proposal in there for an early retirement incentive which offers some short run savings but in fact builds in cost for the next fifteen years i think it's still it's an ill advised proposal it's one thing in the budget i think it's very ill advised so i think we're likely to who certainly in the senate there's a lot of reservations about it and i'm working as hard as i can to see if we can go in a different direction but that will not ease this year's budget pain it will in fact increase this year's budget pain so i would flag that you know as much as we would like to see increase local aid i don't think i would even necessarily take the governor's numbers to the bank so it's a tough year working very hard to address it and but we have great partners critter ship in these communities it's a privilege for me to serve with them and approach me to serve you thank you ok at this time of love to open it up for some questions if anybody has any instead of having you guys move and sit there and distract i'll let you guys stay in your seats and you can answer and i'll just come to you with a microphone if i can figure out how to  got anybody have any questions for our speakers i'd like to also just thank you again for coming and speaking on behalf of both communities i think there's some interesting things happening in both lot of time belmont who are lucky to have firsthand knowledge of it now so any questions in the group