the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments well today is the start of a new work year and i thought it was time to check in with patrice garvin our town administrator you're going into your nd year so i think i'm going to pro thank you for the patrice garvin our town administrator just to have a beginning of the year conversation about how she sees the state of belmont as being i know it's even though it's the the last month and you are starting your your st full year i guess you would be two thousand nine hundred and ninety do you feel like you've got your team in place i think we're getting there i think you know like anywhere you have to be somewhere a while before you really start making or should start making some changes you need to figure out what you need what what's going to work and when my assistant left back in the spring i didn't want to just replace the place a position i wanted to kind of have some more time under my belt trying to figure out what what my office needed so i think we're getting there i mean it's a process like anything else and we'll see but the future brings in the two people that mean that assuming that our listeners know what what i was referring to i'm thinking of two people you've added to your staff john marshall who will be working primarily on recreation issues and then steve duran's has been around for a bit longer but he was new in two thousand and eighteen and can you explain your addition a new not really a recreation director but somebody that specializes in recreation so one of the challenges when i came here given to me by the selectmen was a way to address some of the struggles and challenges within the recreation department i met with some residents i met with members of the recreation comm commission there was eight i report that they had done a strategic plan and they were very interested in implementing one of those suggestions recommendations which was a recreation director given the budget i didn't really see room for a qualified experienced recreation director so i had a kind of think god box i had to figure out a way to address the concerns and the needs of recreation and at the same time be cognizant of the budget and when my assistant left in the spring and i kind of sat on it for a little bit i kind of started to think about merging those two positions and seeing if there's somebody out there that had some recreation experience but also one of the title of assistant time in a straight or and was looking to maybe advance their career at some point and that's when we put out the ad we posted it and john applied john is currently the recreation director in arlington he brings a ton of experience with recreation as he has said he has pretty much held every position in a recreation department that you can have down to a lifeguard so he was very appealing he's also working currently on his masses in public administration so i know john's looking to advance his career so it really seems like a great opportunity for us and as well as john to to address the concerns on the needs of recreation and also some of the needs of my department as well is there a revenue aspect to that meaning that the recreation facilities will be will become more revenue yeah you see the plan and what i have talked to john about is creating an enterprise fund much like the water in the sewer departments where it's a self sustaining organization piece of the town where any  eventually director salary will hopefully be funded through the recreation enterprise fund that's the goal that's what we'd like to get and then steve durant's is the new facilities director he has the disadvantage of coming in after somebody who was so good gerry boyle who retired last retired sure at the end of two thousand and seventeen but can you explain what he's doing so i came in that that position was vacant that position had been vacant for some time unfortunately steve inherited a lot of buildings that needs a lot of the looking into there's a lot of repairs that the town needs and so steve was hired that's a joint appointment by myself and the school superintendent yes that was merged the facilities for the schools and for the town was merged couple of years ago through town meeting so john and i oversee and manage the director's position so he's been on he's had a lot on his plate especially with given the new high school so yes you've been pretty busy and he comes with a great background he comes from the state building background ye with and then you just recently appointed not appointed but promote reclassified yeah glen castro to be better tricked it was got a budget director yes yes when i came in glen was doing a lot of the work that a budget director does he just wasn't being recognized for it that and what i saw was when he interacted with people within town he didn't have the title and i really wanted to emphasize that when when glenn spoke he was speaking as a department head and have some more authority and i felt that giving him the title might help usher those things across and so far he's been he's been great so  directly to the millions puts directly to me and so when the budget starts getting done it'll be coming or coming largely from i'm so glad i will work together it will be ultimately my recommendations but it's really a cooperative team effort that will be putting the budget together so i have a self serving question as you know and as my listeners know i have chair of the town energy committee is there has there ever been a discussion about having the energy manager yes actually i think the town is going to need something in that regard with the new has been you were going to need somebody i mean the systems that are going to be put into the high school are going to be advanced and we're going to need somebody who understands them and has worked with them in the past so i think that's just an ongoing discussion with the superintendent and is that a town school position yeah i would yeah i would be generated out of the facilities department unfortunately the budget has constraints of course steve dorrance his department you know he definitely is lacking in some people power so it's something that we're going to have to continually address and look at  are at least thinking about your entire meant some time in the forseeable future yes so we extended the police chief contract to the end of december in two thousand and nineteen so that's when the police chief which mcglothin will be retiring and since then we've had i've had discussions with the selectmen a bow you know opening a process up probably sometime this year and how the board wants to go about filling that position obviously you look towards internal candidates i believe will have a few and you really look to see you know what the internal candidates have and go from there and there's been a turnover at the fire department in the  know a great job yeah i mean both rich and dave you know bring a lot to the table and if when when rich retires and if dave retires it'll be a loss to the community yes now i know that  you can't talk in detail about the budget because nothing has been decided and we always end up hearing that we have to wait for the state to act there is a lot of moving parts but  a pretty comprehensive five year budget forecast and we've been running what if scenarios we we want scenarios about adding positions here and what we think revenue might be or increasing revenue thinking you know it could come in higher so we're constantly running those types of projections i'm not seeing really any issues with f y twenty or possibly f y twenty one the further we get zero to twenty two there may be some concerns that we're going to have to think about and address well and i would think the further you get out with the last certainly any projects why is that a truism absolutely and if you do have a deficit it compounds after you know each year so it just makes that if you don't address it it makes it look bigger than it probably really is so there's just  looking at it but for f y twenty i don't see any real concerns i think for me the biggest concern is how to manage and funds what we really need versus what we actually have that's the biggest challenge from any  needs and the department head you go to they they probably tell you they could use this or that and it's really good ties in those needs and it seems like historically one of the aspects of canon operations that has been underfunded is the capital budget and by extension the the maintenance budget assuming that there is a line yeah so facilities for share is definitely one capital is i tried to i recommended a couple plan this year i presented it to the capital budget committee in the slackman the wednesday before thanksgiving it is a different way of looking at capital it's a five year capital plan that pretty much tries to list every capital need that the town has and then for every twenty suggesting alternate funding sources for those to kind of take the pressure off of the discussion a funding that's been traditionally used it's but one million four hundred thousand it's really a different way to look at it the other thing i'd like to do given the cyclons ok is to go for another grant to the collins center to really start to hammer out a true capital improvement plan that will run the next five years or so and i remember talking with  glen clancy once glenn who is the director of the offscreen a development who oversees street paving and obviously in belmont one of the concerns that everybody has is everybody says that we need to pave our street but i remember glenn telling me once that the rate at which we paid our streets is not a function of lack of funding that we are paving our streets at the maximum level that would be administratively supportable did i say that correct yes i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of variables that go into which street to paved which  year it's not a funding question in terms of pavement of the streets that is occurring so and we're making progress yes i'm you know just constantly surprise yet no glance glenn does a great job running community element as you know plans been here quite a few years he's definitely well informed as to what what the needs are of the town do you find yourself under any pressure i don't even know if this is an answerable question internal or from the so you have to be i have not heard that yet but then people haven't received their tax bill yet so in regards to when the high school hit so i suspect i might hear something like that once the true impact of on the tax bill for the high school comes in but that could be down the road and i would think that the response to that or perhaps the responses were always careful with our dollars well absolutely whether we have a high school debt exclusion or or anything else it seems like belmont speaking of the state of the town two thousand and eighteen was a good year in belmont it seems like there were any number of things if i can count them off on my fingers including the when i broke a couple but yeah we approve the high school we approve the alexander av underpass the community path move forward they they kind of i should some you know movement on that given you know listening to what the state the state was looking for we put an application to be on the tip i think that's what really started moving the path forward once it became clear  that the state funding might be a priority a possibility let's get some design funding on the table and that's what that vote was for the alexander underpass and what should people expect should people expect somewhat of a lo know i think what people are going to start seeing especially with the high school and the police station is some activity a lot of activity well so we have to do what we've know in the fire as we had chris royer at the belmont light department working on solar and full storage in what that could look like that usage this is the belmont skate park i know there's people in the community  really advocating for that use we have in a robot i just or which we have feasibility report due soon to the selectmen so we're going to be able to see what's feasible up there looking forward to two y i mean it was there at the beginning of the year and it was resolved overwhelmingly yet at the end of the year is there in issues maybe that won't be that overwhelming but you see anything in two thousand that that has it's going to have to deal with honestly i do i honestly believe it's going to be the impact from all the construction projects that are going to happen relatively around the same time i know that pleasant street was rezoned at this past town meeting there might be some activity there you have the police station we have the high school so it's going to impact the community traffic wise potentially just people just trying to figure out how to you know maneuver around all these construction so as people come to concord you know that's for the next couple of years cracked is going to be a different experience with the high school construction there's also the rink might become a player in that at some point so there's a lot going on and i think what we just asked for is patients from the community that you know he's a long standing projects that are finally getting done and it's going to be a little bit you know frustrating but eventually we'll get through it and it'll is going to be a big discussion i think this is the st year that they had more in we quests than they actually have been funding so there's going to be a lot of discussion around that right now we're just working on the budget right pretty much budget to do to office friday so it's going to be all budget all the time for the next month when what is commonly referred to as budget see budget season starts in january and goes through well i'm hoping to present the board in the warrant committee the budget rolled out so to speak in there where the here huge recycling containers the huge trash containers recognizing that comments might not come to your office but would go to d are you hearing things about whether people think that that's working ok sure so the new track any any new program that's going to pretty much touch everybody that lives in the town is going to have an adjustment period have been instrumental in addressing any complaint that comes into their office they receive a complaint to the point of actually going to the residence home and discussing it with them so they've tried to really take on a proactive approach  we're we're hearing it i know this talk on the social media sites about it all i can say is that we're looking into it we hear we hear what some of the suggestions are and we're really trying to work with the residents  accommodate some of the concerns in one of the concerts i live on this tiny little one block long that if you put three cars on it it's almost too narrow to traverse i'm sure it isn't but there is a concern about once there's no you know that narrows the road even further sure and i think with any new challenge we're going to learn new ways and new ways if i can move out of some of the key question a little i don't remember what your costume was i was airfreight united airlines for over thirty years and there wasn't a time where i ever heard him complain about his job i mean he liked he liked going to work he might not have liked what he was doing but he liked his work and i think one of the reasons is he was pretty much friends with everyone that worked there you know they grew up together on the streets of boston at the time so i think i've always kind of just carried that with me that idea that you might not have to like what you're doing but you can like the people you're doing it with and i think that if you do like the people you're doing it with you're going to give more effort and i think i like i think i care i know i carry that with me with every job i've ever ever had really i really want to make it a place that not only the people i work with want to go to but that i want to go to i want to go to work i want to not have it just be all serious and boring you know just kind of things i want to enjoy the people i'm working with i want them to enjoy working with me and i think that comes in how i work and in people see it and some of the initiatives i put forward like the holland wean proposal you know i was wondering how it was going to be you know received by right by people that there but people really got into it and even then the people they didn't really know what to think on board fully on board for next year i mean are you talking about you know the offices and what the they want to go in ads and for those people they don't know we opened up town hall for participate would dress up in costumes and it was great and we also got people coming to town hall that had never been there before and you have young young children you know knowing what it looks like in town hall so it's  has so many benefits that it's just it's just you know and we have fun at the same time so to have fun to boot yeah so sometimes having fun is just is what it is  that something is struck me with here your answer is that given what we talked about one of the earlier about all of the sudden we were making progress on the community were addressed in the high school it seems like all of that or none of that takes work away all of that it raises more work and more work on your staff i mean how how do you keep it from becoming overwhelming to make us people have to yeah i think you know you just i mean it's it gets over on i'm not going to lie there are times when ok you know the selectmen give me a task and i think to myself model on how my going to do this but you know you kind of that's why you have you know a team you know the team really takes on that burden and you know right now i have a great i have a great team a department a great and now they've been here a year and they kind of get me i get them it's much easier kind of flow and it's only going to get better probably as you no longer i'm here so it just i think if you come out it was a team approach and and say look i need you know i'm not ever afraid to ask for help i mean i think some people in my position see that as  negative i don't i if i don't know something or if i need help with something i have no problem going in and asking so you know why they have the initiatives that you've begun this year two is your opening this strikes me because you talked about kids coming to town is you've open town hall night yes at least one night one night we might go monday night yes it'll know can you tell us what you're thinking it's on that i mean there must be some very so sure ocean and i mean i i know in the town i live in my town hall is open you know for monday through friday and as a resident you know i can't get there monday through friday so i know i look at it from ok how would that you know you look at it from a personal point of view and i think it's a big i think it's a big service you offer the residents because there are there are people that work not you know and they don't necessarily have the time to fire oh wait they don't have the time to come in and talk to somebody about you know putting addition on their house or you know running for a particular office you know in town they don't they can't do it because we're not there and i think it's a service to the  residents i believe that it gets people you know out to the town hall that wouldn't necessarily have come because they can so i think it's a benefit and you know it also benefits the employees because there is the have to on friday and especially in the summer when it's you know ninety five dollars degrees and you know you get out of lauralee or because you stayed a little later on monday so well it does help because a lot of county employees have to stay late i've never understood why some do yeah yeah when you have a night meaning sometimes it doesn't make sense to go home you might as well just stay right and it's not as though if you stay until nine o'clock and you come in at ten o'clock in the morning yeah i know it also helps the elected officials you know the ones like the selectmen that you know can come that they work and i know they come in on mondays and they they love that they can go if they have a question to the building department or they assess well that's great it's him we are  community conversations online by going to the media web site media dot org and you can also find community conversations by searching for the b m c podcast network through i tunes even listening to community conversations thank you for tuning in i'm your host roger colton i will talk to you again next time