well it was very interesting to have seventy five percent approval when there was also a massive turnout and i think it was a very convincing showing of the desires of the community  fortunately everybody agreed with us where we agreed with everybody but it did i think will be a very good thing for the town and thank you for your work on that because it was a huge effort  the regarding the articles for the special town meeting i would like to follow the model that we use some time before which is to decide st of we  article so vote on it so we've already voted on article two which was the school and we voted on article five which is the community path project station building committee article seven the senior property tax the interest rate on the senior property tax deferral in article eight is a citizen's petition to the main import of it is to allow additional uses that would be primarily assisted living and other commercial and other commercial but i thought it allowed other marijuana use as a separate so you're talking about that i mean that only the two idea is to free up that area because it's one of our only industrially areas to some greater level of development to foster economic development and help waverly square just with the idea is that if they build something up hopefully that prosperity swings around the corner past the star market it helps the whole area and it also supports the housing production plan for and for affordable housing with the assisted living piece which is part of what we did opted for earlier this year so we feel like  whoever for perry is assuming that the war in committee doesn't have a role i think i'm kind of like elizabeth that i'm having to weigh in on her because there is a financial impact but for how well the kind of  thing i agree with that and also even if there's a general sense that there would be if not a a positive economic impact at least a hope for a positive economic impact if it's not something that we've really to vote in such a vague sense that it's really a value to town meeting i think we're going to vote on something we should say the least we've studied it and i don't think we can say that we've studied this article in a meaningful whether someone came in and got all assisted living then i don't know what the impact could be lester if you know about office buildings but you don't know what the developers are so it's kind of you know you can do is make the area be something other than automotive which i wholeheartedly support and then we'll see what developers come in under the rules that are promulgated but i there either be economic impact which will be positive or there will be nothing at all so i suppose those would be probably the two choices i don't see how you get a negative economic impact of someone coming in to doing commercial films and senior housing is even put kids in the school system so that i don't see where the negatives are you have a negative financial impact i certainly love for you am positively but i respect you not weighing in at all if i understand well and i'm willing to defer to the group my own inclination is that we haven't really studied an article to them to the and i was just concerned about the war committee taking positions that were uninfor be speak to the question yes my going to say this is this is the kind of thing we can study it to death to end it and it would only be conjecture so right i'm fully supportive of of the article in the prospect that there would be economic development but that ultimately economic development depends on the developers and it's on knowable so so you know i have i go along with you they're taking a pass or or voting general support article seven is the senior property factor for all sorry i missed difference between reducing the interest rate from eight percent to four to have percent means that ultimately the town receives receives three and a half percent less interest  on the all that put together it comes out to about fifty thousand dollars buying let me just say we're right coming out of this article i have i'm  index trade but it has to raise the set anyway that this is something that will be revisiting periodically and  the impact in any event if a lot of more people took advantage of this program that raises a whole other set of questions because for example one hundred dollars additional households to further  property tax that would open up cash flow question for you on the order of a one million dollars a year and that would be a pretty serious issue but on the expectation that think that there are protests there are possible strategies for alternative forms of helping ole turn of strategies for people to deal with the property tax that would be very different from one in this work article and that would be something that i would hope the property tax working group will study any that will have a viable suggestion that can be  a reference to ninety thousand so i know i didn't challenge the two hundred because i didn't remember it but it did we're still talking on that order of magnitude here from my perspective to the extent that this helps people who would otherwise haps oppose future overrun ideas or dead exclusions because it gives them then escape mechanism where they are amongst the most challenged in terms of exclusion it's just part of the calculation but i think overall the town benefit by making by by providing mechanisms for people who for whom property tax worried about their taxes in the context of the whole question about whether we're going to build the new school and the the debt exclusion i think the impact is ready is reasonably us and this is a reasonable quid pro quo to minimize the impact of the debt exclusion for some of these these households for which paying their property taxes is a challenge one other piece of information that comes to riordan gave us too which i found compelling was that people can choose only to join the program for the increase that they would experience in the property tax not for the whole property tax that they pay which some people may people the option eliot i support this but also with this to think about other measures going forward here i understand the concern about a cash flow she was a share but if we can find ways to something like this and maybe other measures that we could bring in slowly so that we can handle the cash flow issue of it once we get into the program that will sustain itself and i don't think there's a problem i'd like to see us look at additional changes to this program that would allow over time more people is a manager because it is a tremendous benefit to our community as well as to the people who are impacted to be able to stay in their homes i think it's really important for the community to think i agree it's important for support of fusion future five years and it's important in terms of not turning over countries or not stressing our schools anymore so when we look as if an eight percent for a long time that's my understanding so it sounds a little silly but just mechanically want to make sure that the town like that there's a mechanism to be keeping proper track like it's been the same rate for a really long time warrant committee shall review the recommended appropriation at least every five years it would rise whether it is at a suitable love the work of many reserve fun should be used only for unexpected operating expenses that can be quantified requests to draw upon the more committee reserve fund may be made only by the county administ with the school superintendent any such request shall be made in a timely manner to allow deliberation by the board a release of funds from the warren committee reserve fund requires a majority vote of the army any balance in the war committee reserve fund at the end of the fiscal year shall be transferred to the reserve general fund and language in the original just set any financial need which would include conceivably problems with some capital project they're required in the appropriation and i thought it would be more appropriate some of the from just for operating budget and even having done it before i had a reading today i know i suspect others don't have a really good feel that as i walk through this document pass to one of the things that we're already doing and we're just codified into what are the things here that we're not doing that we're proposing and for both of those for all of us substitute point of view is that the right outcome is that the right thing to do so it seems to me that the word splitting of the policy is themselves we can't really get into until we've looked at that maybe that level overview is not what our job is in just seems to me d to react to the words on the paper without having the bigger picture of the i think what's happened as a practical matter is different people in different groups who have different levels of put in and i it's it's confusing what what those how those percentages stack up to what we have now and sort of how we how we manage how we've managed to treat cash up to this point and how we might evolve to manage free cash differently so i'm i hear you're saying that he needs to make progress but in my mind the modeled which i thought was what was going to happen coming out of the summer meaning that there was going to be that it was going to be modeled with the reserve funds and it would show different levels and then that would sort of  representation of how it how the reserve fund would work as it is now i think it's too confusing it wouldn't be able to be in and for us anyway and i think we're we've got stuck was the committee everyone has their own idea of how they thought work in other towns so it's really what does the town of belmont right you want to do i don't have the idea of how it should work i didn't think that as these are laid out that it's even clear sort of like what the base starting point is  so i'm not advocating a certain position it's just that i couldn't like i couldn't explain to somebody else like how to document this is just the kind of opening effort to try to get this document up or troll or i don't work clear picture in my mind right now how to approach search and see so for a good example is there's a special ed stabilization right but there's nothing in it and there's really no policy around how does the town want to put money and i'm not going to i mean there's really no why is it there type of thing in the policies of there to address those questions you know  that's kind of where we're kind of stuck i think it's very hard to wordsmith a document like this with seventeen people really it seems to me it would be i agree with jack and whoever else i don't know how to go through it like that but i think it would be much more valuable if if people want to wordsmith that if they send changes and then we get a red line version or something like that because i don't think we can take in you know changes to each paragraph as we go i don't think that's good we're you know couple ways when i think like for them my understanding is that floyd has a reserve policy and he calculates it we've seen the calculations for and so that would be helpful again to if it says it's a guideline because we have been discussion whether it's a policy or guideline before so this seems like it's change because it's a policy it's been a guideline and and there are other things in here as you get through the stabilization funds and the along so there is this threshold question of whether is this a useful exercise we should try to complete or not i mean i think i totally agree with having a management policy i think that's an excellent idea because a lot of times things get approved when given the free cash guideline and then it just kind of disappears into i mean there's not a document except maybe in the minutes of the you know i think i don't know maybe document some of it seems like there's more and more document in every last one people's think you know kind of carrying on with that so i totally agree with this i just i think that it's it's going to take a long if maybe burdensome for all of us to be discussing every wind of this here and without any knowledge of it i mean i would be interested in what ford's opinion is on the reserve policy i be interested in if you're really going to dig into it understanding again what for a while i think the real questions to the town are and one of the strongest policies that the content is coming at us but this doesn't count want to use one time revenue to fund it operating budget does the town want to use continually continually free cash to fund its operating but what does the town want to do with their stabilization fund do you want to build them up to a point where they only are used in case of murder i mean those are the fundamental questions looking at the budget going forward have to be decided by the town what's the culture of the town in the cards to one time money because what's happening is as the as all right money gets depleted in the coming fiscal years there's going to and that's a that's a big question that we keep it nothing against i know there is a lot of differences in those discussions about how to use it so i would suggest that we have a presentation on that you know on one of the key questions are and then maybe have a presentation of the i guess i'm stuck on the idea that we as a work community will be discussing this and i guess i'm just wondering if there's something more like a financial taskforce that's doing this where there's members from the foreign community but there's also their capital budget and such so that you know so that we're not all doing this and the treasurer and i just i don't i i don't understand the value together to really get it done but right now  there's no clear path forward to get a resolution to these things that's right whoever's corner this thing but belongs and i think that we still have an obligation to weigh in on on the key questions and and i really like an suggestion that we take those key questions and we try to get the right people into the room and let's sort of march through those and and give our input and then however this document moves forward from from that point we we will at least know that our our our our comments and thoughts of have been addressed chris go back to my point about this being linked up to that to the our little subgroup that's doing the modeling he said a lot of these things are talking about in the abstract but i think that things related to the reserves and free cash need to be modeled in order for people that has to have an understanding of what they are and what the level should be  so i don't think this can really be discussed in the absence of some linkage to become a model for forecasting model  has been but when i mean to to satisfy the terms of the grants the concept is going to give us their best practices which is the policies but their policies i mean that doesn't mean they're actually in stone so what i've already told the counselor is because they've been involved in a lot of discussions how much this free cash actually kicking towards the operating budget or how much does this other research you how much of on a one time basis are these contributing because then you can at least factor about how important that particular section but i think the free prices but for some years at least it appeared as though free cash was being replenished in a way that was not always fully understood but it was replenished which created budget i mean in past years and not not so much in recent years it's gotten tighter but in past years there was a sense that we were you know sort of overestimating the red star to underestimate the revenue and overestimating the expenses so that we would in fact have a cushion at the end of the year that was then operating money that sort of folded over into the next year and if that two dollars or three million dollars just folded over and it was actually part of the operating budget then it made sense to do it but as the budget has gotten to change so that we budget more tightly then we don't have that cushion and there that operating plan part isn't there anymore and that's a factor partly on because we don't have enough well i thank you for that with the fact that you stabilization once they figure out what they want policy is to make sure that they work with the modeling group to see because i saw some things in the commons things that i was concerned about because i don't think the town has the capability to go forward in the similar and a those those will create huge gaps and one that he found between what the town is spending and what they what they're generating so i think we need to understand that that before the policies get adopted to make sure that they make sense for a town now or maybe are we going to work towards a goal is it a goal or is it a policy that kind of thing because i was concerned when i saw the model i think was this summer about some of the things that it assumed we should get to and we're pretty far from that at this point plus we've got everything else coming down the road although you know the increase in students and the all of the structural deficit that we have anyway even with the free cash in there so that that's that's one thing that i think we do need to look at before we put policies in place and i think the the section of this document on free key takeaways is that we were going to review the assumptions because we had the same conversation while the assumptions that were put in we didn't think were realistic or feasible for those reasons and so one of the key ones is to use the school finance to get the just a complete unknown whether or not all those percentages are additives or whether these two policies really fit into this war and your percentage and some way i mean that even clearly need there for the model but some way to questions to the th but would it be helpful to read through it and spilt your questions and give them to you before him should forward to them st because it i think if one million people are asking questions more say on this point water which is going to allow people to have real time on their phone to be able to see your water usage and that will enable us to to you set limits and do conservation measures plus it would allow you in the town to know it's continuously if there a this is just going to happen again to lead up to the policy of the trees looked at other towns came to us we tweaked it made some changes and we came up with a policy that we adopted we didn't have the cycling are not taking ownership of the schools or the librar of those effects of asset is controlled by and managed by run by a particular board and that board can make their decision they don't have to have the same name policy as we do but it's a model if they choose to use it that's fine just or which is the one that we've is very very difficult to do you know all the details on that so we did the other night is we approved a contract to hire a consultant to run them down for us because we felt like we actually can't something that could work or could not work whether they would pay to cap this site or not if they paid to cap the site and we have three million dollars the stabilization fund account the site that could get released that would be good to know so there are things like that solar could interact with others i mean the wetlands a lot of restricted areas on the site that we can't go on there's also piece of the site that is not restricted from the state for municipal years and the question is whether that's preserved whether we want to preserve that as some sort of commercial development going forward it does not have any frontage on concord avenue so legally that becomes difficult you have to create frontage winding through somewhere so if a little tricky but there is a back part that we already own that's  much they read it how much use they get out of that idea as for what they think it might be improved so we're going to be sending that out after thanksgiving so thank you and learning what we can that this really critical when we need them you know we're also we've picked ten couple towns that have representative town meetings and our representative town meetings about the size of markets there are some towns that have very small representatives have meetings so to just survey what they do in their reporting to their town meeting members about finance about the budget to see if there's any dust practices or things we can learn from those of the towns well maybe we should say that we as a thought that our goal are to be to make some sort of recommendation to the whole work committee by the end of january is that reasonable yes i think that the the writing of the report really doesn't start until the beginning of april actually but i think to finally going to be a significant change to the of very good anything else