please be seated so we can resume  so i'd call the meeting back to order and some undoubtedly strongly held so i would just urge town meeting members to follow the example that we sat back in this summary or go when we debated belmont cent obviously that was a very divisive emotional issue but we handled it with civility and good and good fellowship so and respect for each other so i would just urge no matter how passionate our feelings that we adopt that attitude on article one i've spent a fair amount of time in the last several days but putting yesterday in today talking to various presenters and so forth so that we could organize this in a expert and expeditious way but also a fair way so what will happen is after the reading of the motion by mr  polow and then the votes and jack white's who has been our representative to minute man will make a twenty minute presentation and then i will recognize mr polow will briefly describe the rationale for the ords vote and then i will open it up for discussion you've received  material from minuteman itself and others about arguing for the merits of the project ed because ellen who's head of the school and  are here tonight not to debate the issue because this is a bellman town meeting debate but to be here in case there are specific factual questions that they can answer so i want to underscore that i would and all questions obviously should come through me and i will recognize who might answer them and if they're appropriate but i just want to be clear at the outset that this is a belmont town meeting debate but if there are factual questions that would call on them to respond they are here and we appreciate that so with that i will  polow to read the motion the one hundred forty four million one hundred twenty two thousand four hundred seventy eight all or barring authorized by the minuteman regional vocational school district for the purpose of paying costs of designing constructing and the originally equipping a new district school to be located at seven fifty eight merit road lexington mass in for the payment of all other costs incidental and laid it there to print out of the project which school facilities shall have an anticipated useful life an educational facility for the instruction of school children children of at least fifty years school and for which the district may be eligible for school construction grant from the massachusetts school building authority paratha calamity a set amount to be expanded expend excuse me at the direction of the school building committee the shall be the sole responsibility of the district and its member municipalities provided further than any grant that the district may receive from the m s p a shall not exceed the lesser of forty four and three quarters percent of eligible approved project is determined by the m s p a or the total maximum grant amount of term by the image to be a and that the amount of borrowing authorized pursuant to this vote shall be reduced by any current amount set forth in the project funding agreement that may be executed between the district levinson the warrant committee recommends unfavorable action via a vote of eight to six and as i mentioned before when we took the vote this past week i was unable to be presents had i been there i would have been the night votes voting unfavorably given the split nature of the vote i will indicate that the work committee will share further information about our thinking roy epstein will speak to the points of of the yes votes babak loughlin will speak to the point of the no votes and i will also share my perspective thank you that the budget capital budget committee recommended unfavorable action by a vote of six to one thank you for the votes and now i would turn and i should say jack thank you for your service town meeting member of precinct one as mike mentioned i've given been given about twenty minutes i'm going to cover a lot of terrain i'm going to cover it quickly for those of you have not had a chance to see the presentation i am not going to spend time on every slide and on every the comment i have also been asked to the extent of what i've tried to do in this presentation is give you as an objective neutral information  presentation as possible so that you can make your own decision about the project what i've been asked to do within that twenty minutes is to the extent that i want to offer my personal thoughts to do so i will do that at the end  here i'm going to cover i want to set the table items one through four or really a little bit of history or a little bit of context five gets into the financial projections and assumptions for which for most people is what is going to drive the decision and then some conclusions which are really pluses and minuses about reasons to vote when we were here in february we talked about the amended regional agreement as part of that ended regional agreement seven towns asked for the opportunity to leave the district if they wanted to six of them exercise that option so we are now a district of ten communities the map here shows with the kind of geographic dispersion of those communities we have a little bit of a cluster here of arlington belmont and lexington we have what i will call the root two communities of concord act in stone bolton in lancaster and then down south we have a little cluster of needham and over it in all honesty is a bit of a geographic oddity i don't think anybody would put that district together the building project in order to consider voting for the building project you have to be convinced that there's a need so what's the need first it's just the age of the facility built in seventy four much of the  although there have been replacements along the way much of the infrastructure is just aged examples are the roof there have been upgrades see heating and electric but the distribution systems are u changed and at past their useful life there's also cracking and kind of structural issues if you look there's a just picture of the roof where it's good patched this may make it more obvious if you look at all those white squares those are patches if you look at the left and right photo in the slide that is jerry rigged v a c to overcome ventilation problems i think the picture on your left addition to just the aged facility there's other reasons why a building project is warranted number one there are three of those number one in two thousand and twelve minute man  received notification from the new england association of schools and colleges which is an accreditation group that minute man's accreditation as a high school which is important for college admissions to many students and many colleges was on a limited amount of capital improvement project that's outside of the m s b a school building project can trigger an immediate requirement that all of the school be brought up to current life safety and handicapped accessibility codes in the case of the life safety if you spend thirty three percent of the value of the building not the land in the building the value of the building in a five year period or in the case of handicapped accessibility if you spend thirty percent over a three year period you will need to immediately bring the building full compliance with the current code what does that mean in terms of dollar amount right now the assessed value in lexington for the school building is twenty five million so if you spend more than eight million dollars in capital over a five year period or more than seven and a half over a three year period as it relates to handicapped accessibility you'll need to trigger an immediate requirement to bring that into compliance  addition the although this is interesting the decision to come forward with a building project it does give minute man the opportunity to enhance the learning environment there are a couple of it's the one i think is probably most noticeable or noteworthy is the trades area right now the vocational school the programs mostly the skilled trades are currently in an r open petition roofs or walls that separate so you have one large open room where all of the programs are hearing everything that goes on in the other programs it is not a conducive environment to learning it was popular i guess in the seventy s it has since been derided so aging infrastructure the potential compliance billy to enhance what has been done to date we just talked about or heard about the feasibility study process here minuteman has been in the feasibility study since two thousand and ten i won't go through during that period roman or the school sizing has bounced around they started looking at a school m s p a said look at a school of eight hundred and must be a then later come back and said look at a school of four hundred thirty five minute man actually started down that path  i know that our feasibility study funding was a million seven fifty what we authorized as a district including our town back in two thousand and ten it was seven hundred fifty thousand so it s b a was originally asking minuteman to do is d feasibility studies for seven fifty was it working out school committee decided in may of two thousand and fourteen to focus on a school of six twenty eight the project design team with that school of six twenty eight looked at three options there noted bottom of the slide renovation option an option that would do some renovation and in addition and a new building not surprisingly to renovate a school an older facility n the strength of this as they will be a has put in writing that they will not support they're not prepared to support a school building project of less than six hundred  students i'm not going to spend much time this is the vocational program mix programs are going to be broadly divided into two clusters if you will this is largely the existing program mix at the school with the exception of two new programs advanced manufacturing and multimedia engineering there's some combinations imbedded in there and one or two poorly attended programs are being eliminated but the program mixes a large of the same in addition to looking at the program mix it live the feasibility study a subcommittee of the building committee did look at what would it cost to renovate not renovate in terms of got rehab as in the option considered with the m s b but if if minimum was to go it alone what would the potential cost be to the towns to just upgrade the existing systems and the like they came up with an estimate of one hundred million dollars where that estimate came from is it was rooted in minute bans third party construction estimating company or consultant grown by inflation but i will confess or acknowledge that the lion's share of that hundred million is the triggering of the life safety and it kept accessibility and also need to bring the building of compliance with current seismic codes i think there's a question about whether or not that would all be required so what were you could do whether you have to do all of that work so what do you get for a year hundred if we go forward with the project there's a quick bird's eye view of the existing here's a bigger site plan many of you probably have not been to minuteman so just to orient you there is nasa have and one twenty eight runs along here there's the existing school parking and athletic fields the new school planned for the new school and there's the outline of the existing school is to move it and build it over here just off of where those athletic fields are and that parking is where that kind of football field was this line here is the town border between lexington and lincoln the new school the current school is in lexington the mailing address will remain in lexington which is why the amendment says like in and the new school will be built on that that parcel this is a quick bird's eye view of what the new school is i will point out and back point out that the current  plan is each of these wings on either side will have those two clusters of vocational programs and then shared facilities like auditorium library cafeteria administrative offices will all be located in the middle  the quick view of the entrance i'm going to fly through these next pages the pictures here are pictures of school projects that the current architect council blues has done mostly in massachusetts i think one or two may be in connecticut but this is what the new facility could look like one of the important things is there will be increased the glass right now the third floor of minuteman has classrooms have no window  more modern shops a lot of minuteman programs have the syllabus or services that they provide to the public as a way of educating kids this is a rendering of what the cosmetology program would look like space kind of an atrium again cafeteria going to skip that completely and so turning to financial projections in belmont at least one cannot think about minute man without thinking about enrollment and sizing so let's start with that this is a chart that minuteman helped put together it is compares member town minuteman to pull the six towns who are leaving the district out of that member town in rome and and put them in the nonmember enrollment so that we can look at what historically would roman is relative to where we're going forward if you look at member town in rome and ups me a little hard to see the line here the  line here is three hundred students blue again is member town minuteman over the last twenty years has ticked up very briefly over four hundred but by and large member towns for a twenty year period have sent students somewhere in the order of magnitude of low to mid three hundreds if these were you have to add these two together to see what total enrollment is total enrollment recently has been hovering in the seven hundred range it has was a little bit higher going back twenty years belmont's in rome  right now we're at twenty six high school students if you look at this chart we've been as high as forty five as low as twenty two and on average we've been in the low to mid thirty's that's an important number to keep in mind in a second so what's minute man assuming in the financial projections that they are put out on the project first they are assuming that beginning with the october fourteenth enrollment not last year's fifteen in rome and but october fourteenth in rome it will grow eight percent for all ten member towns will grow eight percent per year for four consecutive years so that by october well will get to it and that any seat that's not occupied by a member town student will be occupied by a nonmember student so where were we and in october two thousand and fifteen in district in royal mint was three twenty six not only did minuteman not achieve the eight percent in roll meant that was originally forecast and it actually declined slightly nevertheless these projections still use the same sixteen seventeen and eighteen numbers that were predicated on an eight percent enrollment growth so that the in district in rome and here between three twenty six and four fifty eight is projected in a three year period to grow about forty percent and to exceed dramatically what the past twenty years of experience where minuteman currently is and in belmont case in roman is projected to grow to thirty nine percent or thirty nine students which again is a substantial percentage increase not out of line with where we have been in that last twenty year period building projects are going to cost one hundred forty five million dollars the state reimbursement as was shown in the motion is forty four point seven five percent of eligible costs but some costs are ineligible and some costs exceed the end be a state mandated cap or admin of the s b a mandated cap for those expenses so the net reimbursement is about thirty percent or forty four million dollars oliva towns to pay one hundred member towns to pay one hundred million dollars some people have question whether or not the costs are in line these are the only or three buildings that i'm aware of vocational schools in massachusetts that were approved by m s p a project you can see the per square foot cost of minuteman is in fact in line with what the other is with a total projected debt service of five point three million dollars if you remember the regional agreement discussion the state department of education has allowed  e who will pay this eighty five hundred dollars per student capital facility charge if that's the case then the five point three million dollars of total debt service the burden for member towns is reduced by a million four so it's about three point nine what does that mean for belmont under these specific assumptions about how our enrollment grows and under these specific assumptions about  under the new regional agreement in the capital allocation formula minuteman is projecting that our annual debt service cost is three hundred thirty four thousand dollars it's important to note that that is not a fixed number our cost of debt service will go up if our share of enroll meant as a member as amongst the member towns goes down our share of debt service costs will go down we've talked before back in the original agreement i won't review the reasons unless people ask a question later but there are risks to minute man being able to collect that eighty five hundred dollars from the hundred seventy nonmember students what i have done is as calculated what the exposure to  belmont would be under the same in roman assumptions if that those facilities were eliminated it goes from three thirty four to four fifty eight quickly to run through conclusions reasons to support the project a newer facility secures the m s b a funding to match the new school enrollment even at six twenty eight is dramatically lower than the thousand or so that the existing school is and there's the issue of the accreditation risk the other potential reasons and i'll get into it's it is not clear that if the building is rejected it's a better outcome for belmont will there are reasons that you will hear later as to why people would be opposed to this project they basically revolve around i won't try to  those arguments but some combination of the size of the school relative to the demand by the member towns make this project just simply too large so so my it were my thoughts this is that if we pushed for a smaller building and i do believe this building is oversized we could have ended up down the road to winning that battle getting a smaller building but because of inflation because of changes in interest rates because of how a reimbursement worked we might end up getting a smaller building at a higher cost and that did not seem like a good outcome having fifty member town students walk out the door with those six departing talents changes that calculus song and i stand before you as not only us minimum school committee wrap but i'm also a town meeting voter and so what i have to do is vote for what i think is in the best interest not only of the folks in my precinct but also the folks in the town it's not to just advocate for minutemen where do i come out i am frustrated that i think th school is too large i don't think it's reasonable that we will fill that with in district students that's sad when i say to myself if we vote the project down will we be in a better position five or ten years from now that's where i get tripped up i just can't get over that hurdle  i think the paths and outcomes if we vote down the school and remain in the district are not possibly could lead to better outcomes but in my view are not likely to lead to better outcomes we could leave the district and that's something that has not been discussed and it's off topic for tonight but i think that's a possibility maybe we're in a better financial position if we do that but i don't think that option has been analyzed enough so in an odd way in a paradoxical way perhaps i don't have the vision that others have perhaps i don't have the willingness to take the risk and jump off the cliff with the unknown of what we do if we vote this project down but paradoxically i think the safer and the more conservative path and the better path for our town even though the building is oversized and it's a higher cost than we otherwise could pay should pay i think that's a better path for our community and so i'm going to be voting yes thank you m that were presented jack on the slides so i think they're there understate it the average single family home today in belmont is around one hundred twenty thousand that's wonderful right it's thrift for all of us i mean people want to move to town so the impacts from kicking in their fair share which is frankly is a risk here at the was a four hundred fifty thousand jack the amount would be sixty dollars i do want to clarify those two numbers ladies and gentleman we can't afford to pay out of operating budget three hundred thirty four thousand to four hundred fifty we just can't in the out years in one thousand nine hundred twenty one twenty two we could afford it and if we vote yes we clearly have to afford it so we certainly have to go off or get exclusion that would be the plan of the board of selectmen it's probably going to be in twenty eight hundred when it was in to support it would go up for the new high school let me just say this is a close call so however you come down on it and i work really closely with jack been sort of this ad hoc commitment working group and jackson wonderful work and he and i disagree on this i am against this building not not because it doesn't need to be renovated it absolutely does it's the same age as this high school without question it needs renovation but i believe it's the wrong building at the wrong time in the in the reason for that is when we went through the revised regional agreement i support that you did as well and i think that's good for this district the six towns at the side to leave they should leave they didn't want to remain they will try to come back in and clearly they're likely will be back in as well so the ten times that remain will remain to try to solve this problem dummett may be the only town that votes no slating number other communities like arlington the cast of bolton and stowe i believe are going to their town meeting at asking for a vote recommendation for their boards of selectmen recommending the u s fell predicated upon a successful debt exclusion i don't think that's the way to go i think when we decide whether this is the right building for the district today rather than throw to the voters decide for us i just think the building is too big and frankly is and i understand the risk of not voting for five years from now maybe more expensive for a small school i look at it from this point of view in a simple way and perhaps no it's not simple it's complex the ten remaining towns currently have we'll have around three hundred thirty one to three hundred thirty five students in the district as of today perhaps that will grow over time so if we were convening new district today with those with the other nine remaining towns and i think we should remain in the district actually i support that would we decide that we should build the school twice the side of our need wouldn't decide that we would say here we have three hundred thirty one students today let's build a six hundred twenty eight risk at the nonmember towns with the side to go elsewhere although i still support that provision it's an important provision because for years we've been subsidizing these nonmember towns from a cap a point of view and by the way they do pay a low operating not not it not significant  amount so i just can't get a yes i've been trying to get the years i've talked to other members of boards of selectmen who clearly are in favor of this building i just can't get to yes for one hundred forty four million dollars building for six hundred twenty eight students are high school won't even cost that much for twelve hundred students and for the cost of it student with fifty thousand dollars per student prospect of lee option one clearly is the more conservative route it's guarantee we know what will take place and we don't have to live with the risk of as jack outlined i'm going to live with option two and that is to vote down the debt exclusion and try to convene with the other members of boards if they want to meet with me and decide you know how to move forward because i think it allows us options all over the place now it's been said that we've been spending seven years in yes but it's the only option that we've ever looked at we haven't looked at other options so government sort of been force fed as well the other member towns on to this building we didn't really look at other options and i think perhaps that could be does it mean that we still would we wouldn't go out and find a new but do a new building perhaps it could be would we renovate perhaps we could could we saw some land some buildings and perhaps we could do that as well wonder whether some  nonmember towns like watertown and others will decide to join the deer to because now the regional agreement provides an easier exit for them that was the whole intent about the revised regional agreement and improved governance that was flawed that allowed member nonmember towns to grandfather in over a period of joining the district and go back to the drawing board and i know ladies and gentlemen that's difficult to do and i know some of the other members of boards of said we've been at this for so long but that doesn't actually mean that we should take a vote on something that i think is in it is wrong i think it's just too expensive and i think it's something that we can't afford and i'm committed to continuing to stay in the district in to educate our kids in the way that we've the quality education that minimum clearly provides and i certainly understand the need from a cap a point of view that we need to do some things there but i'm willing to sign up for the next thirty years for ten million dollars of that hundred million dollars because it will be about nine or ten percent pending on a woman over time in terms of the overall district's students and for debt service anywhere from three hundred fifty thousand to four hundred fifty i'm not fortunately today i just can't get the yes i understand it's a close call thank you thank you thank you not open up the discussion i recognize urge you to vote no on is that for five years we have been working group that alluded to and trying to find a palatable solution to belmont and we have been told is there way or it's the highway and we here and i with a misconceived project we have to vote it up or down and we should vote it down we're now down as they've indicated tend three hundred thirty one students from those ten towns and they want to build a six hundred twenty eight school students school and it's a cadillac school it's already the most expensive school in the commonwealth in the commonwealth of occasional schools some numbers issues right now if you divide this year's assessment by at twenty six students it cost thirty thousand six hundred two dollars a student that's a little bit unfair because under the regional agreement we have a rolling average so the which  few other students because we had higher going backwards but it's up to the high twenty's of what we're paying now now if the so called surcharge for the nonmember towns which hopefully we would get but i'll get to that in a minute if that goes away at another fifty five hundred thirty nine dollars so your tuition be up to over thirty six thousand dollars per student and if they build it and they don't come the nonmember towns that's how you  up to what they said was fifty thousand dollars it's forty nine thousand one hundred fifty seven dollars as well i get and that's based upon their assumption that the membership is going to grow at eight percent a year you just heard jack you just looked at the statistics it's not grown so and it's not happening but they put together figures so that they will get your yes vote now they say build it and they will come then tell you that one of the reasons that the school was successful in the past in attracting students today had a so called ninth grade exploratory program that program time doesn't mean that it's been a masculinity and now students have to stay in their own district for the most part they can't try out the minuteman and so by the end of the ninth grade they found the love of their life on the basketball team and they don't go at the warren committee meeting the superintendent admitted it's having a very negative effect on the in roman how many towns are going to willingly pay a surcharge of almost eighty five hundred dollars over the going to find other places other schools they can send them out or do it in house it's already roman there is a legal challenge to the eighty five hundred dollars surcharge as a matter of fact on t v probably not at that  place to tell and they get a good case but just think about it a bit they get an idea meant that they don't own a piece of the rock and they're paying for the m and ization and then what we've always worried about is the big day and in the constitution if you are not a member town you are go of the member towns now what if you vote no when you've heard it and i think they're shaking around one hundred million dollar figure which is very nice coincidence that they can say see it's the same either way get a shiny new school or get a repaired school i don't believe the nine and a million dollars they have not verified and as we argued in the regional agreement you now have people with a weighted voting with skin in the game and that school can be renovated for a lot less than one hundred million dollars they have invested that at all but even if you do spend one hundred million dollars and i think it would be less you're going to get a very good school and bear in mind the new school is only ten percent less six hundred twenty eight students than the twelve honest students that it was built for they're not going to be a smaller more efficient building it's almost as large it's a cadillac but as i say the worst thing that happens for us if you vote no is one hundred million dollars what is the best thing that can happen for if you vote yes yes absolutely guaranteed you got down to a million dollars to pay after the after the reimbursement and it's probably more if you look at they don't have any sporting good any any athletic fields built in the only way they're going to get built as if it comes in under budget so there's going to be another six million dollars for those fees if you vote yes for this project it's the last meaningful vote you will have in your lifetime the next my lifetime for sure thirty thirty to fifty years before you do any except grumble every year when we get told what our assessment is if you vote yes or no no there's lots of options and we'll be back even in this town meeting and is indicated  by by mark when we vote no some mature heads are going to get together and say what are we going to do what do you think what the town is counting on sending sixty six students as they do don't you think they're going to be at the table is there a good possibility we'll be here voting to amend agreement everett more often or are we going to be talking about leaving the district i hope not but it's something that would if that becomes the right answer and we everyone agrees it's jaipur maybe that's what will do you've heard me before time doesn't sell the building it's sixty five acres it's the wrong building in the wrong place at the wrong collect kirtland why are we spending one hundred fifty million dollars and perpetuating that public mistake it's a mistake yeah they put a lot of work in it and we're at the goal and it doesn't mean it should be a law because they've had a lot of time and effort and we've got to do it and do it right maybe the only town of those kids we have a unique situation some town stand five students it's not a big deal some towns have commercial based on long one twenty eight and they have all kinds of new growth they can afford it we can't afford it we'll like i like them who's agonizing over this but i got a huge problem they have one hundred thirty students we have twenty six students with the money we say if we don't it be burdened with this hundred million dollars that we can solve our own problem and no one is going to abandon those twenty six students they're going to get a good education we've always taken care of our constituencies but this is not the way to do it that's terribly off from work five minutes i'm about done mr moderator let me just say i hope you all saw the movie report that came out last month i applaud floyd again aaa rating if you read it it says this three reasons why our aaa rating is in is in danger and the second reading is substantial growth in debt burden well i want to borrow money so that we can build a high school in belmont that's at least a buick style and i want to have a town yacht and i want to have a police station where there's a women's lavatory that's decent we've got to do something with a lot of i say to you we do not need this hundred forty four million nine hundred dollars on our balance sheet we got twenty six kids no one's a banning them as they say but we can deal with them a lot cheaper and a lot better with limited resources we got to look at everything balanced we got twelve hundred kids in this high school we've got to make sure that everything is properly balanced we don't afford is like a vote no thank you very much moderator as tax states approach four times a year i've never really heard anybody being outrageously eager to pay them but after hearing mclachlan speak to the woman's club about the wonderful things that are taking place so excuse me could you identify yourself for the record i'm here you tell me member precinct pardon me thank you when chief mclaughlin spoke about the wonderful things that take place between the townspeople and his group of employees i didn't mind paying my taxes so much when i had to call an ambulance at six fifteen in the morning one saturday and almost immediately the ambulance was there and the people from the fire department i can't tell you what the care they were taking there and there's a woman employee there now too who was wonderful and so i wonder a would it be so much to do this that we're asked to do tonight i was at the dedication with my family of this high school in one thousand nine hundred seventy one with a seven year old a four year old and a one year old and his dad's back to see everything and when they graduated from high school that child decided that rather than going to college as his brother and sister did he wanted to be a carpenter and we had taken our children when they were eighth graders to see minutemen and an option so he went out there and did take a post graduate course and became an accredited license carpenter who's always been employed that's one of the things that happens by going to minuteman chance to be employed it's a very high percentage but i had been out to minute man since our son graduated from there and i went out today and spent an hour and a half they are talked to quite a few people including students i just happened to sit down next to two who were from belmont who were very enthusiastic about their life there the school itself i wasn't paying as much attention to as what's going on in there i know what the courses are and there are several more that are one in particularly theater extension of theater arts that wasn't mentioned as a program at the moment and that is to do video and enhanced minutes that people can use in t v were in things that we all might tune into in various ways electronically so my my vote is going to go for a yes tonight maybe it doesn't make sense fiscally but when we're asking our taxpayers to help the students who are coming to this new school when it's built it seems to me that we may have in the with the growth of students that are coming in one hundred percent a year now to one hundred belmont a year and this may very continue in the future maybe even more so that quite a few of the students may wish to do other than just a college prep course and i'd like that school to be there for them i'd like it to be as attractive at the high school that they would not come to if they stay in belmont so i urge you to think about these children these students and yes the night son from precinct one and my sense is in terms of listening tonight and also past discussions and meetings we've had at the time meeting about minuteman is that for many people in the town including many town meeting members it's a foreign subject we are used to talking about local matters and local appropriations and so forth and we very rarely get into the discussion about regional situation that we're a member of and i'm going to talk about two subjects why is this new project and the larger school and the school needed and i'm certainly i guess motor on this and secondly how can the town of belmont make this a successful project i spoke with bob eyes in draft who's a psychiatrist by profession but served on the board of health for many years and he said that a large number of students at belmont high school were not successful and he felt that a vocational high school with a hands on instruction would be the answer and i think that when you think about it and other times it taken much more advantage of it it's because we don't have that information about minuteman that we have such low numbers but every delay that we have means that students that ought to be an occasional school i'm not going to  negotiations with the other towns boards of selectmen in terms of revising the reach an agreement and he mentioned that water would be a good member of this region well that's another negotiation there are other towns spent you know many years on this and put a lot of time into it and so knows the ins and outs and so forth and hopefully he'll continue in that role as a member of the minuteman school committee so we have some people that are actively involved but going forward if we are going to reach those large number of students we need the cooperation of the school department the guidance that teachers in general and belmont we also  need much more involvement by citizens of the town programs in the library p t o s getting involved and explaining to their parents what is involved with the minuteman so all of those things i feel i would then the power and context of the town of belmont either through elected officials through the townspeople themselves so we can make this project work we can add to the numbers we should be adding to the numbers we also ought to be thinking about co operation between belmont high school a great public high school and minuteman i'm sure there are things that could be done jointly between those two high schools that would be beneficial so my conclusion is that we don't want to put this off time is important we have for the reasons that jack has indicated why it is important to proceed with this and i think that with our active involvement our active participation citizens in the town organizations we can make this work and so i would urge you to vote yes for this project no is because the in roman numbers and if you build this facility i really think that our numbers will go up and i guess that's part of the debate is whether if you build it they will come if we look back to the wellington school i believe that the school committee was in favor of making the building larger than it was built to be and the m s p a had said no we're going to build it at a certain capacity and almost immediately the school is actually pasadena and i think the same thing would happen with this building which if you build it there are there is more of an incentive to come out to the school the pictures i saw why or why would you go to that school and in terms of the member towns also if we continue to debate and never really come to a resolution i think it's wonderful that we've come to the new agreement but i don't see other member towns wanting to join when some resolution cannot come to pass and if you agree to build the building it's more of an incentive for it and the threat of the surcharge  is going to cause communities to yes let's get together and really support this project so i will be voting yes thank you mr magoo robert  one tonight belmont is being asked to be a bank and fund a project typically when a businessman comes in to a business woman comes in to get a loan the bank hardnosed is going to assume that the business person is overestimating revenues and underestimating expenses and makes a decision along those lines after carefully examining how carefully those numbers were presented one feature that puts us as a bank in a little different perspective has not been described to us it was mentioned that warren discussion and night i don't know who the right person is but we are not stepping forward for a slice of that bond we are going to be jointly and severally liable on the entire bond and someone should try to describe to town meeting what exactly we're getting into if belmont could potentially be on the hook for the entire lo everybody's pointing at somebody else when you borrow money to more people borrow money if they both guarantee if one goes broke the other one has to pay the whole thing under the regional agreement under the original agreement we are contractually bound to each other if any town drops out doesn't pay share then the rest of the other towns get to pick it up so we jointly and severally liable that's probably not going to happen but from a balance sheet point of view the hundred forty four point nine million dollars is shown as a contingent liability that we have to explain to moody every year mr whyte thank you mr moore or joel or precinct four i sat here and listened and i didn't hear i was wrong previous to the school and and it is my understanding was had it i guess i need an explanation of the evolving one from the orchard street trade schools to minuteman and as why i'm standing it was a trade school for the trades not for college bound and it's for the people who are in need for the trades and i haven't heard that but talk of evolution i'd like to know i was off i was away when they built the school but i would like to hea what that school's or original intent was for the students and i know it's evolved into a technical high school and and and i'd like to hear that the original basis for building a school and setting up the agreement mr mcclellan do you want to answer that question you mr moderator had both quillan superintendent of been a man technical high school if i understand your question what was the purpose of the school when it was built and what is its purpose now under chapter seventy four law the purpose of career in vocational technical education hasn't changed it's still to prepare young people for post secondary success what has changed is the definition of post secondary success it includes going right to work it also includes going into the military and it also includes going into college in a field that's related to your study in high school statewide about sixty six percent of graduates from all chapter seventy four program sixty six think the original need for that school for belmont i'm not speaking of other towns i don't know them but the need was for a student who couldn't accomplish what he what was needed to get a high school diploma and to go on  to life itself not the schools not the college we have a great college program here i don't think we need to duplicity there i think that we're paying for students to go to school full machine commentary i think they've take a machine of one of the trades which is a media trade licensed and on to work and we're paying for the college people who go beyond that the people who go into high tech when i was on that school committee they wanted to change the name of that school take high school lot of it and make it a dust they want to take the high school out of it so made it a technical school rather than a high school and i was opposed to that then and i'm opposed to us paying for correct the gentleman that spoke when you get out of high school you can do anything you want with your life you can take it up or down and middle management great for taking people up but they will pay a high price for thank you yes sir and  robotham precinct to mr moderator would be really helpful to know what would be the financial and possibly legal implications if we vote yes and then withdraw from the district or if we vote no and then withdraw from the district and someone it's not often under the amended agreement anytown being a majority must within sixty days convene a town meeting to say no otherwise it's deemed allowed and you can withdraw so it's probably a pretty easy path out if we vote yes we have to go through that process if we vote liable on the debt i'm still not sure i understand so if if we approve this and decide to withdraw are we still liable for our committee therefore could vote in jack i don't remember is a two thirds of the school committee or a majority majority can go forward with a referendum vote district wide to all of the and not be liable thank you later joe much want to make my point clear i think we should remain in the district i mean i said this in february that i think we should remain it's all the problems that are there i don't want to run away from it perhaps would be faced with having to leave i don't think that's the right choice and i also frankly support the idea that we need to do something from a capital point of view i'm not suggesting that that building doesn't need renovation it clearly does but i don't think it's this type of renovation today when when we were meeting as members of boards i said to some of the colleagues there other member towns that i support this revised original agreement i want to reconstitute it i looked at us forming a new district reconstituted district and then joined together perhaps other towns in the side what we need to do from a cattle point of view now some folks with some towns would say boy you would start all over again we're faced with this today but frankly i think we're faced with the wrong option i think there are better options and i'm willing to work through that the part of the process in the end done for molly that he asked me if i would meet efforts to do that in fact it's failed that i said absolutely i'm for the education that takes place there i think the quality education frankly my point of view will continue without a new building and i think it does compromise a new building clearly allows for inherence programatic changes but i think the kids today are getting a quality education that will absolutely continue and they will absolutely have a need to replace the roof at some point in time but i think we should reconstitute the district and get together and decide what we do from a cap on a view i'm not saying no one capital i'm saying no to this capital and straps and i think you are  roy up stein vice chair of the warren committee the town meeting member from precinct six and one of the six people on the warrant committee who voted in favor of this project last wednesday this is a really hard question warren committee is wrestled with it for some time but i think in the end there are a couple of simple considerations that really make a yes vote the right answer and this might be the first time i've disagreed with my friend and colleague bob o'clock and other people on the warrant committee but but consider the following this is not a cadillac school and i thought jack's presentation showed clearly that the present building is the lab a date it served its purpose it needs major work and it doesn't make sense to repair a building that is so far rundown and built from a different era for different purposes really the construction cost is totally in line with what other schools are being built for this is not some kind of gold plated project i think as a practical it seems to me that there will be a district wide vote where the debt will be approved and dominant will be at that point will face the choice of leaving the district and there's no plan there's no contingency plan right now for what to do in that case we'll have sixty days in the very near future to decide to leave and to do what nobody knows i talk to shaw sheen which is the only other school i could get on the phone since last wednesday they're maxed out they have zero capacity they said that they've received inquiries from other towns i was the first call from belmont they have zero capacity to take any students they said possibly in five to seven years they could consider students given the waiting list they also said when i asked what the likely charge would be the tuitions there were two things one is if it was going to send students to shaw sheen they would expect it would be a negotiation where they would expect all mt to join the shaw cian agreement and lord knows how long that would take and what's involved and the expected to wish an would be on the order of twenty five thousand dollars it's not terribly different from what we're minutes in a bus in traffic in bad weather you're probably talking about an hour travel time each way it's not clear to me how feasible those schools would be i just don't know what the plan b is if the idea is to encourage weaver i've been hearing very mixed signals we should encourage other towns like watertown to join but then if that capital charges imposed it might deter watertown from joining why would watertown join if they knew they had to share the capital cost i think the if that doesn't make sense to me i think the the better course is to lobby very hard with all the resources at our disposal to ensure that a fair capital fee is charging let me and let me just give you a little bit of history that i dug into this week we've been hearing about in romans were down to twenty six students sound small and an eight thousand dollars cap of the charge which sounds big if you go to the belmont annual report from  you will see a description of the funding and enrollments at the new minuteman in one thousand nine hundred five element was sending forty students at that time and if you take and there was a capital charge separate from the operating tuition there was a capital charge specifically charged to belmont and if you take the cost to pursue didn't at that time and adjusted for inflation you get eight thousand dollars so there was a time when belmont actually stepped up to the plate recognizing the value in the importance of occasional education and was facing costs that are similar order of magnitude to what we're talking about today and when the potential assessment expressed in terms of the tax rate on the average house whether it's thirty three dollars or whether it's sixty dollars the way i would think about it this is somewhere between two and four large pizzas a year to ensure a very high quality vocational modern concept of occasional education for the foreseeable future  and we've already been informed that the m s b a is not going to support a school that smaller than six hundred students because it stands to reason that a school that's smaller than that is not at an efficient scale if you have an auto shop when there's only three hundred fifty students the shop is going to be used for an hour or two a day you need a school of a certain size or the whole concept to make sense and if a school is built well it makes me think of mr epstein we're nearing five minutes to be done a second the sudden without repeating other things that have been said think about the china re middle school people said rebuild rebuild don't do anything but finally a new school was built in the town is better off for it and just recently we replaced the belmont pool didn't try to repair an old antiquated facility built a new pool and suddenly memberships are tremendously up the facility has sold out and it was the better course so i think this bishop carolyn bishop precinct one my head is churning with all the details and i applaud jack for control understanding and presenting that so effectively what concerns me are all the sort of generalities of course options what options what options do we have now it seems to me they're very limited what can we do with the students that we can't send because we didn't send the new school and they don't want to go to a woman it's falling apart we couldn't begin to provide sixteen  kids like this we couldn't even provide five without incredible expenditure and in this building or whatever building a transportation costs if we send them off to show sheen or any other school we have to pick it up no matter how long it takes to get them there that's an additional expense we lose the forty million and go way back in line i just don't think greed having a building that looks as dreadful as the one they have at least our high school doesn't have cracks in the foundation and holes of the roof and great even are duct taped together i think this was far more well built building obviously but to try to rehab that just seems beyond the pale it's i would rather see something that is slightly too large we've never heard on the side of t large but there's always ways i mean nature abhors a vacuum there are ways to rent out spaces to support staff or consultants it seems to me the building will be very full and very busy but if it's large it will be still useful for other purposes which could bring in income actually i think it's unfair to the students that we claim to be meeting their needs somehow it's another one of the promises that they i don't see how we can meet the needs that minuteman currently supplies and meets and does a good job there only and i can see that perhaps students are saying i don't want to go to that horrible place you should see what it looks like maybe with the new building they will come and i don't think finally that we can encourage watertown to do anything they will do what they will do and they may pay they may not pay but they're probably sitting back going yeah you people take care of it we'll make up our own minds but don't count on them and i think that's probably everything we just have a responsibility to our students if we wait of course the price is going to go up it's only going to be more expensive the longer we wait especially if we're at the end of the line so thank you for your time think could you go back to the chart about belmont's and roman in the middle in the middle in the district meant district it's where it shows where it's twenty nine now what would be most interesting to me would be to have that chart twenty six now with the with a bar or an opposing line for the enrolment in the belmont district so over that time period since one thousand nine hundred five the enrollment in the belmont district if i'm not mistaken has ok so my point being that the enrollment it's looks like the enrollment in minuteman has gone down as are roman in the high school has gone up is that correct statement ok thank you and while you're getting that could you go back to the chart on the cost of the project per square foot compared to putnam an sorry ok so what's missing from this chart is the enrollment in those schools and i'm not familiar with these i did a quick google search and maybe my information is inaccurate so that's why it's a question it looked like from my google search that putman school and rolls twelve hundred students and it also looked like the essex student school might enroll twelve hundred as well as opposed to six hundred and it's a question i don't know if those searches are accurate i don't know i don't remember the numbers offhand they are all larger that and the minute man's proposed enroll minutes or twenty eight minutes proposed moment would be smaller by an order of magnitude so do you ok so in other words the cost for those students those programs that one twenty four million or one thirty four million were for twice as many students as our building would be at one forty four million that's correct ok oh is this are in rome and this is are so ok so it is going up well the enrollment in minuteman for belmont is going down ok i had just three reasons why i'm going to be voting no for this unfortunately the first one is that i think that the alternatives haven't been explored i'm not sure who made the that the alternatives around this building have looks like they've been exploited to death but the alternatives around what we have broadly for what to do to give kids quality choices for technical education which is really important have not been explored and the gentleman who's just speaking is that mr epstein he said that last week he called shaw sheen i mean we're community that prides ourselves in doing exhaustive analytical research on options probably to a fault and the idea that we're looking at alternatives other than this building by just doing sort of a few last minute phone calls in one week is doesn't really support the idea that all the options have been explored so i would really like to see all the alternatives explored to bring high quality technical lead to the kids beyond potentially beyond the minute me on it seems like we owe that to both ourselves and the kids the second reason i'll be voting no is cooperation i think fred paulson said he's in favor of cooperative activity in my mind the way that the district has worked up to this point from what i understand about it is almost the opposite of cooperation it's like a it's like a prisoner's dilemma with full information people can leave but they can avoid responsibility they can come back in there's not there's no connect connection between responsibility for for the district as soon as you don't want to have responsibility you can just leave but you can still have privileges it doesn't it doesn't really co operation it's a forced situation and with the new agreement that jack and others worked really hard to put into place i'm open to the idea that there could be some actual co operation in the district under the new regional agreement so it seems to me that we owe it to to ourselves if that new agreement a chance to work to have real cooperation rather than cooperation then involves people not taking responsibility and then the third reason that as i just don't think the balance of risk makes sense you're right that the levy whoever said that the levy on our taxes one could argue that some people might think it's not that much but to me it's really the risk in as opposed to what the actual levy is the risk is that it's going to go up and up and up and also that we're joined the several liable for one hundred forty four million dollars of debt is a huge responsibility we don't know what will happen with the other people in the district we could be responsible for a much higher amount so the risks in my mind far away what might be you know perceived as a small incremental cost so that's why unfortunately i'll be voting  hi i'm michael vincent share the work committee and tell me member from precinct one obviously there's is a tough issue i think that the question before us is not whether or not we want to provide quality education in a technical form the question is is this a good deal for the member towns is this a good deal for belmont and i think that the answer to that is clear that this is not a good deal for the ten member towns but they should not be building a six hundred twenty eight person school for the three hundred thirty one students that are in the member towns there are three reasons that i'll give you very quickly first of all we talked about enrollment in roman is clearly  significantly in belmont we looked at the last twenty years of enrollment at the minuteman realities if you go back to one nine hundred seventy seven the school had over twelve hundred students ninety seven percent of the students were from member towns today we have three hundred thirty one students from member towns which represents from the ten member towns which is fifty three percent of the school so it's a completely different picture the decline in roman has been significant over that period of time while we've had increasing involvement in belmont number two that the member towns significantly subsidized the nonmember towns it's simply not a fair deal if you're a water town with sixty six units in the skin this tool you're paying in the low twenty's twenty twenty two thousand dollars which say roughly per student to send your kids to this school we are today paying thirty thousand dollars per student to send our kids to school and that number is going to go up to forty to fifty thousand dollars per student to send our kids to this school and the watertown's are not going to be paying that amount if they are have to pay the maximum amount to eighty four hundred eighty five hundred that is being suggested that would put them up to around thirty thousand per student right but that's even  d s e as allows that charge take place or they agree to pay it rather than say i'm not going to pay it so there's a meaningful subsidization that's taking place that i think is fundamentally unfair and what that means is this district is not suited for the member towns and the school is not suited for the member towns the school should be appropriately sized either to fit the member towns or the member towns should fit the school right so if there are six hundred twenty eight persons  person school you need to have the member towns be able to fill a school like that you need to get the watertown's in you need to get the the wall fems and and they're not going to come in if we build the school already and they're not liable for the debt they're never going to come in if we build a school and they're not liable for the debt so that's the second point the subsidisation and the third thing i would just ask you to think about is this is a fifty to sixty thousand per student cost it's about eight to ten million dollars of debt that belmont will have to incur this is for twenty six students which we clearly want to serve but that's roughly six people little bit more than six people per graduating class can you imagine spending eight to ten million dollars to build  school to serve a graduating class of six people that's probably not a choice that would we would make relative to the other very expensive things we've got to spend our money on so i think that fundamentally this is not a good deal for the member towns and i think we need to rethink how that works the water towns are sending their their students to the school we have the opportunity to send our kids to that school and get that exact kind of rate which is what crystal i was saying before thank you very much might be voting this down and if that would happen then it would trigger or be very likely to trigger some type of thing where they go to a district wide vote is that right mr moderate or mr weis those towns votes no against the debt it is stopped in its tracks as of now seven communities have taken this up at their town meeting lexington's town meeting approved it hundred fifty eight two two zero or something like that concord approved it subject to a debt exclusion vote that has since been held that passed by the residents of conquered by a seventy five to twenty five margin there are or townes lancaster  dalton stoll and dover who have all passed it through their town meeting subject to a debt exclusion vote that will be held in the next week or two and arlington and needham remain to vote through town meeting arlington reportedly vote will be also conditioned on a debt exclusion vote if any of those communities don't lead to a yes vote then minuteman has the decision to make about what to do does minuteman say fine the towns have spoken were done or does minuteman decide to try to pursue it if they want to pursue it they need to get m s p a approval and convince m s p a that there is a path to approval for the debt and s b a may say you're done but if  there is a path that path is likely to exercise the option under state law to pass the debt via a general election of the citizens of the member towns that and ask about it because that means that if we perhaps are the only town that will sit down or bails votes yes this would trigger possibly and we just have a popular vote on it and we might get voted overridden possibly and i was warning if that's the case or you divide separately on that we just separate from the program i was warning if there's a thought process what happens if we do either because we're either going to prove it over and probably have to leave so i wonder what people's thoughts were on that thank you i can only speak for myself on that i don't think that question has been fully vetted and any decision will come back to this town meeting because any decision to go from a no vote on the debt exclusion or no vote on the debt issuance in a general election to a withdrawal from the district requires a two thirds vote of this body so will you back here discussing that as alternative  along the way in all of the years we've been discussing this why there aren't alternatives that where we've been presented with so i'd like to hear and answer to if possible and i'm wondering is there a way to tell whether enroll mint is down in part because of the safety issues at this building the way that they're able to deliver their programs like our own school system we built a school and instantly we were over capacity not sure that we've seen enough data that says that we don't have more students that are willing to go there and participate  of great frustration consternation aggravation irritation on my part as a member of the school committee i have been trying desperately for six years to have talent not only the school committee members but those who remember the feasibility study vote in two thousand and ten it required the town's themselves not just the school committee to get together to think about what the school sizing was and in fact we reacted to an eight hundred number that was promulgated by them s b a and the six twenty eight number i will confess my colleagues in the school committee in the a minute many ministration may see it differently my view is that number was introduced and presented to the school committee at one meeting in the following meeting the school committee took a vote on it there was never ever a discussion within our school committee about what would the impact of alternative sizes be what would a school of five hundred look like five fifty six hundred if we looked at those alternatives what programs were gets sacrificed the school committee just merely reacted to what was presented by the superintendent i believe the superintendent and the administration were pushing for the largest possible school they thought they could get approved and there was a fair amount of support on the school committee for the largest possible size school cell that's the first question and the second question i don't know that there's a factual or way to answer that i think it would be anecdotal my own personal anion is that the in the real minute minute man is not down or flat because of safety issues the condition of the building i'm sure people can come up with anecdotal stories you know to to differ from that but i think the enrollment in the district is fundamentally a reflection of the change in the economics and the demographics of the minuteman communities over the past forty years and by the way thank you so much for all the work you've done and because of all the work all the actions that we've had tonight and discussions that we've had the last couple of weeks just going back and forth talking about it is there's a lot more work to do and the only way to just stop the ball from rolling down the hill is to vote no and go back to the drawing board and i want to thank jack and i want to thank mark and everybody else that worked on thank you and ellen sugarman precinct eight my question through you mr moderator is i'm trying to understand why all of the planning for this this sizing etc was with the sixteen town membership and now we're down to ten so why does all of this apply still i mean if the question was are it seemingly that a lot of people are saying six twenty three was too big for sixteen member towns than it would certainly seem for ten why does all of this applies still to ten decided to stay six towns we drew so that agreement provided that opportunity for them to leave and i supported that actually because at the thinking from our point of view is that we need to understand who really  committed wants to stay and then we can get back to sort of planning for a new capital sillett that's why they decided to leave they know full well it's been said it at other meetings that i've attended when i've asked for what you're plan for your students what we're just going to send right back to minuteman and they get one of the means i said well the dumbest leaving them to i don't think we should leave but the fact of matter is all these other communities are deciding that they're just going to send their students back to this rep i think the answer is that what we did under the regional agreement is divorced from and does not impact the m s b yet we have a school project in front of the m s b ebay for six hundred  twenty eight that's what has been approved the district is now faced with the decision of whether or not it wants to go forward with that six twenty eight so the district can choose to not go forward with a six hundred twenty eight students school because six communities have withdrawn and that's reduced in rome and by fifty but from the m s p a point of view the project is the project and that's the decision that we're faced with as a follow suggesting no so what i would like to hear is then ok if we do that are we planning to withdraw and turn around and send our kids back and say hey the rest of you know you deal with it mr concern is the options we have options that one hundred five thousand dollars one hundred five million is about what forty million dollars less than the sc a authority in two thousand and five and two thousand and six there is a way of getting grant money on renovation the building the authority building  gets grants on repairs extraordinary repairs on on run of ations and new constructions i optioned it can be very good for both no take a look at the options and and it's possible that the thirteen million dollars you spend on the nobel might be only ten ten million a reconstruction excuse me thank you can contradictory answers to the question on the one hand if we participate in this agreement and take on a portion of a joint several liability then if everybody else drops out then we're fully liable for the whole thing on the other hand i heard that if we vote yes and then change our minds and drop out we'll still be liable for our share so i'm a little confused as to how everybody else can drop out there was to be a default if you ended up with a hof skill building and member towns said we're not going to prove anything and the whole district collapsed not only would we be stuck for our share of other pounds and pay would have to pay back  there's all kinds of risks i don't understand how that this trick could collapse and you know everybody you know the words if either all the other towns drop out and we're left holding the bag it will as far as join several i believe it's a yes ma'am suzanne robotham precinct two it's starting to feel like this whole concept of member towns is totally ludicrous we should all defeat this measure tonight drop  and send our kids at the reduced rate like watertown does is you know mark you you you sort of proposed you know i want to stay in the district belmont should stay in his district but we should let this new regional agreement kind of shake itself out see where in rome and goes and then we'll have a better idea better numbers to to to scope a new school that sounds like a great plan but the sense i'm getting is that this train is moving down the tracks that we actually don't we're not in a position to to set things up that way concords approve this lexington approve this arlington's approve this dover's approve this like this school is going to happen now well arlington is going to approve it as a you know but well so i guess the question i'm asking is if this if these other towns are going to approve this as it seems like they are and belmont is going to be the outlier who doesn't approve it and we don't have the ideal situation and being able to say ok back to the drawing boards let's do this again what are o vote absolutely stops the debt within the town meeting vehicle so the only option that's left to the administration is go to a referendum vote in the referendum vote yeah we may be forced faced with a different no and the other towns the majority passes it right so fifty one percent say yes that is a community we would have to consider convening a town meeting decide whether we want to remain in the district or just move forward with the debt it's for me not the best option because again maybe i may be overly optimistic paul in mind sky kind of thing i i think that we should stay and try to solve the problem with the reconstituted district and perhaps new membership and that may not it there's there is not why this is a close call it's not a completely clear path to that but i know voting is yes we're done that's what it is and will accept that voting no  we have an opportunity reconsider things and see how the district shapes out that's my that's my thinking on it i'm not saying it's a high percentage that it could occur i think there is a percentage that could occur ok that makes sense yet it does make sense thank you do you have a try county and so on what does in roman look like how is demand for those services in those districts and you know is what worse suffering here a failure of imagination which is to look at the last ten or twenty years and say well that's the way it's going to be going forward as opposed to hey with a new school we could have a seven hundred kids want to get into this with great programming and a great facility mr big thank you mr moderator redbook quillan superintendent of minutemen yes a lot of questions about enrollment in there and i can tell you that statewide while high school enrollment has dropped about three or four percent in rome and in occasional programs has increased about twelve percent blackstone valley has a long waiting list tri county does not have a waiting list but they're pretty close to capacity many many vocational schools have long waiting lists southeastern just this year had over  thousand applications for three hundred fifty spots are in rome at this year are admissions for next fall is up fifteen percent from our member district communities thank you yes or or tell me member precinct sex you know i think that no one is really disagreeing that vocational education is important and that fixing the building is important but i think we have to keep in mind that optics and timing are as important if not more so and we may have only one opportunity one realistic opportunity to go to the till voters to ask for money and my focus my laser focus is on the twelve hundred and not on the twenty six and so my question maybe to go along with that is what is the timing look like for going with what would project the timing to look like to go to belmont voters to ask for more money when we have trouble enough getting any kind of money clearly based on what the building community needs to do over the next year or so but i think in generalities and we've said this publicly likely twenty eighteen vote for the high school that exclusion go probably in the fall i think the spring is a little bit precinct eight i first i want to thank everybody for the hard work over the many years i've now been a town meeting member from how many years and i would say personally i'm tired of voting against the minuteman i was very pleased to vote for the agreement earlier this year and i to vote for the new school for me it's beyond the twenty six people that come from belmont or whatever that number is there are six hundred twenty eight slots at the school and no one has said that you cannot fill six hundred twenty eight slots and so what we're really doing is providing a quality education for six hundred twenty eight people if we build a school that's too small we're never going to get the watertown's in the other schools and so if we downsize the school then you actually preclude options to under the new agreement get member new member towns in being optimistic that will get the capital costs more fairly distributed and have a negotiation that mark wants i do think we need to have a more fair school district that is more responsive to the communities and that work needs to continue because the history hasn't been great but at this moment in time with this project in front of us forty five million dollars of state money at risk here and an ability to provide a quality education for six hundred twenty students at least of which a fair portion are own that need this type of education and with few other options i think now is the time for belmont to stand behind this school and to solidify our engagement with the rest of the community that are part of the school or we want to be part of the school to make it the district that we want rather than take the other course which may well lead us to be dropping out of the district so i urge that we vote in support of minuteman i'm ready to do it and will tonight thank you thank you yes ma'am good evening michel banker precinct to town meeting member this is very emotional all the way around this train got started about seven years ago and despite calls for more information for ideas for not only the sizing of the building but the sighting of the building the location of the building different from the lexington concord site there was no respons from the administration i'm dismayed over the years i've just been dismayed that whenever jack would come to us to report i was what i was really hearing was its very strong language a level of arrogance that came out of the minuteman administration regarding the willingness to respond to questions concerns issues and here we are this train started out seven six or seven years ago and just seemed to be gathering steam i feel very strongly that we need to have a state of the art minuteman school but i was floored to learn that two of the other new regional speak occasional schools were brought have a thousand students and essentially the cost per student was fifty percent lest the what is being projected for this particular building i don't i'm totally i'm but just be funnelled that we could all be taking on this kind of a debt twice the amount that these two other schools took on for their students i want this to have it wonderful  school but i'm really dismayed at the way this process has been handled top down and i have gone both ways yes i wanted to be no of this is ridiculous and then i said oh i don't want to spend yes send good money after bad i e repairs rather than building the new building but everything that i'm hearing here this evening and i know that our voting no for this particular project says into place some other downstream issues concerns problems to solve but i truly believe that the administration of middle man has not been responsive and truly forthcoming to work with the communities to be able to build a building that is not a cadillac but that works thank you for listening and i sadly i'm going to vote  member at large since our vote is not conditioned on a successful debt exclusion we have to find within our operating budget three hundred seventy five or upwards of five hundred thousand dollars per year yes and janssen precinct three i really would like to see the minutemen have a new school it's obviously outdated and needs to be repaired but as i listen to the debate going back and forth i can't see how belmont can continue to be even in the district let alone vote for this the financials risks for being with the with the district to take the repairs risk on or to take the the varying membership on both our extreme risks and to the alternative of not having a good option for the kids if the district fills up with think the likelihood is very very low for that so the risks are high on the bad side and low on the good side and we're being able will find a place for these kids because there's openings at the spot so i would say that we just need to be mindful that this vote today if it's a yes really binds us for a long period of time and we have no options but we have to then rely on our voters the popular vote if we come to that to to get us out of of of of an agreement that we don't probably want to stay and i know mark has suggested that he really wants to see a state in i think we have to have that debate as a town meeting others others did that other communities did that we have not yet as a town meeting been presented with that option i would like to have that option as a town meeting member and also i would say that the state really does need this the students in the community in the region need it but what are other options that could be explored why is this not a privatization aspect why can't some other entity that isn't an individual town take this on and then each of these communities participate in another manner i think we need to explore all the options and i'd like to preserve that by voting no tonight mr jones ralph jones precinct three i'd like to thank joe scally for speaking up on this issue is a former member of the minuteman school committee and i think you could tell from his remarks his frustration very similar to jack weiss as frustration as a current minuteman school committee member with the rest of the member towns in the school committee and with the administration that has been pushing for a school that is simply too large we've been fighting these sorts of issues for about twenty five years as far as i can tell and the enrollment keeps declining when all of the other schools have waiting lists what is it about this particular school that makes it be have empty right now and have a declining population i think that the only thing that's going to bring change is the revision in the agreement that we've passed and the efforts by our selectmen working with other towns to resize this school and make it work i think that's the only option i'm going to vote no and also even if we were to withdraw we would still have financial obligations with the debt but if a town we keep saying we want like a town like watertown or warfare city they want him to join today if they join the yes if you are a community who joins the district you are going to be responsible for your share the debt under that capital allocation formula now two things there is in the new regional agreement  the opportunity to incentivize nonmember towns by ramping up over a three year period their obligation under that so they actually could to the extent that minute man charges that eighty five hundred dollars you could actually could get a financial benefit if you joined the district after that you pay your share and depending on the community depending on the circumstances that share could be more or less than that average honestly one thing that they would pick up that they don't have as a nonmember is the obligation on their balance sheet  you know that is a cost for joining that the district but they get a vote they get to participate in the governance they may get a discount at the beginning that those communities are going to weigh whether the benefits of membership are worth it so a question if we were to withdraw then we don't have it on our balance sheet but then two years from now we could rejoin and not have an analogy no you have it on your balance sheet if you're a member of the district so if you it's coming back to two if you're a member of the district you are obligated with the debt on your balance sheet so if you join  ok and i would like to echo what mr jones said somebody isn't looking at the big picture of this because it doesn't make sense that every other school in the state has a waiting list or is full and this school is not something's wrong attention to and invest in that said i've heard a lot of discussion about options and i'm afraid i'm just much less hopeful about all of these options we are an outlier in the district we have argued against the size of the school for many years but the other towns seem to agree with it we are much smaller the idea that we're going to be able to convince everybody to get a smaller school i think is unlikely the idea that we're going to have a lot more control i think is unlikely i believe also that if you do build a school for six hundred people you will have more students coming i know that the school is investing in the program and in the school my other question is what happens if we don't do minuteman and if it is full as i believe it likely will be what are our other options are we going to build a vocational program about high school i mean the fact is if there's nowhere to send our kids if they're all full what are we going to do with our children who need vocational education i think we're left then if we're part of this district looking at do we build this new school or do we renovate and if the renovation is going to cost the same money as the new school i'd rather get a new school out of it and not throw money into what ultimately is not a great building yes sir thank you steve evans meeting member precinct six i may have missed this but a question we are not contingent on that vote as other towns have done number at large because i think those other communities frankly kicked the the decision on this to their to the residents who are not as informed as perhaps others that have been working out and i think at the bourse like when in this body the work communicate a budget committee need to make a decision first on the on the itself and the merits of it for the district rather than say well vote yes as long as the residents are willing to pay more in taxes i don't think that's the right approach i vote my voice that not certain how my colleagues felt about that but that's what i've waste and actually told member town select ins that i think you just sort of kick the can down the road by letting your residence decide rather than us miserable seven this is a tough one you know there's the we've all been sitting here for how many years talking about the minutemen situation and it's exhausting and it was interesting to hear that in one nine hundred seventy seven i think maybe seventy five seventy seven when the current school opened that ninety five percent of the student enrollees were from the members of the minuteman organization and now that's not the case and what i keep going back to and i know this is probably not going to be resolved here tonight but the model is broken this is not a model that's sustainable anymore this is a ridiculous conversation that we're all trying to figure out what we're how we're going to fund this and who's going to take on this burden is there that is there the suggestion that the vocational technical high school program be a state operated program like the community colleges so i don't see i don't see it being much different than a community college program you've got a set of schools and people funnel into them and so i came in tonight thinking that i wanted to support this but i'm wondering if we're continuing to put to put our energies into a model that is really not working i'm  very concerned that we're going to be first of all going to our voters with our current with belmont high school and minute man at potentially the same year and is that a concern or is that something that we're looking at time wise because it looks like they would both be they would both be coming to the voters around the same time and then i would worry that minuteman would not get funded and that we would then have to find it in our budget you know for for subsequent years so we're not going to solve that one tonight but that's just my opinion i think we need to be scrapping the situation and really looking at a different model mr  favor of of this and and i've certainly heard most of the arguments that i made that i made last week in the statements of other supporters but after the after hearing ralph and i felt i felt i felt like i wanted i wanted to get up i've lived in belmont for about thirty years but i've just been a town meeting member just for the last four so i have not gone through the battles i've not done the work that people like bob and pat and jack jack i've done and i hear a tremendous amount of frustration in their voices when it comes to their past dealing with the  and i certainly and i certainly understand that because i've been in other professional circumstances where it's been very for us frost straight into sort of deal with a situation where you feel like you're not getting heard in this case since i don't have those scars i can step back and sort of see the path to yes here i think i mean i totally agree with all of the financial risks that have been that have been put out there  facts but i think the magnitudes are not as great great on the downside as people see and we aren't going to be facing with you know nine other member towns going into default a parcel has real value that we could use at some point to help to help us and then on the flip side i know i have a more positive view about what vocational tech ed means going forward for the next forty years not looking back to the past forty past forty years but looking forward and it's and it's and it's something that i can't you know give you a set of facts now to make the case but i do think that book ational lead is going to be much more mainstream in in the next twenty or thirty years and it's going to be in in port and part and and that in the biggest path to us was actually the great work that mark marked it in terms of the of working with the other selectman to get t grievance because i think that gives us the set of tools that we can work with either the current administration or else we have a much smaller concentrated waiting waiting vote and we can that we can we can we can have a more active board that can have a real strategic vision to figure out what the future of folk ational it is i think there are i think there are a lot of a lot of them possible a lot of possibilities that i think this deal is the best deal we are going to see for a long time and if we don't like this deal then if we want to go and completely get out of the completely get out of the interest rate that's that is a path that would make sense but i think if  we're going to stay and this is this is this is the best deal that we have in front of it but if we take it now we have some closure we can start to focus on the other major building projects here here in town that we have to do so  so those are all the reasons why i'm why why i will vote vote yes yes ma'am land you want to post one hundred two to thirty five obviously more than two thirds so debate is terminated we now go to a vote on the main motion all those in favor will  glenn do you want to post it eighty one in favor one forty one opposed i doubt that vote i can't even read my name up there so i think we've got to do something about getting those names listed yes and calling a roll call vote so that mr mercer i mean there's nothing wrong with that in terms of roll call if you want a roll call vote vote yes and we need thirty five people voting yes for a roll call vote so there's a no no vote doesn't matter either way i mean the either abstain or vote no is the same so if you want to roll call vote press yes