good evening and welcome to the belmont candidate's night sponsored by the belmont league of women voters i'm marianne galli president of the belmont l politically party candidate the league of women voters a bellman and carriages informed an active participation in government it takes action on a specific issue after we studied it but it would never do we support our oppose candidates information about the dominant lee can be found on our web belmont l w p dot org the chamma lection day this year is tuesday april  or e mail rides at belmont l w v dot org to request a ride we'd like to thank the belmont media center for televising this form live and showing it between now and election day and of course a special thank you to all the candidates who are running this year so i'm happy to help the belmont leak conduct this candidates night once again a reminder please shut off your cell phones or silence them thinks  before we get into the agenda i would just like to represent the to mention that representative dave rodgers is in the room somewhere  and let's quickly go over the agenda and procedure for tonight as you can see town meeting members are already lined up at the microphone please each of you state your name address and precinct unfortunately you won't be able to make any remarks to the community at large i hope you had good conversations before coming in after that the uncontested candidates for town wide office will be coming up in ballot order to make statements and answer questions they will come up here and then we will have a little more time for your contested offices for school committee housing authority and board of selectmen they will both make presentations answer your questions and make a closing statement in reverse ballot order this year belmont has an uncontested seat for the one year term of school committee michael crowley the only candidate is unable to be here tonight due to a previously scheduled vacation therefore we will only be hearing from the contested race for the three year term for school committee and we'll get into more the details of the procedures after the town meeting candidates so just for all of you wonderful folks in the hall we're going to be done by nine hundred and forty five dollars and everybody  shoo out at least by ten so moving on to your wonderful town meeting candidates each made its candidate in precincts one through eight will be coming up candidates again name address and precinct and then just walk right on out please one starts here adriana poole fifty three louise wro stone road precinct one kristen seche thirty orchard street precinct one eighty four long of precinct one jessica houseman eleven sharp road to precinct one crystal fifteen cedar road precinct one these thirty waverly terrace precinct three would now like to invite the candidates for the uncontested races to come up while they're coming up can we give all these civic minded candidates of yours and while the candidates for our uncontested races are coming up i'll just explain how we're going to blow through the evening each of them will be called to the podium in ballot order the candidates will have two minutes to make an opening statement at the podium the audience will then have the opportunity to ask questions of the candidates and these are questions not statements they will be brief audience and the league may also have some questions for the candidates which i've already got so the candidates will have one minute to answer these questions and of course there's no requirement to use up your whole minute meanwhile down in front we have lisa card this is for all candidates and then a red stop card as necessary and so i invite you that when you see that your time is up please finish your sentence and stop after the candidates have finished your sentence and your statement audience members who wish to ask a question should line up in the mikes in either aisle and once again the timers will hold up warning signs for thirty seconds so  good evening thank you to the league for hosting this event i'm honored to have served as town moderator since two thousand and eight and i thank the voters for their continued confidence in me during the time i have made during this time i have made it a priority to build a productive town meeting which serves the interests of all citizens of belmont i have worked hard with others to ensure the town meeting members receive adequate information in advance that the presentations on articles are focused and informative and that there be broad and respectful discussion of important issues by our elected r my other three major responsibility is to appoint members of various committees and closing the warrant committee and building committees the work of the three current building committees will change the face of belmont for library we are exceedingly fortunate to have volunteer leaders and committee members with such dedication and exceptional talent over my years as moderator i have always been open to new ideas and i've encouraged input from often contrasting points of view because i have such tremendous respect for the thriving democratic process sees of our town meeting i am committed to ensuring that we continue to have a healthy discussion of different points of view but in the end joining together around a common purpose for the well being of generations to come thank you again for your i will ask a question and stay put last from here since electronic voting makes it quick and easy to keep a record of how each town meeting member votes on each motion what is your possession position on recording the votes of individuals on all motion well clearly we have available through the our bylaws the opportunity for recorded votes it takes only thirty five town meeting members to achieve that which is a small fraction of the total time meeting body so it's already available i think doing it for all votes is unnecessary i mean as you town meeting members kno there's a lot of routine business that we just go through quickly and it would be unnecessary and i think counterproductive to have rolled essentially roll call votes for those matters thank you  some turmoil on the planning board and then we had a number of people good response from the public on terms of people throwing their hat in the ring to be appointed to planning board but often with vacancies on boards we don't have a tremendous number of volunteers so i guess my question to you would be do you have some ideas on how to get word out about committee vacancies and get more get a broader range of people from the from the community throwing their hat into the ring and saying i'm i'm willing to volunteer i'm sure well of course many of the boards are wanted by the board i mean committees are appointed by the board of selectmen my sense is that there's been a renewed effort in the last year or two to reach out and identify more opportunities for a diverse set of people to participate in the board in my case what i've tried to do for the committees and i  let's say the warrant committee is identify people who have had some experience in town but are still not yet widely known and involved so we had the committee on whether we would that i appointed  point to the warrant committee so i'm trying to identify younger people and broaden the pool of people who get involved thank you well timed and we have one more question it's great to see you can michel  michael mcmahon tommy member precinct seven i sort of wondering i know there are a lot of people who can't make it to this meeting tonight because they have family or kids so that's actually why i want to ask you about the automatic voting or sort of the recording all our votes because i feel like that would be helpful so that we could have it prominently displayed so people just look on the website and see hey look there's this is the vote some sort of wondering is there some way to try to make it more accessible to people who don't always fold the meetings or don't have the local access channel them that's just why i'm wondering if you well as i said i think we have we have the opportunity today and we're like chronic voting you can do this roll call vote which then records your vote that's easy when it previously was not easy it was time consuming laborious you had to read the names of two hundred and eighty eight dollars town meeting members now with our electronic voting after we vote on an issue just takes one town meeting member to call for call thirty four others to agree and then we have the record and i think it's appropriate to have a handful of those issues ones that are critical and maybe contentious have roll call votes for that but i don't think it's necessary as i said earlier for a whole host of routine matters thank you good evening hi i'm ellen o'brien cushman i'm running for reelection for town clerk i have to tell you i love being belmont's elected town clerk it's been fun for nine years me and i'm three people on my staff we have gotten to know so many belmont people who come through our doors thinking that the town clerk's office is sort of the front door to figure out how to deal with the town and we appreciate that is we think it's a vote of confidence we have people coming through the doors with their residents or just general members of the public who are interested in vital records elections voting dog licensing business licensing committee work meeting work the list goes on and on it's pretty long and varied last year alone in two thousand and eighteen we welcomed nine hundred thousand visitors to the town clerk's office given that the town's population is twenty five thousand that's pretty good we think no wonder a little tired we work hard long hours we have a good time of it but that tells us a lot we do count in addition to that we did about forty thousand little more than forty thousand e mails we sent them and we're c of them so people have figured out how to reach us and we really do hope that there's sort of that means there's a vote of confidence i would tell you that i've lived here forever and one of the things i always knew growing up as a belmont is a small town a friendly small town and lately there's been a bit of rancor whether it's about elections or points of view that people don't necessarily share and that makes me kind of unhappy and i know a lot of people are unsettled about that so i'd rather instead of the rancor i'll offer just a suggestion since i have the  and i'll tell you i think if you see someone on the street why not just smile and say hello and realize that that person is your neighbor today and after whatever election or ever issue goes by we're going to be neighbors tomorrow too so let's try to make the most of it thank you i appreciate your  sometimes we use electronic voting when no one has call for a roll call vote justice of matter of convenience are those votes also being recorded and kept on file so thanks suzanne christian i actually was leaping when mike was being asked some of these questions earlier as well so electronic voting is entirely up to the moderator and when he or she chooses to use it that's when it will be used and it's up to the population of town meeting as you know and as mike explained of thirty five people say they agree that we should have a roll call which captures every single result of every vote so on but aggregate vote which is what we call it when the numbers just appear and not then thirty five dollars town meeting members have not requested have a roll call vote then those pieces of metal data are not captured thanks so much those are not accessible to follow up since i have fifteen more seconds people who are interested in the full record of the town meeting votes i think mr roberts asked this earlier those are embedded in the annual reports as part of the town meeting record but it certainly seems to make sense people might be interested in having us do that in a really time we way so we'll look at doing that on to the website right away during the middle of town meeting it sounds like that's what thank you you've been using the c p a funds to digitize historical are two kind of notable projects one is all of our vital records back anybody in the room doing genealogy research for their grandparents great grandparents who ever in any given year we have thousands of people who come in looking for their birth certificates death certificates of relatives marriage certificates of of themselves or long lost relatives or if you are right now trying to get a real i d that's how you will get it so those are accessible at this moment through a data system that is accessible only to the town clerk staff it is not generally something we're putting out like on ancestry because the state does not allow that annual town reports and town transcripts of town meetings those are currently being index for office and without fail this is always scheduled the day i'm coming back from town from vacation so three years ago i got up here and they proceed to forget ever my whole speech going from the airport t isn't there a split tax rate commercial and residential that's because we don't have a commercial tax base to ship the burden to why does it need a residential exemption same thing there's not enough to make that classification every year in early december help everyone so we look forward to you guys coming in answering your questions and as i'm looking around for questions come into the league how often does a house in belmont get reassessed and is that often enough given the hot housing market that's the department of revenue massachusetts department of revenue set strong standards that every house has to be examined so in belmont there's basically on a three and four year cycle so we come in we take a look and we're now looking for any hidden bathrooms or hidden attic spaces we want everyone to pay their fair share of the taxes and as we say at the board chess we tried to treat  everyone fairly you know not every house in belmont a little bit different but we want people to pay their fair share of the taxes no more no less than so yes that's often enough often enough how much did royal belmont add to the tax base and belmont's tax revenues so that will come under a new growth and with that will belmont in question village in some of the projects they haven't been come to fruition at the town meetings thank you very as you know that the board of commissioners of the cemetery were canned and hand with the department of public works it's the d p debbie that does most all of all the maintenance at the cemeteries and does a great job there and i'm sure that you have all familiar with the highland and want to grow street belmont it is a deed a pleasure to be at those cemeteries and work what we do we will continue to maintain them as best we can in a perpetual care program that is derived from the lots as a percentage of that rate goes into perpetual care for most of you i know that when the loss of less of a member family member is a really rough time for those of you who have never been through it i'll tell you how i've gotten through it i've got through it in two thousand and five with the loss of my daughter it's not an easy thing you need somebody nearby who understands what's going on i understand that sympathy is a great thing to have around to help people along and it is a thing that it just never goes away people make comments it will it will pass nothing passes it stays with you forever and her children were seven and eight years of age so we really did have a tough time at the time but they've grown up now as you can see where my granddaughters jacket from stonehill college and my grandson is working for his father but it's a pleasure to be here and i thank you very much so we'd like what percentage of plots are still available for sale and do you feel that belmont will need an additional cemetery in this century that's a very good question i'm not sure that i know what percentage of p are available that's something you would have to find out if we went to the office and looked it up to the program director would tell us that that we don't keep track that is a commission that was done by the office manager who keeps track of that and for this century you know i  would hope that we never need a cemetery that we could all live in perpetuity forever but that's not the answer the answer is yes some i would of invention it some day we'll have to extend it but how we're going to do it i have no clue thank you so you do you feel that belmont is running out of space not at this time no not this time and do you plan to open a new section of the highland cemetery and if so when now you say do you it's not myself that does that that is that board of three members will have to have a meeting if we're going to do that and we'll discuss that but it is not my decision to be made by myself it's a board decision and that's how that will be handled as the board planned open not to my knowledge no ok ok thank you so much thank you very much and for the library no board of health board of health is not able to attend tonight that would be julie julie see limaye so yes we are going on to of the public library we're going to ask those candidates and take questions and do this a little differently make your speech and then come sit there we've got two people so we may do this a little differently come up make a speech sit down come up make a speech then sit down and we'll ask your questions from there ok that are right we just deal with logistics so you can well ask questions after both of you have made your opening remarks and so be prepared folks to come up with your questions and and this holds true for the whole evening any when any question you ask of one candidate needs to be able to be asked to the other so using random dot org to pick numbers in advance mary stearns will go   th busiest library in the state and on average more than nine hundred people a day come through its doors good things are happening at the library and people are noticing during my campaign i heard many compliments about the helpfulness of the library director in the staff i also heard many positive comments about the library's brighter physical interior the staff of made very prudent efforts to refresh our current building with paint carpeting improved lighting however these improvements are bandaids the original systems the h fact the electrical the plumbing the roof all need constant repair and also the library is not accessible to everyone in town it is not a  compliant but the good news is that there are efforts underway to get a new library building the feasibility study was completed and determined that the best option for this town is a new building on the current site town meeting in the town so the town meeting authorized the establishment of a building committee and this committee has selected an architect to develop the design for a new library last week the architect tell the st of three public meetings to a community input to ensure that this eventual design will meet belmont  needs but to have to get this library there must be private as well as public support carthy candidate for reelection for library trustee and similar to mary i would like to cover some of the issues there are with the current building and also some changes that have me made over the last four years so as one of the issues that i feel very strongly about is the children's room and we are the th most used children's room in the library in massachusetts were about one rd of the size that we really should be for the population that we have and if anyone's visited there when there's a children's program it's just bedlam there's so many people want to go to the programs you sign up you can't even get in so it's become very difficult to the same children bubble that we're seeing in the schools is coming through the library was in terms of the changes that have been made over the last four years with the limited budget that we have we we have had a lot of carpet in paint as mary mentioned but we've been also able to update our website have a new interactive logo a new branding effort reinvigorated collections if anyone has visited the hallway of the library we've constantly refreshed what's on offer to show people what is in the library and we've redone parts of the children's room the east and west wings and just tonight we were meeting about redoing the teen room which is an all important the canned group in town that we haven't really addressed we've also turned out a lot of new partnerships across town i think in the past the library had been a bit of a silo and we've we partnered with the veterans we've partnered with a lot more with the town itself the town office where we're being a lot more cooperative on both sides i think before we were running out for example our own maintenance and now we've cooperated with the maintenance group in the town and i think we ended up getting better service so all in all i think that the library has been refreshing with the assets that we have we would like to move on to a new library in the future thank you so i already heard something about maintenance asking both of you starting with mister given that you are new library is several years in the future what do you see is the most pressing major maintenance needs for the current building so we as i said we just had a meeting tonight and we heard that the ac unit on the roof of one half of the building is completely out and we're going to need a new ac unit before the summer starts so i think that's just an example of major systems in the building are failing and we have to replace them i endors what mr carty said and it seems to be almost at every trustees meeting we discuss one of these failing system so they're doing their best to keep the library going and keep it as attractive as library building what are your two top priorities to top priorities to maintain this upward trend in terms of the usage of the library we get the statistics reported every meeting every month and it's quite striking how how intensively the libraries used in course the nd part of that is that we have to maintain the services to do that  the other thing that we're doing as another priority is to make sure we are making most effective use of our staff we are reviewing a lot of aspects of how the staff is a have some people retiring and there are rules there are unions and so there's a lot of difficulty in being able to spread the staff across the facility in the most efficient manner possible given all the rules that we have to deal with  think that that is in issue that the trustees spent a lot of time on thank you michael mcnamara for one precinct seven i was going to ask you know you've focused a little bit on the sort of the younger kids and we're trying to work on the sort of getting more  teens into the library and sort of curious cute you expand on that as a lot people my my age are using i phones i pods everything is digital some sort of wonder if you could speak all bit about trying to get them into a building that maybe most of them are like well we use it for school but  the library today is not just books there are many electronic resources there are many different types of formats even of what we might call books i'm not up to date on all of them so and we see the usage the teens are coming so we're providing them with the inference and the technologies that they need and it might be of interest in a more general sense that the librarians a wonderful technology resource for the community and if you go on the website you can see that you can book time to have a session with one of the technology librarians one of my big things is that the library is a democratic access to books and technology for everyone and there are many people who don't have you know expensive computers internet i phones and it's very important that we provide everybody with that level of service from not only from a civics point of view but also from a just a plain educational point thank you very much thank you and thank you all through our uncontested r like to invite you to come down and we will next take out the school committee no school committee candidate so there are three candidates for the twenty three years school committee positions and one candidate for the eleven your pain unfortunately michael crowley is on vacation this week on a trip that was scheduled months ago so he's not able to be with us so we will just be debating the three year position tonight we have with this amy checked with peter andrea prestwich and we again use random dot org to pick numbers in advance to decide the order of presentation peter me my name is peter pan is up and running for school committee i've been the belmont resident for the last nineteen years with my wife older and i have two children the last was five and evan who is one and as they are starting to enter the belmont school public school system i have been get involved with a lot of school issues such as the new school being built special education student fees bus an issue and i've been talking to a lot of other concerned parents and who have similar issues and i decide instead of talking about it i should donate my time and get involved and help solve some of these issues my background i have a bachelor's degree in business account and i have an executive master's degree in business finance and i have a master's degree in computer science and i also have twenty years of consulting experience mainly in finance and i am a global portfolio manager where i manage a team of children i have two boys one of whom is in rd grade and one is in th grade who are right in the middle of their public school careers since my oldest child started kindergarten have been really involved in our local schools and probably spent hundreds of hours volunteering particularly at the elementary school in a variety of leadership roles and through those experiences which include starting a new program to help families who moved to the district new year mid year another program that helps support families who move from other countries and matches them with the mentor i think a lot about education in my professional life as well as my personal life and for the past twenty years i've worked in the education policy space starting out working for a national advocacy organization  and then moving to doing educate cation policy research and consulting for a firm in cambridge that does both federal program evaluation as in the education and early childhood space as well  as consulting and strategic advising so i say spend my days working with state leaders and i really hope to bring these skills to contribute in our community to a lot of important issues ahead thank you and andrea pres problems associated with spiraling in rome and and have generally in belmont high school students start later so that students can get the sleep that they need i'm pleased that we've made progress on both of these issues the new seven through twelve high school w importantly and this is my top priority i want to maintain excellence in belmont school this means continuing to fund the schools at least at least the current level i understand that funding for the schools come direct comes directly from hardworking belmont residents and i'm incredibly grateful to the town for the support given to the schools over the past few years nevertheless belmont school did per student below the state  average cutting the per student expenditure would seriously impact core academic i have other priorities i don't have time to discuss including access to after school care appropriate education for all learning styles thank you i want to invite people to come up with questions i see a question coming up right now boy half years old who if you could choose how to spend his day he would spend almost all of it either habitat or joey's park or on a bicycle however as a nd grade boy in public school he and fifteen minute periods of recess except when he isn't after school with at which point he gets about an hour outside but i ask you to identify yourself and just come to the question we don't have time for long involved questions i'm sorry my name is melissa macintyre tim i live in precinct so i'm curious to know what the position is and i don't know if i'm even asking the right people but what the position is of the committee on increasing access to outdoor play time for younger children especially you and miss press which would you start i think the short answer to that is yes everything i have ever heard and read of the past few years suggests that access to time and plenty of tape play time is incredibly important for younger students and i would support the administration in any moves in that direction especially for the youngest you mr penton yes to answer the question i would have to look at the policy for each school for each classroom and what the standardized is for that grade terms of his suggestion from straight from them as well i know that our district in our teachers are under a lot of demands in terms of what they need to cover during the day and there are there are sort of restrictions to the amount of time that they are able to spend at recess i do think it would be important and i would fully support a focus on trying to take advantage of the outdoor space in right outside the building  to conduct some educational activities outside of the classroom i think there are sufficient spaces and there's a lot to be learned even from the areas right around schools so to the extent that teachers can think a little bit more broadly and bring their students outside to from each of the candidates if you're familiar with the science about starting school later and if it's of that for adolescents in particular and whether that whether you would if elected board were sure that the need i think the american academy of pediatrics centers to do these control of just about every other medical organization in the country recommend but schools start no later than eight hundred and thirty and i think as we move forward into the new great configuration that should be a top priority when it comes to setting times think that many districts are moving in the store action including a lot of our neighboring and peer districts so i'm excited that we are trying this out in the high school next year and giving students there  too nitty to go half an hour later and i think this is an important direction that we continue to move in it's important also to take the time we need to plan for it but i think i'm very supportive of moving in that direction  to if i was elected i'd like to look at the bus and schedule because that does affect the later times and what happens to the cherry time and what happens to the when work time so we have to take those times at the place what the standardized  high school sleep study says and how they do better and then also look at it from a fiduciary standpoint of what that does to the budget and what that does to the downstream effects like boston but i definitely agree that you know we should go with a national studies and  high school or in this case middle and high school combined build those programs up and i think it's very important that those students have those opportunities to go down that road thank you and miss check away i think hike  students access to high quality because vocational and technical education is very important and i know that our district will be leaving in the minuteman district as of june two thousand and twenty and this raises some considerations for  what their options are going to be moving forward and so i think it's really important that the school committee keep a close eye on this so whether it be students having access to minuteman or continuing to expand what we can also offer within our district i think it's important that we make sure that students who are interested in this get the opportunity to have thank you place i i think vocational education the important i think peter and amy have put it that nicely i would add that a while back the school committee of which i was a member voted to leave the minuteman district for my own part my vote was  because i felt that the belmont would be paying too large a burden of the cost of the new minuteman school and also that that school at that time was not sized right it was far too big the initial plans were huge  school has is now designed physick like six hundred students rather than over a one thousand so i would be willing to reconsider my vote on the minuteman issue thank you last very brief question with that missed check away what you can pay start so i think the st question was about athletics and court nation across districts is that dealing with yet so you know i think  i think we it's important to learn again from the number of districts right around us who have already started to implement this in terms of what their experiences have been and how they've tackled these kinds of challenges  and i think i think i would need to sort of learn more about what some of these issues are but i think this is important to consider and your other question baseball fields are going away baseball fields are the st thing that gets destroyed in the construction of the high school which is great but what it was the resolution for how this can be handled yes so i think that i think there are starting to be plans in place about  how to make sure that our student athletes have access to the facilities and spaces they need even if they're not right there in terms of transportation i know that was unfair to question as this is a lot miss pres wich place in terms of athletics and school start times it's tough i admit because you know it's schools start later than they are going to end later and i don't know what to do about rush hour traffic but  i as much as i value athletics i think that the basic health of our student population takes priority so that may be something we're stuck with i don't know i hope not i hope the gist is can be solved in terms of the baseball field know the new school being built and we all use the same buses for the students and what the impact is going to be a family like that i would have to look at the bus schedule how many how many kids are actually in rolled and using the bus and what the impact is going to be because i think with construction that you're in with rush hour traffic it's going to be hard and as a former student athlete i just i do think that we need to see what other fields are available during this construction time and what the impact it's going to be for the students and their well being and making a back and forth in time for them to do their activities thank you and thank you all so we're going to move into closing statements and each of you will get a minute beginning with andrea prestwich well st of all i'd like to thank you all for the opportunity i've had to serve on the school committee it has been an honor and i've thoroughly enjoyed myself if we elected my top priorities are the new high school maintaining school funding and after school care i have served on the curriculum policy and finance subcommittees and i'm very familiar with all of the issues currently before the committee i respectfully suggest that experience is important as we move forward into a time of lean budgets and careful oversight of the new high school i respectfully ask for your vote on april i will be very honored to serve another term peter pan is obvious i'm not a politician i'm a teacher what i bring to the table is i have a strong finance and plan and background and i'm a data driven person so these issues of special education where thirty percent of the budget is used for out of state out of district cost i'd like to look at the numbers look at you know how to bring those numbers and how to save money for the taxpayers and do the right things for the children look at student fees the bus issue but i'm able to look at it from a different perspective than a school teacher on the board or or someone else so there are there are many financial people on the school committee board if you vote for me i will look at it from a different lens as that and hope that i can add value for the taxpayers and for the the parents of amy check away will conclude yes closing i'm really excited again about the opportunity to serve in this important leadership role in our community i think it's important that we have strong leaders with background in both education budget management strategic planning and a variety of skills who are who are ready to dig in and engage in multiple issues to make sure that our students who have a variety of needs and experiences are continuing to receive an excellent education  i also some other priorities are making sure we continue to support our top notch teachers that we continue to make sure we have enough staff to help support all of our kids needs that we continue to communicate with the community and a diverse range of perspectives and listen to what others are experiencing outside of our meeting rooms and that we continue to manage or are constrained resources carefully so i'd be honored to serve in this role it's a big job and i'm ready to take and i would like to just ask will candidates for the housing board please come to the stage and sit at the table and meanwhile let's give a hand well behaved group you are thank you so let me introduce them as they come up so we have two candidates for fifteen year member of the housing authority board position well take care of you hi i'm thomas in olson i'm running for reelection  to be a member of the housing the belmont housing authority three years ago i was elected to the board since that time we said goodbye to a former executive director initiated two search to find a qualified one who has since been on board for a little over a year we oversaw as a board the emergency maintenance requests often with with using only having one member of maintenance while three of our three maintenance staff while the other two were on approved sick leave we brought on a new accounting system actually a new accounting firm that provides better updates and transparent we updated our online financial systems as recently required by d h cd we improve tenant collections and maintenance turnaround time we are updating our personnel policies and we have initiated the work to add new and improved housing at sherman gardens with funding from c p a and housing trust of which certainly we also need to address the aging of our infrastructure i've been an advocate for seniors through my work on the council on aging in that i also initiated the still ation of four little libraries at the three properties there's much left to be accomplished as people person i encourage i want to encourage attend an organization that can develop community among the three properties and within the community of belmont as a financial professional i understand the importance of the board's fiduciary responsibilities careful assessment of our budget and personnel policies and staff good evening everybody st i want to thank you for coming out of women's voters for having me here they say that it takes a village to raise children well it took a legit to get me here i'm very nervous but i am very dedicated to this cause i happen to live in one of the properties that the belmont housing authority owns as a residence  have seen a lot of growth and changes but i've also seen a lot of pain and suffering that has come with that there's a label that is attached to living in low income housing and for those of us who are there we have a hard time admitting that and trying to be a well rounded member of society expects in a time like that much i want to encourage the residents to work with the staff and with the board so that we can make changes and everybody is involved in that decision i've heard a lot of complaints that it was that's what's driving me to be here is that people are unhappy but they also don't know how to voice that opinion the they're scared and i'm here to make sure they don't have to be i might be nervous here today because i've never done this before but i do have personal experience i'm also very dedicated to making sure that anything that i don't know i learn so that i can better serve this community thank you have residents been on the board before and if not went out one minute for either of you and we'll start here and go there my understanding mr carter is that at one time there were residents and way and it will probably be an appointment by the selectmen we don't know for sure but that was the initial now you ask how we interact we do have weekly we have monthly meetings and they're invited but i think because sander has raised a good point we need to be a little more a little more transparent in inviting our residents to the meetings but they're always invited maybe they don't know that they should come in so i think attend an organization would be really helpful and as i said by next year we will have a tenant on the board this page and  as far as interactions go with the board as a resident i can tell you that i did not know much about the board until i started doing research a few months ago i knew very little i didn't realize that the relationship was supposed to be as strong as it was intended and i believe part of that is because we have been through a lot of changes as a community and i think that it's also in part because have the availability all the time a lot of people have children and i've already made some changes i have a lot of people interested just since i've stepped up and coming to the board meetings and i think that's a big step in the right direction and no there hasn't been a tenant to my knowledge on the board before but it is something that we are trying to do but i'm not willing to wait i'm ready to do it now thank you stay with the mike what are your highest priorities for major maintenance of the housing authority units my highest priority is for the maintenance would be to take a step back from the external property structures for the most part not in all of the developments as sherman gardens it is absolutely crucial that we get in there and we make sure that they are handicapped accessible because they are for disabled and elderly residents as far as the family goes there is a lot of internal stuff that we need to deal with that are causing concern for residents for the health of themselves and their children and we need them to voice and be involved in those decisions was built for returning veterans we have a lot lot of work to do i don't know where to start i know we're doing roofs now i know that this page brought up some issues about r executive director has been working with a company major maintenance going back we are doing windows we're doing roofs i don't know that we can get them done very quickly because we have a capital budget structure that's very limited but certainly we want to work more with the tenants  michael mcnamara for one marvelous street precinct seven i was going to ask about affordable housing i was wondering are we do i think we need do more in belmont for formal housing so i was wondering are we going to be focusing like where do we have several new projects including the mclean hospital plot that we're considering working with i was wondering if you're sort of working with the housing trust and other groups drive really encourage more for pao's because with so many elderly folks who really want to stay here and are downsizing my parents  and we want to stay in the community but there are also a lot of folks war young families who can barely afford to stay here and that's not even considering other aspects such as when ask your plans to approve or for housing and salsa and michael i serve on the housing trust and we have we have made our concerns known about the mclean property we are very concerned about seniors and about affordable there's there's also a mid range of affordable you know not everyone is at thirty percent of am i some people are a little bit and i am i can you just say average median thank you so i've been i've been working with the other members of the housing trust to address that and specifically we've been talking going to plain board meetings and  talking about our concerns with the planning board and also the developer i'm not one hundred percent sure that i could sit here and tell you that we have a huge input in that but it is something that is very very  what is the status of that project and do you support building additional units for senior citizens at sherman gardens and we'll begin with ms paige i absolutely support building additional units there not just for our elderly but for the disabled that are currently living in the family development some of them are not one single family it's multiple family members that might have either a child or parent that's in a wheelchair and needs accessibility and the plan for sharing gardens is to either potentially redevelop completely or just remodel but you definitely make sure that it is handicapped accessible and i would love to see than be able to expand so that we can provide more homes for people that need it and more access ability for the families who are currently using temporary railings and ramps that the that friends and family housing was never designed for that   a consultant who's working on a design one of the problems that our senior units both sherman gardens and waverly oaks is that they are two floors and have no elevators as people age they need elevate need elevators so one of our hopes was to have an elevator building and as ms page says we are considering all aspects you know we have a very large the last question you're running for a five year term what is your biggest priority that you want to accomplish in the next five years biggest there guess you know having just said this eight hundred and fifty people on are weightless really bothers me so we either need more housing or we need to find a way to whittle that down the state recently required that there was a a comprehensive list that we're pulling from other communities as well as our own so more housing getting our list down and then the next thing and i think i'm grateful to  this is i think we really need to build in our among our three properties and also within the within the town thank you miss pa absolutely there are a hahn of projects that need to be done there but the biggest thing that i'm concerned with is rebuilding trust sense of community and it's something that i feel has been lost along the way and i want residents to become more involved not only just in the community that they live in currently but in the town as a whole and that's got to start at the bottom and it's got to work its way to the top whether it's by going to war board meetings getting more involved in community events through the town we are one where not we're not singled out and that's how a lot of people have felt and they need to get on board start communicating and that and start helping make decisions that they feel are important for the health and safety of themselves and their families thank you and closing statements will be in reverse order of opening so we will end with cassandra paige going  i don't have you know many years of political background or town starving like my opponent has i could never take that away from her she's done a lot for this town and i commend her greatly for that however i have a perspective that no one else on the board has ever had i have lived this life for thirty years and i am dedicated and committed to serving not only the residents in the low income housing but also serving and giving back to the town that i grew up in and was fortunate enough to be here for because i would not be able to afford it otherwise thank you  sherman gardens which was much to lade and is now there was a question of whether or not waverly goats could use a an elevator and i researched it with the fire  work with me as an advocate for seniors i believe that my skills and my qualifications my financial experience are needed on the board  as they are coming to the table belmont has three candidates for one open selectman position this year jessica bennett roy epstein and timothy flood so once again we use random doubt or pick numbers in advance and timothy flood then roy epstein and then jessica bennett will be the order for your presentations two minutes for your opening remarks one minute for everything else may i invite timothy flood my name is timothy flood i'm running for select meant to give a new tour perspective in all matters belmont i want to hear your opinions and concerns and provide an opportunity to have your voices truly heard you may have noticed i have not mailed literature with lists of power base supporters nor have i solicited contributions i am here to represent all twenty five thousand or so residents in this town even if you disagree with me i am here on my own merit not on the merit of others i understand there are e mail circulating attacking my character as voters you have to decide what to believe i know what's true because i have lived it and i would ask you do you think i would have custody of my daughter if these accusations were true do you trust who would spread false woods just to gain power are those actions of a true leader this is not belmont this is not leadership i moved to belmont to provide my daughter the best i could i want her to thrive in school to be safe walking on our streets and have her grow up with a strong sense of community i believe many of us share these values we need a leader that will bring us together overcome our challenges in create a vision for our future not to divide us we need to prepare for our future not prepare for our future of our past this vision incorporates shared community education family and inclusion we need a leader that will be fiscally responsible we need a leader that will support local businesses we need leader that will address traffic i separate myself as a military veteran and a local small business owner i select men my responsibility will be to represent our entire community equally i will listen provide transparency and most important take action thank you very much evening and thank you all this election is like choosing the c e o for belmont that person needs significant experience good judgment and excellent knowledge of finance i go door to door every day to meet as many of you as i can to prove my fitness for our most important elected office you might know me already from my leadership in many town committees and also for making not too graceful speeches and town meeting luckily that's ok for voters like ralph from walnut street who stopped his car one day when i was canvassing mailed out the window hey i know you from those meetings on t v i hope you when i went to college it was only in and receive my ph d in economics from yale my dad never went to college because of world war two until the day he died he thought i went to wellesley but my wife joanna and i met at yale we found jobs in chicago and our two sons were born there we moved here because you want to receive an offer from harvard we lived at thirty four cushing avenue since one thousand nine hundred and four i work as an economic consultant in complex financial cases in addition i am an adjunct professor of finance at boston college the warrant committee and member of many other town committees for more than ten years i've devoted hundreds of hours to critical town building projects and other issues why because the committees or the little democracies where progress actually get started  belmont it means nonstop public input practical thinking and making hard decisions that's vital preparation for being a good selectman it's key for achieving a new library a new hockey rink and building the community pa i believe i have the experience that counts to serve as your selectman that's why i'm here and i look forward to your questions thank you for coming out tonight and thank you to the league of women voters for hosting this very important event every year my family and i have lived in town for twelve years i also moved to town because my wife got a job at harvard we live here with our two children one who's at burbank and one who's at and we love the town and the town has been very good to us this is an open seat on our board any one of us would be a newcomer and every selectman current and former who i have spoken with all say that nothing really prepares you for the role not serving on committees not being in town meeting not running a business we would all be learning on the job so we should ask ourselves what is missing on the current board what perspectives are not represented we have a selectman who is a lawyer with warrant committee experience we have a selectman who is a business executive with school committee experience we do not have a select woman with my combination of skills and experience my professional background spans banking marketing and communications this means that i have the financial skills to manage our budget but i also have the communication skills to help explain it to  our residents i serve on town meeting and multiple town committees and i'm a respected leader in our school community and as an advocate i have helped a town policies changed to bring in new grant revenue through the complete streets and safe routes to schools funding programs i'm running to be your next select woman to solve problems how do we help the town be more responsive to the needs of its citizens how can we make progress on our climate goals and housing challenges how can we inspire the next generation of leaders including our young women i am a leader who knows that we can do more together than any one of us can do on their own i work through collaboration i know that teams of smart people working together can change policy and improve the lives as your select woman i will work for you and with you when i ask for your vote on april nd thank you you that much energy i expect to hear some questions from the audience here they come so that will be one minute response time and ok so i want to see all these questions i want to not only invite you to be as brief and says sinked as you possibly can but also you so that we can get more answers ok please begin larry lang precinct one i want to pick up with a housing truss could you each explain your views on senior housing how we can expand it given the recent proposal that was i guess is very much in flux right now fortunately we have a very qualified planning board but it's a negotiation because the prior deal is really off the table of a continuing care facility the developer has made a proposal which is really unacceptable in the planning board rightly rejected it so they really have to negotiate this i think long term will be some senior housing and affordable housing in mclean i think the larger  potential really in belmont is for south pleasant st i believe there will be a significant development along south pleasant street and other areas in belmont where there will be a significant addition to the affordable housing stock in the future jessica bennett hi thanks for your question i think that it's one of the big challenges of our time in belmont to find affordable housing options for seniors and not just the affordable ones but like tommy was talking about the mid range ones the the housing that people can downsize to the mclean proposal was completely out of line with what people in town need my own mother lives in a housing development in connecticut that is a fifty five dollars and up adult active adult community which she moved into because she has parkinson's disease and she after she was diagnosed she needed a house that was all on one level and that provided handicapped accessibility and that's what she got at an affordable price point in a place that she enjoys living we could do that for our seniors here in belmont i do have high hopes for the new zoning that's happened on south pleasant street as well but i also think that mclean's development has to be put together in cooperation with our housing trust and with our coun aging timothy flood so as it's already been stated the excuse me the project at mclean is was a complete mess and m concern is that we're spending a lot of time talking about salt pleasantry which isn't remotely on the table so i think we need to put a lot of pressure on mclean to make sure that we're bringing in what we need now that conversation needs to be had and we was very messy pardon the pun and many of our citizens and many of our seniors are still experiencing issues so my question for the candidates are what would you have done differently and you know what would you do moving forward to stress this issue well the trash is an issue it's been brought up multiple times through the senior community you know as it stands right now the project is already in place so we can't turn back time but i think we need to step up maybe a separate truck to address the particular seniors that need that help at least temporarily until we can formulate a long term plan mr epste the new program was put into place last summer i think we're still learning we're getting a lot of information about the different problems people have been adjustments will have to be made i met a woman when i was going door to door who is even the smaller trash can and blew off the porch from her from the wind she was eighty five years old that was not strong enough to bring the can back to her porch so it's clear that there are a number of issues that have to be addressed and i'm convinced that if we all get together we will find  short order it's been an i think that we need to be addressing this issue we should have addressed this issue much more quickly i think that there were many people for whom just dragging these gigantic trash cans was just not an option when you're a tiny elderly person with mobility issues putting one of those trash cans to the road is a significant obstacle and these are these people are in town they're paying taxes they deserve to have their trash taken away this is a service that the town provides so i think that our d p w and our council on aging should work together to find solutions that work for people who have mobility issues not just seniors who have issues dealing with this trash you know dealing with these oversized cans and i think i am encouraged by the good nature of many neighbors reaching out to help people with the issues that they have or neighbors sharing barrels and everything but we can't we can't look to that could any of you see any reason why you might need to recuse yourself from the many issues that and have to face miss bennett well i think that there probably you know any number of issues that people could be could ask to recuse themselves from as a member of the board of selectmen and if a recusals are you know interfere with the ability for the selectmen to do their work then they can be looked at i live on a street that is close to the high school as you know and i was not considered in a butter with any of the materials that were sent out to a potters with regard to the high school so i think that i would possibly not be considered in a potter if the town hasn't thought that yet i have obviously been very concerned and involved with addressing the issues of traffic both in your neighborhood and in mine as as an activist who is concerned with the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists and with moving traffic through an efficient ways i am very concerned with making sure that we all move forward together and make good decisions that affect that are good for the town as a whole  moving forward in brevity for the questioners if you've already asked a question once i ask you did i ask that you let others who have not yet asked a question go st and over here yes my name is mary lewis i live in precinct one my question is the following what should the town do to ensure that the education of our children tomorrow is at least as good as it is today in education question for the selectmen because the selectmen are involved in making decisions about potential overrides and therefore this question is relevant to the selectmen thank you miss bennett you know i have been very involved in the schools from the time my children st entered i am a dedicated member of the community on this issue i worked on the override campaign in two thousand and fifteen because i understood the dire situation that we were facing in our schools in addition to the other problems we had in town such as terrible roads and nasty sidewalks but i also worked tirelessly over the last year to ensure that we built the seven dollars to twelve dollars school that it that we had the going forward need to have the facilities and the teachers in place to serve their needs mr epstein let me st affirm my support for public education we all are very proud of the belmont schools and it's a principal reason for most of us i believe for moving to this town and liking our liking to raise our children here the schools are expensive other towns services are expensive and i imagine that to preserve the quality of the schools and the have to be extremely resourceful in going through the school budget going through the town budget rethinking how we deliver services finding efficiencies and doing this to put the absolute minimum additional burden on our taxpayers that's the challenge before  mr flood to be brief we didn't we need to fund the need right now we are effectively about twenty million dollars on funding as compared to the state average that's concerning to me you know we are going to have an override there's no question about that you know i think we need to maximize the effects of that override moving for sano precinct three recently the board of selectmen began discussing changing the position of the town treasurer from the elected position which it currently is and to to and appointed by a three member board position in i'm wondering if you could comment on your no pun intended your position on that thank you miss bennett i think we have an excellent time treasurer right now i do want to give a shout out to floyd kerman he's done a tremendous job with maintaining art you know helping to  get us the best possible interest rates with our aaa rating and i think that there are strong arguments for moving to an appointed position but i think what we need to do is we need to study it we need to look at what our surrounding towns are peer towns are doing and see what kind of effect it has on the perceived quality of the performance on the job i don't think there's any need to study this question i have direct experience working on the high school sorry on the d p w and police station projects where the financing was quite challenging and i have to tell you that there were strong differences of opinion between the treasurer at certain points in the town administrator and the building committee the perspective of the treasurer was indispensable and the independence of that view and knowing that he didn't answer the town administrator or anybody else was critical for getting extremely good guidance most of the time maybe it doesn't seem to make much difference whether the treasurer is appointed or not but i can tell you that this was an instance where the independence of the treasurer was fundamentally important we i would trust the elective process if we have a bad appointment we can terminate the person it was appointed but i think it's more important to trust the electorate for an elected treasurer if it doesn't work out there's always another election in the town meeting to what i believe was the correct decision which was to withdraw from the venom and otherwise i can tell you every year an issue comes up whether it's the high school debt exclusion or a pension obligations and that is the nature of the war a committee to advise town meeting on every financial question that comes before town meeting mr flood so i have not been on top meeting i know everyone's aware of that you know  but i'll say i don't need to have been on town meeting to hear the concerns of the community everyone speaking about it out on the street and i think it's almost more important to be receiving that information from there and then bring it for miss bennett i have been on town meeting for one year i was prior to that taking care of pretty small children it was kind of hard for me to run for town meeting when i was at home taking care of my kids are running around doing p t a stuff i agree with mr flood that there are many ways that you can gain experience in town and it's only the electorate that gets to decide what experience counts so i want to make sure that people know that i am here to lead from the community i am not here as a candidate who represents a certain type of a certain segment that you're supposed to go through like of roles that you're supposed to fill in town i'm here and running because i have been a leader in the community and i see a big gap between what goes on in the committee rooms and what people are talking about in the community and what people care about i want to bridge that gap and make everybody feel part of the process thank you thank you we have a question from this hi i'm close to meeting member precinct five and i have a question about transparency a min of you in this room will remember that our own budget time i complain that we are not getting enough information from the warren committee to evaluate line items like thirteen million dollars for public safety specifically i would very much like to see at benchmark two or the tone such as how many policemen permit habitant and my concern is that nobody is going to vote in here against public safety so when we don't get information to evaluate we instinctively vote yes which means that the war in committed turns from the little democracy to the little dictatorship because it's their opinion that just gets railroaded through so the question is will you as a candidate will you support that we should benchmark the major line items in the budget against surrounding towns mr flood so in the area i do agree with that we are slightly different than some of the surrounding communities so we do have to look at ourselves individually as well as make that comparison but i would it's not an apples for apples comparison bennett i think that it can happen all too often in town that we think about the way that we've done it in town like how does belmont do this how we've done it over the years and i think that there are things that we've done in town where if we look at the benchmarks compared to other towns we'd be doing pretty well because we have cut things pretty close to the bone in most of our departments so i think that it would be a good compare would be a good exercise for the town as a whole and would help educate the voters on what our real needs are if we were looking at how we compare to our neighboring town mr epstein i have to say it's the st time i've heard the warrant committee referred to as a dictatorship but all of our meetings are public by the way there is no lack of effort by the committee and every other town body i'm aware of to convey as much information as possible the specific question about comparison to other towns that are something we have tried it turns out to be extremely difficult we actually prepared a draft of the warrant committee public safety report last year that did that exact under took that exact task looking at both the police and the fire department we had a lengthy discussion with both the police chief and the fire chief and the complexity of making informative comparisons town to town were so daunting that we decided to postpone it to this year if possible to try to do something the town meeting would find informative and useful and not merely misleading and superficial mahoney town meeting member precinct one and self described queen of capital however the capital budget committee is not a monarchy we presently have three major capital projects that are up and running the high school project the d p w police project and the library can you identify other potential capital projects that are coming down the road and suggest a long term capital strategy for addressing them bennett so i know that we have the rink project has been you know people have been discussing it a lot and there are many hockey families in town who are very concerned about what will happen when that rink is no longer usable also the library but you know there are other things that all that we have coming down the road to we'll have to you know do work on the town hall the town hall building will have to do work on any number of the schools you know i'm burbank is definitely due for another renovation and in a few years down the road so we're going to have to look at what our servicing capacity is within our budget it's really fortunate we've retired some of the budget that are not retired but we pushed back some of the borrowing capacity from the wellington because we came in under budget for that so that opens up a little bit more for us in terms of what we can borrow but it's you know we have to look for some community partnerships to help us with the bigger projects and we need to be looking for the grant dollars we can get anywhere we can mr flood so we have a lot of projects that a lot of groups want to have happen and as a town everyone wants all these projects to happen at the same time it's not realistic and the reality is some of these projects are going to have to be held off for some time until we finish what we're doing we're spending too much money we need to finish the current projects and then look forward steps to so you've heard a little bit of what i heard as disparagement at least that committee work but i can tell you that in the d p w and police station work which i know quite intimately we had committee work that was public meetings it was enormous amount of work precisely because it's so difficult to come up with a plan that is effective and affordable the same time it took two years to come up with a workable strategy for d p w and police and it's going to go out to bid or i believe it's going out today actually for ten million dollars when it was originally thought to be fifty million dollars that kind of success is precisely because people do put in the time and committees analyze discuss get input and really knock their brains out to try to find the best way to do the job for the whole town and mary mentioned the library the library is not a done deal yet it's barely a design the board of selectmen has an obligation to promote that project as best it i don't think any of this is true but i'd like to ask you to confirm that you decided to run for office on your own volition and share with us what motivated you to do  you as a part of your own will yes instead of another scheme mr flood i think my opening statement covered a lot of that question the answer is yes i ran on my own  i'm still running on my own as i said in my opening statement i don't have a group behind me supporting me with names that seem to be important to a lot of people or i let me correct that it seems important to a small group of people but i think we're missing the point that there's twenty five thousand people that need to be represented in this that's why i'm here so i decided to run after working on the seven to twelve school campaign most of last year i through that campaign engaged with hundreds of people in town on the issues that really matter to us i worked my butt off on that campaign and i worked my butt off on that campaign with some amazing people who gave their time to work on my campaign  well we've done tremendous work together over the last few years trying to make sure that belmont is moving in a direction that serves the entire community i at the end when i approached one of my campaign  managers about the fact that i was thinking about running she said oh my god i can't work on another campaign right now but when we talked more and more we realized that what we were missing in town was a voice that comes from that community so we want i decided that it was important to run i just i'm going to make an arbitrary decision here seeing how many people are left and what our timeframe is  i'm premature i'm ahead of us thank you i honestly don't know what's lurking behind mr williams question but only say that in december i was hoping mark pay a little oh would run for another term and when he chose not to i thought that i could do the best job in his place and that's why you decided to run thank you so i will say that the candidates are already doing what i'm about to ask you to do just trying to honor the number of questions in the room can you do thirty seconds max do you think you c that for answers because there are a lot of questions let's start over here and as brief as you can so we can get as many in as possible filthier time remember precinct as a member of the select board how would you go about persuading the other two to do what you want every committee is a discussion and people exchange ideas they get input from the public they expect and it that's how any group comes to a decision people the best idea prevails we hope there's some eventually you have to end your discussion and take a vote that's all you can do that it when i am working in groups where we have disagreements i try to find consensus i think that it is important for us to all here each other and define the points where we are agreeing and then to keep working towards more agreement and more agreement now you can come in and say i'm right i have the best idea in the room and i'm just going to sit here and i'm going to keep asserting that or you can come into a meeting and say all right this is what i really believe but i know that there are other people in this room who might believe something else and i want to know why mr platt i'm not here to persuade anyone i want i'm here to represent the community and at the same time i want to understand everyone's viewpoints if i can understand everyone's viewpoints i think we're probably representing the community thank you very skinnerian tell me precinct three  concerted effort to find more grant funding to help us meet our goals and i think one thing that we can do is take a cue from other communities like winchester and stone and waltham and hire a part time energy and energy manager who can help us identify grant apply for them and bring the money here they would be paid for out of the money that they bring into town so there's nothing to lose by doing this in the one who's been working in winchester brought two hundred and fifty thousand in for the town last year and only brought home about example belmont light by shifting its power procurement to greener sources will have a large impact and that is something that belmont light is working towards quite successfully i think i think will be a transition to electric vehicles i agree with the energy commission the energy committee's work at the kadian heat pumps home insulation and i believe bottom line we will meet our energy efficiency goals by two thousand  fifty meeting member precinct eight st of all thanks to all three of you for standing and running and giving voters a choice i it's a good thing for our town and for democracy my question is one of the most contentious issues facing the board of selectmen in the last five years was the controversy over the belmont town green in which the board of selectmen came before town meeting with a design that was described as ninety or ninety five percent complete obtained funding for that design and then with no notice to town meeting unilaterally change that design we had a special town meeting in which a majority of the town meeting request requested the board of selectmen to adhere to the original design roy you voted my question to the three candidates is could you explain your position on the town green controversy and how would you work as a selectman to foster trust between the select men and the voters and the select men in town meeting th think we all recognize that the board of selectmen made an ill advised decision i think we're all smarter as a result of that and the board of selectmen i believe has has taken a lesson from that and we are three volunteers basically doing the best we can i think in the end the outcome of the town green was ok and but the everybody is just wiser for that experience and i'm sorry getting tired it's ok it's a long night town meeting voted what they thought was a a project and the board of selectmen let themselves be swayed into thinking that they have the  chain they were they were concerned with you know meeting the needs of certain residents who spoke up and there was a squeaky wheel situation and the board of selectmen cannot over rule a town meeting and that it's one hundred percent not ok thank you peter dorfman you know the road precincts in our town has many issues but as i've told a few of our poor town meeting members tonight i'm here as a single issue voter i strongly support the decision to build the new school summerize police it's now time for us to address the road problem our roads are another major legacy that we will leave to our children and they are also a big impact on current quality of life so in my opinion it's now time for us to take seriously that problem before it overwhelms  what is your plan to address this problem mr epstein roads i think the roads are in a crisis situation that's not a secret in belmont my view my mother's father was in the paving business in philadelphia so i'm actually acutely aware of the conditions of our roads i hope that belmont as a town will come together and agree that this should be a top priority it will require assessing how we deploy our funds if there's a future override how much of that override should be directed to increasing our paving budget and that but the town has to commit itself to doing this that would be miss bennett next i'm not only committed to us having better roads  you know tires in shocks and struts like it is also appalling to me the condition of the sidewalks in town in our crew are terrible infrastructure that we have for keeping our walkers our bicycles safe my question is similar it's also about the road so in our neighborhood to be made push to some of the roads and we have talked with the town and they've said they won't do anything unless one hundred percent of the people on private roads agree and this is a very high hurdle to get over and on our road of your question ok on our road we've gotten seventy percent of the people to make the road public and the road question  so my question is what would you do to improve the process for making a private road public and also know that the conditions of the roads up there are horrendous and i feel the pain of the residents who want to fix it and who are stymied by the residents who don't want to make it a public road unfortunately we're  hamstrung by the process if you want to make a private road public not only does the have to be one hundred percent but it's expected to be brought up to a certain level before the town is going to take it over at this point the town is spending so much money patching potholes though we really need to find a way forward for you know as it was already noted where our hands are really tied when it comes to that and till that road gets together and gets that one hundred percent i don't think there is anything we can do  i keep trying to shorten it absolutely go as i understand it private sorry as i understand it private ways were not accepted because they didn't meet standards at the time we even when they were built so now we have a situation where they're terribly deteriorated and i believe there are some significant legal obstacles for the town doing what this resident would like to see but i'm happy to reason with that question and i hate to do this but this is going to be the last question just honoring our time frame and only peterson precinct one zero well maybe maybe we'll stay a little want but we have to get out of school you know we've got folks cleaning up ok we've heard a lot riot about funds being in short supply my question is a simple one and i'm wondering if with many of the older trees that have fallen in re storms do you feel that allocation of funds for maintaining green space as well as our tree canopy should be a priority for as both a means to combat climate change as well as maintain the beauty of our town not that ok let's start mr flood but i think you're asking if we're trying if we're maintaining the trees probably yeah i just don't i think i've heard that there hasn't been and there's not enough funds to replace the fallen trees so wondering if you guys would support the only thing the only thing that out there are not on the trees i know that there's been an issue with the storms this year they're already over over budget for just cleaning up all the trees are the come down  so we definitely have a lot of work in progress to be able to move that project and move that forward i love trees i spoke in town meeting a couple of years ago that it was shameful that we only had a ten thousand dollars tree budget for the whole town so i would like to make every effort to replace trees that they come down whether because of storm disease or other reasons you know this is and this is a growing problem in town another  nother terrible pun ok but you know there are lots of norway maples around town that are reaching the end of their lives and they're choked by the sidewalk so we're just going to see this more and more we have to put a concerted effort into maintaining the character of our town tree lined streets also slow down motorists and create a safer environment for pedestrians to be walking so i think that we have to look at it as a character in a safety issue thank you and by popular acclaim our last question vino goldenberg precinct two i have a question related to the council on aging and their need for a full time social worker two weeks ago the league and the council on aging co sponsored a forum on the subject and involved also were the police department and the fire department they get so many needs for social services of people that they work together with a console and so the push is for a full time social worker to deal with this population seniors a number are growing in this town and the needs are very serious what is your position on a full time social worker have you had time to epstein i have to say going door to door i have been startled by see the condition of some of the seniors i've met they need social workers at the same time out possibly by cutting back some other program unless there's other decisions other funding can be found but the social need is very real miss bennett i have kids in the schools and i believe that a full time social worker is important enough that i think that we could make the trade off if we need to make a trade off with one school position in order to take care of our seniors in town that i do think that that's incredibly important i know from interactions myself about neighbors with the police department that we're spending a lot of money for our st responders to handle things that could be maybe avoided by having a full time social worker on staff so i am in full support of us having a full time social worker for the council on aging if we implement a volunteer group that can go around and check in with the seniors i think that'll that'll fill some of that void carly thank you all right we've got closing statement everybody gets one minute for your closing statements beginning with jessica bennett there's been a great discussion thank you again to league of women voters for doing this incredible work in town and please volunteer join the league of women voters and help make this happen so i want to get serious about solving a lot of problems in town but in order to do that we need to be creative and resourceful we need to seek out new sources of revenue and look for the talents of belmont citizens to help us to find ways forward i've spoken with thousands of belmont residents about budgets schools trash sidewalks and i've truly listen to their concerns i've served on community boards in town committees for eight years in meetings and online door to door and on playgrounds i have learned about what matters to you and i know how to lead our town to address these issues i'm jesse bennett and i ask for your vote on april nd thank you collaboratively represent our community i will be the voice for all community members that has been missing for many years as a local business owner i will utilize my years of experience to establish business friendly town policies to increase community support and strengthen our tax base utilizing my military force one experience i will work tirelessly to implement new solutions to address traffic congestion and improve safety such as adding four way stops at every intersection surrounding our schools i will do this through open discussion without negativity i will listen and work to understand various opinions i will welcome all input every person in our community matters just as each vote matters i ask you to keep an open mind continue dialogue and demand complete transparency from your leadership r you here and to those watching at home good government doesn't just happen it comes from experience and hard work you have to listen to everybody i have demonstrated real achievement for years we thought the police and d p w work would cost ten million we're doing it for ten the town budget is more than one hundred twenty million dollars that's a huge responsibility for knocking on your doors i know you're worried about overrides and maintaining school in town services the hockey rink and library are top priorities belmont faces a fiscal crisis i'm the only candidate with the right experience for these challenges in closing education counts independence counts experience really counts selectman should be your last job in town government not your st if you agree am roy up stein and i'm asking for your vote thank you and i would like to say thank you to all of the candidates for your willingness to run and to serve the town of belmont and thank you all for coming out and participating tonight thanks for being the moderator