to we're trying to find more chairs for those of you that are standing and yet there there are some chairs and listened for those of you who are standing but thank you thank you for to have a very simple structure to it number one and number two is we're going to strictly adhere to the time frames so that people can answer and ask questions and so that every component receives the same amount of time the way it's going to work is the time the financial task force will make their presentation that i have about fifteen minutes the school department will mark the superintendent will make his presentation it will also be fifteen minutes and then the representatives of the yes committee will make their presentation first this was determined by a coin toss and then the representatives of no committee will make their presentation again maximum of fifteen minutes with there will be time and we really don't want to make this a very late evening for anybody we hope to leave the most time so that all of you can ask your convened beginning a general twenty fourteen and conducted business well over a year well into january and i would say you can see the members of the committee i'm not going to read them all i would say that as a task force we met on a monthly basis as an overall task force the working groups which i will describe momentarily met several times in fact spent dozens of hours looking at all of the issues that we outlined as part of the task or so i do believe in terms of the appointments that this board made for the task force that was a broad williams we also appointed we thought it was important we thought about the membership in it was larger and then we brought in a little bit smaller than even that said we had significant number of members we also thought it was important to have what we call the focus group these individuals that are listed here it'll frenzy in two eleven jim bulles and justin amigo were individuals that really were not part of the working groups if you will they were actually group members and so as the working group came back to the task force meetings which were held monthly these focus group group members could be our sounding board in ask questions express concerns present constructive criticism in terms of some of the things that we're finding in some of the reports within the group working groups that we were submitting and i think that worked really well actually so the working group structure is we formed five working  of requirements an opt in opportunity for structural changes in group b was the financial projections on group b let me just state that the revenue opportunities were really non tax revenue opportunities that were  perhaps other service delivery models can we continue to do business where we do business under current financial cover financial program that we have today in life capital project funding needs and impacts and collect data task force and then john does his budget presentation i'm going to move on to group b which is revenue opportunity i think for carbon a town treasurer did share that he's not here this evening i don't believe in david you're going to go through this so that won't you please go through the revenue opportunities ok again copies of the reports are available at both ends of the stage here and then they are available online so i will not go through this in great detail since we are trying to be respectful of our time again you can see for yourself that basically other revenue opportunities group had a few charges one number one is to make sure that our fee structure is comparable to other busa pallies to make sure that we would not miss the opportunities to charge fees that were reasonable and competitive and that was confirmed by the group we also  parking fees and perks for parking permit fees those have been increased in this budget cycle and have yielded approximate fifty thousand dollars in additional revenue to the town for the sixteen budget recommendations of this  group were to again on a planning basis maximize the revenue opportunities for the town and school recreational assets again including the new pool and the existing indoor pool and basically try to come up with a model where basically we take all our school and town assets under one umbrella and make sure that we are optimizing the revenues that we can be collected from outside users for those assets in addition to that the board will be having working sessions to go over the recommendations of this group in the other groups but again one of the recommendations was to hire a recreation director to manage these recreation facilities as you may know  recreation department was merged with the public works department a few years ago to basically provide efficiencies and administrative support and that has worked very well because it is established a process to develop policies and procedures and to provide administrative support but the the recommendation of this group is to try to add another professional to basically move forward the recommendations of this subgroup and you get again in the report there is a listing tylenol parcels that are potential for sale or for a definition of public purpose there is a parking management plan that was approved by the board two thousand and twelve as part of the belmont center reconstruction project parking management opportunities such as the implementation of parking stations meter stations which will provide additional revenue to the town but also will allow the town to make sure that the spaces on leaded street turn over quickly so that some more public parking not only to support the pool but also to generate spaces for peter parker's or for commuter parkers to generate revenue to the town  and again as i mentioned one of the recommendations to really do feel better to make sure that the asset management to make sure that we can find vehicles to increase revenue and to support the cost of maintaining our facilities  what that we have let me just say let me just add i know that we want to know we're trying to move things along so two things that came out of this in terms of the presentation that were made in fortune with lloyds not here this evening that i took away one is that this group and i should have said this is the beginning that number the working groups we believe will continue the board may consider some type of implementation committee around the financial taskforce findings and i know that all of us are focused on only one recommendation within the field for task force report notes the override  question a four point five million but there were a number of the recommendations that we have a fiduciary obligation as a board to execute on i think the two on the revenue side that i thought of the most compelling is of course the ongoing dialogue around power payments which we continue to struggle with as a community and extremely challenging to find any real positive change there but i think this board needs to continue to support efforts by a board of assesses in talking to a number of our tax exempt organizations in town about providing some financial support for the services that we provide on an ongoing basis to them whether we have any success so that we're not will continue to try in the second i think beyond the fee issue in the parking fees which is you know still think we can work out we organize it how we think we can look at how we reorganize mom recreation and perhaps use our recreational assets that she has as underwood pool comes online in and some other sort of facilities perhaps come online as to maybe real some additional revenues that's more than one term play so i think this board will look real closely at that recommendation particulars i think that's most compelling the command of their review along with of course the fee structure that's now the compan me barry quickly so that i can do this fast the capital subgroup five members mark david or grade school department and myself on the capital budget committee spent the majority of our time on capital the buildings the big capital projects that are out there let me however start with what's labeled here is the pay as you go this is the annual capital budget and we did spend some time talking about that let me very quickly review that in the last few years the amount of requests that we have received for the capital budget have been between four and a half and five and a half million dollars we had around a million dollars to spend so that you can see there's not a lot we can't possibly meet everybody's needs we do the best we can so therefore as part of this proposed override money will come to the capital budget for the yearly pay as you go and it will be broken down in this way although capital budget committee has maintained that in order to keep up with the requests that we get a predictable flow of three million dollars a year would be really great we are still happy to take anything that anybody will give us so what's being suggested under the over i proposal is this that we would get an additional five hundred thousand dollars each of two years to be broken out three hundred thousand for the roads two hundred thousand for the sidewalks this would be in addition to the roads money that we are to have now about a million to from the two thousand and one roads override and whatever we get chapter ninety front funds from the states in addition to the five hundred thousand dollars we would also get five hundred thousand dollars in bonding capacity that would be one hundred twenty thousand dollars each of two years in cash which would allow us to fond of quitman up to half a million dollars that's with the capital budget annual pay as you go now the majority of our conversation was around the building projects if you take a look at the last fifteen years the town has gone a lot of really good stuff  built this senior center which is wonderful we've built the wellington school the pool is under construction we've proved a belmont center project we've replaced the harris field and track twice  know the fire stations yes and i knew there was something else thank you the fire station right all of that is good what's left to be done on high school the incinerator site d p w facility library and police station these are major projects we interviewed all of the stakeholders for those projects we talk commission talks to everybody who had any interest in those projects as a committee we looked at location we looked at cost we looked at feasibility studies how current they were and we tried to prioritize what order those buildings should be addressed in with debt exclusions in the town there were two problems the first is as the real estate people say location location location some of those projects have locations on high school incinerators ideas what it is and the d p w facility however still in question librarian police station where are they going to go the second issue that is significant is the state funding for belmont high school that is right now roughly one hundred million dollars project it probably will be more than that by the time ready to go forward with it with state reimbursement town piece of that is around seventy million dollars the state reimbursement is unknown now not the i'm out but when we're going to get it every year and if those of you who are here a little earlier selectmen and the superintendent talking about this and actually making a motion to submit the latest request to the states the state will send a letter sometime in december that says yes we're going to fund you or sorry no we're not going to fund this year but it's a year to year to year so it makes it very difficult for us to plan because this is a huge chunk of money and it affects everything else that we do similarly the library while there grant rounds are a little more predictable we still don't know whether we will qualify or not and their next grant round is coming up in a few so when we looked at all the projects the one high school clearly was immense need but so is everything else on that list and when we looked at location readiness feasibility study actually the d p w facility rose to top so that's what we addressed we have all of the figures for what it would cost to on those projects i think all of that information is on the website and we would like to see going down the road a plan for addressing all of these buildings because the that i got him off ok i will mention one more thing and i always forget this and that is that also as part of our discussions is the reality that over the last twenty and thirty years we to burbank and the wind brooke scrolls and guess what they're going to come back around began meeting some significant work and as anybody who's been paying attention to the school discussions with dramatic increases in and roland that will at some point in the very near future the cessna takes some action on our part whether it's portable classrooms or something but we are both areas so we have the support of one of the i think you didn't mention was the skating rink in and that's ok because one of the things that we see in the report the board of selectmen has begun discussions around the possibility of privatizing the rink and i want to get into that now but for all of you skating and hockey enthusiasm is not something that we ignore especially if you know what kind of condition it's in it's in if specially going down and watched a game and froze when you were down there it's really unfortunate disgrace so we are we are in discussions on it believe we might have some success around privatization of that rate but that's that's something that you take a little bit of time to do thank you marie them will remain in place i think this working group absolutely needs to remain in place because i don't think our work is done i've always said that there's we continue to need to look for ways to deliver services in a different way but she with our ongoing fiscal challenges and so hope we can because paul and other members of the task force to remain they continue to try to find ways to to look at how we deliver services and paul will have some talk about some recommendations that we put in here about looking for ways that we can collaborate with other communities that are prickly deal with the same issues we are both great thank thanks mark my name is policy on this one of the citizen representatives on the financial task force and i was on the committee with the david hale our political as well as on the town government you know i think one of the reasons i was chosen was it was hopefully from my background i'm an executive director of one of the largest financial services firms in the country and i came to this financial taskforce saying ok let's look at the center jesus are ways for us to cut government spending are we running our talent the efficiency efficiently and i think we came away with a lot of really good answers to that i think there's a perception that there's a lot of waste in government and i think you know on the positive side we came away that that simply wasn't the case belmont as a town is running much leaner than it was ten years ago fifteen years ago twenty years ago there's less police there's less d p w and i think at some point we've reached the you know the critical juncture of of where this air services are so one of the things that if i go over the first slide it was you know we were over the last twenty years public works permanent staff has been reduced by twenty six percent and it's seasonal we want to think critically about the level of service in the town do they need to increase do they need to decrease should they remains that one of the tough things obviously of a town like belmont is stated at the state level is down sixty three percent over the last twenty years and belmont is at the suffer of those cuts the other thing that we looked at was how do we compare belmont to other towns is it newton is at lexington and the two towns that we came away with really arlington and winchester and the reason we did it was because they get the vast majority of their revenue from property taxes which is what bella gets we don't have a large commercial base in belem and so we felt like it was really good to kind of compare ourselves to those towns a war and i went over arlington i know david and mark went over to winchester to see cut as much spending out of out the budget as they can one of the things interesting about really true regionalization is it would mean different towns combining and we think frankly just legally and logistically that that's probably a non the town is right they've been doing more with less for a long period of time i think we also can't we really impressed that this year leadership and that kind of institutional knowledge took twenty or thirty years to kind of develop the other thing i think unfortunately we came away with this is really no game changer here there was no silver bullet to say we found five million dollars and we can we can apply that to the school we can apply that to the roads there was no silver bullet we were certainly hoping to find it but but i think we knew at the end of the day that staffing continued to get leaner and i think the town has to question you know what do they what kind of services do we want to as residents but we did come away with some recommendations that  covered that a little bit establish a working group of town administrators and managers to really share best practices and generation of additional non property tax and again work more closely with state and local legislators to lobby for changes at the state do more in fact we should sort of be the leader here if we can in those other communities have dialogue with us about these issues and how we can address them because whatever happens enable either way we need to continue to address these issues that we're all facing with especially increasing health care costs our pension issues and and also some of the other service delivery models that we have in place when we met with all of the major department they all came in asking for more staff and you know we walked away thinking which really challenging in difficult folks is everyone has a different definition in terms of what's essential what's not essential depending on your particular circumstances so for the board of selectmen to try to decide what are a sweater essential services what are non essential first of all i don't know how you measure that and how you sort of debate in dialogue around that so that's real challenge for us i certainly think that we have to and i think we've we've come some ways especially with the work of the work committee and the work that they're doing around the budget we have to continue to look at outputs i think we have to do a better job in measuring the value of the services that we deliver and those up which in terms of the investments that we make not an easy thing to do at all is call programmatic budgeting and performance based budgeting we have to really migrate and evolve to the point where we're truly are looking at our budgets in a performance way performance management there's all kinds of courses out there i don't know many communities that have done this but i think we need to look for ways to continue to measure belmont's budget generally is funded from two major sources of revenue property taxes and state aid which rocks me eighty nine percent of our available revenues what the financial  projections grouping together superintendent promote this in terms of his presentation about shortfalls that have been experienced over the last couple years in the current year budget issues that the school department budget faces  and again some of the resources that were available to maybe cover some of the shortfalls of the past are no longer available those are findings of the financial projections subgroup again the superintendent will go over these items in detail his presentation about the roman and about special ed costs and about the fact that go to the last item here is basically we've done a model that takes us follow the fiscal sixteen through fiscal nineteen for fiscal sixteen which is the budget process we're developing we have again using the model and the actual budget project fall proximately two million nine hundred thousand dollars cumulatively that increases to four million for forty eight in fiscal seventeen and gets larger by fiscal nineteen to seven point seven million projections were developed in a way that we were trying to maintain programs and service levels in town departments with subjects options as mentioned by emory the financial model as five hundred thousand dollars allocated for additional roadway and sidewalk repairs that is in the model and that is part of the shortfall for the two million eight seventy that i talked about for fiscal sixteen in addition she talked about the hundred twenty thousand dollars it's included in the model that would allow five hundred thousand dollars worth of body capacity to be issued on a short term basis a five year note to basically borrow five hundred thousand dollars to cover some of our capital needs and that would reoccur in fiscal seventeen that's contained in the model in addition to that the model doesn't clue ten teaching positions i would note that in the superintendent's fiscal sixteen budget the balance is two available revenues assumptions are part of the model that was developed so you can consider that in addition to that again the model has increased money for special education to wish and which there has been an increase of the associated transportation and contracted services and temporary services which covers such things as substitute teachers and staff development the amounts of listed that are contained in the model again why we were developing this model for sixteen we basically were working on the actual sixteen budget so these numbers mirror themselves in terms of the part of the property tax based upon new growth or new construction some of the major projects that are assumed in the model are cushing village on the uplands and at the end star component that will be part of the new substation project closer to fiscal eighteen and nineteen recommendations again to use this financial model that's been created going forward by the various committees and the boy elected officials in town to consider the revenue opportunities group recommendations some of them are substantial and will require some period of time to implement but again to consider them and to make sure that we try to implement as many non property tax revenue  spent some time to try to find a balance to basically deal with capital projects to deal with bonding to increase our ability to fund those projects to deal with roadway and sidewalk and progress and then also to basically try to deal with our sixteen and seventeen problem immediately again so the four point five was a number that fell through balances three things of a million dollar increase to the property tax levy for the average single family home owner is approximate one hundred fifty dollars so basically or as the treasurer said they could tax the value divided by a thousand times  seventy six cents so basically the average single family home is approximately one hundred fifty thousand dollars based on the latest tax bills it basically would translate to about a six hundred fifty dollar increase in your tax bills for the average single family or obviously if you're poppy assessments higher it would be higher in terms of the overall net increase but if you use that seventy six sets number i think you can calculate what the amount of the individual tax bill so basically as i mentioned the four point five number was recommended to the board of selectmen to basically provide stability for the next couple years in addition to that a strategy to take some of the increase excess levy tax capacity in fiscal sixteen to basically bank that so that we can stretch if the override successful available dollars to the out years first eighteen and nineteen if possible to basically establish a stabilization basically bank savings or levy capacity that is not needed because some additional revenues may take place or in the case of projected savings with regard to special education that did not materialize because the number of students is declining or the cost decline basically try to bank those savings in out years so that basically those can be used in the future help balance the budget so at the end of the day as i mentioned seven point seven was the year number four point five was recommended to the board of selectmen to deal with sixteen and seventeen projected shortfalls but also to come up with a plan to basically try to extend the override amount if approved to the out years to basically to try to do with the budget problems in the future so the board of selectmen did receive this recommendation in terms of where we are the budget process  every year the war committee with the board of selectmen develops in available revenue budget so what that means is you take a look at where you are in the prop two and a half number you increase that by two and a half percent which is what allow law you increase that by any new growth that you think may happen which we get from the board of selectmen and then you go through all your non property tax revenues and basically take a look at what you were where you are for current year collections and tr project for the future for the non property tax revenues the budget that's available revenue budget has approximately four thousand dollars in increased nonprofit tax revenues in addition to that to make assumptions on state aid which is not known until later in the ninety three hundred eighty six thousand dollars in additional state in the governor's budget however the legislature has not yet weighed in and on with that number and that process continues to that number of may be the four it may be the ceiling it will it will be now that's a lot of pressure good evening my name is george vaillant of the product from kind of the belmont public schools and i'm thankful to have a healthy discussion about the finances of the community i'm very thankful for the financial taskforce work that was done that i was able to participate in the last eight months and make recommendations to the board of selectmen tonight my goal is to give you a context of what the work looks like to the belmont public schools as it relates to some of the pressures that are on the district that as we speak and then as we go through the context i'll actually provide you the scenario of what a financial task force over i budget would provide to the belmont public schools and what available revenue budget would provide for the more public schools so i will work through these forty five slides in the fifteen minutes that i was allotted i will not go over so if anybody wants to mark my time right now this has been on the web for over two months this is the twelfth presentation that we've had the fourth with the board of selectmen we've been to every school and we've been to other locations as well so i say that because i hope that a lot of you have already seen this information if you have not it's on the web for you to read and we do have about thirty or forty copies for the folks that may not be able to access it on line it would like to walk away with it tonight so if i skip slides i apologize i'm going to summarize and move quickly for you were timing you john i'm timing myself i got ten of and i got so five past so we want to set our goals for our budget every year we do so by having issue teacher plan we do so by having objectives but most importantly it's very important to talk about the context that we're in because we're at a very unique spot in time for the pub our public schools our goals really revolve around maintaining what we have because the enrollment that's going up is making it difficult and if everything stays equal it's hard to take what you have when you have more students coming in and it's also hard to maintain with you have when your budgets and recently is have been a deficit or needed to be frozen to accommodate some of those services that you have moving forward so there's going to be two teams that we have moving forward one will be in rome and it will not be the historic u funding of the schools that has been compound as time has moved on we want to maintain the fact that we have heard staff that we have great students and we are considered a level one district and we want to make sure that we provide all those good things to our students that we've been able to provide the pressure points of the district are in roman and i'll show you some slides that unpack with those numbers look like and what we projected to look like the deficit drivers that we have some of the items in our budget that are increasing that are state mandated in federal mandate a cost that we have to pay as part of our work as a public school system and some of the other curriculum issues that would like to resolve as well for an roman i know this is hard to see i apologize this is a chart that shows in the last five years alone that the district has grown by three hundred seventeen students k to twelve and as we project that moving forward we see another four hundred eight students that will come to the district giving us about a seven hundred  twenty five additional students to the district this was not inclusive of the two major proposals that are building projects that are going on in the town and after meeting with the town planner mr clancy we have come to the conclusion that we can predict about another seventy five students which is a an average in the range that they believe that they're going to see in rome an increase between those two projects so we could actually bring that number of seven twenty five up to about eight hundred students additional over that ten year span and we would then become a school district of over forty six seven hundred students so if you see back in october one of two thousand and nine we were just picked up thirty nine hundred students we project that by two thousand and nineteen will be of a school district of over forty seven hundred students that's more than two of our elementary schools put together these are just quick graphs that show that roma growth and what i want to do is talk about two sup groups within our aggregate roaming growth that have high expense items attached of the services that we provide one is our student population of students students that come to our community who need support in the language of english that student population of or is has risen from ninety eight in two thousand and nine to two hundred twenty two in october of this year those services come with me and data costs in related services that the state prescribes we don't get to choose how we deliver it we don't get to choose how we staff it that's a function of a state expectation that we have to do or are we to teachers short and we act actually have to provide those staff into next year's budget whether we would like to or not there's another population of students that have high budget items attached this services it's students who go out of district for this support these are students who are substantially challenged who we obey the law by moral right the access to a quality education and if we can't provide it in our own district they need to be serviced outside the school system this happens in every single city in town that has a public school system where they just don't have enough numbers of students to provide a program and they have to provide that program outside the school system if we had more space we might be able to bring some of these folks in to have them go to school in their own neighborhood to have them take the bus with their neighbors and go to school together but we have a restriction of space in the restriction of the  accumulation of students that have the same type of need that we could provide efficiently these students have gone up from ninety one in eighty one in eighty seven to ninety seven students and i can tell you right now that number is ninety nine as of last week the average cost per child is about sixty thousand dollars per child with a range of fifty to about one hundred fifty thousand dollars per child per year just there alone you can see how your budget can increase and escalate within  year with a few students that have certain needs you have to provide for when we get to the current deficit the district is in a five hundred thousand dollars projected deficit for the year that we're in we have experienced deficits in the last two fiscal years and we have experience freezes in deficits in four of the last five years i bring the slighter attention because our deficit concerns in the school side are not related to anything that happened this year or just last year this is a small cumulative effect of services getting more expensive services needed to provide that a mandated in a budget that didn't support it and therefore we have four out of the last five years had the free spending in two of the last two years it's support from the war committee in town meeting to fund the budget by the end of the year there are a lot of different pieces that fall into why the step as it has accumulated over time it's been a series of support from the town that a one time funding items to different types a one time funding areas of funds that we can access through our collaborative work with the lab in the echo population that we work with those funds and no longer available for the time we have exhausted over the last agreement for gasoline at a two dollar per gallon rate as they collaborate with brookline in another town and a collaborative we do that on a regular basis for everything from our purchases for electricity our purchases for books in materials and supplies professional development bus transportation cost us special education transportation costs and a special education services all those expenses that are awful high we go out and we collaborate with other towns to get that that price down as much as we can on behalf of the town we have a great history of collaborating with the town i can't speak highly enough of the partnership i have with the town hall and the other town white departments and we all experience the february that we'd like to forget and look forward to spring it opening day soon but that was a great example of collaboration across all town services in our community so when we get to some quick facts and trends if you look in the department of elementary and secondary education that's the d e s c that's the those are the folks that control and supervise the k to twelve population of schools they say out loud every year how much does every single town pay per child for this school and education services this is their comparison this is a formula and we go by them this is an apples to apples comparison of every single school district in the in the commonwealth the state average is fourteen thousand five hundred seventy one dollars per child belmont pays twelve thousand seven hundred ninety nine dollars per child that's a difference of about seventeen hundred seventy two dollars per child if you multiply that by the forty three hundred students that we serve you could say out loud that we're having  what other towns have in their budget that we don't is about seven million dollars the graphic shows the sun surrounding communities that we like to compare ourselves to burlington lexington bedford watertown wellesley wayland they all pay higher than the state average the state average being about fourteen thousand burlington lexington bedford watertown all pay over sixteen thousand dollars per child and some of them almost up to eighteen thousand per child belmont is on the right side of the average at that twelve thousand dollars mark so when we look around to see what other towns and communities are doing around us that's how much they spent on education versus where we spent in the in our community at this point in time so that is the context before we go forward with the two budget options so i took five minutes on context hopefully i'll take five minutes on one budget scenario and five minutes on the other i will finish by that ten past time i want you to remember that the big voted it and they accepted it and now we have a motion or a vote on the april seventh ballot for an override of four point five billion dollars they asked to do a three year plan of the schools and we provided a three year plan that addresses the enrollment in the key budget drivers that we need to support in the budget with real dollars in those budget line items so those other line items don't have to pay for things like out of district cost contract and services in transportation so the three year plan will outline the financial support we'll put into those budget lines to pay for those budget escalating line items that we described earlier it also will provide a list of despair of positions that we would like to see put in place to support in rom before i get to the actual positions what we haven't outlined here clearly but was outlined in the slides that david showed is that we're actually putting deposits in to additional funds for special education transportation contract services which ranges from everything from translating services to counseling services to occupational therapy services all those deposits in those line items and those major line items are a big piece of this override amount of this financial  we gets a position you'll notice that almost everything on this chart as it relates to elementary middle and high school is around just supporting the district in the growing in romans that has at the elementary level it goes elementary middle high district why we have teachers to get one more classroom in one school building to grow each grade by just one class and hopes the kind of bring down that class size so we're asking for kindergarten one two three in the next three years that's all that the elementary schools are getting there's no shiny bikes there's no brand new programs it's one more teacher per grade to supply one more classroom to reduce class size at the middle school we have one more fifth grade teacher to bring that wave of  enrollments up to the middle school and we have students who sit in study halls and our middle school we want another teacher to provide some exploratory coursework for those students so they're not sitting in nodding gauge by teacher but sitting in a study hall at the at the middle school at the high school we want to provide three teachers because we have students who are also not engaged that we want to provide elective classes for our content elective classes for to support students who are physically in the library or the cafeteria of the hallway during the school day and not in the classroom we also need to provide that to english language learning teachers that brings the total to ten in year one five in year two and there's another five year three so essentially what the see over right at the the belmont public schools an infusion of money into those big budget driver accounts and i see my friend astute in the back you look at the clock he's actually he's time in the right now most my senior back there belmont high and it gets us ten positions in year one five in year two and five in year three we support the task force because it doesn't only support the schools it supports the whole town it's a town budget that we are a part of kind of like a precursor if you have it if you have a weak stomach this will be a tough few slides we have to pay all of our bills that's the first thing you do when you have a problem at home with you find it's you pay your bills we pay them all we start with our old budget all the things in red show all the amounts that have increased over time you have to pay those bills it's like your mortgage your light bill and your gas bill that results in a one point six million dollars deficit i can't do the math for you because they have a minute and a half we have all the folks who w on these reductions we have reductions at every level that add up to one point seven four hundred at the elementary three hundred at the middle three hundred at the high in six hundred at the district wide level here is a list of all the positions just at the elementary school that will be reduced or cut ranging from guidance counselors to teachers to clerical aides in professional aides hear the impact statements at the middle school math english science social studies world language electives and also small group reading at the high school english math science social studies world language in performing arts all of those things will bring very very concerning school conditions to our children i could spend a lot of time talking about with the high school is it's in a very bad spot right now i can tell you that the teen model at the middle school is a vital part to keep our middle school students engaged that would be sacrificed and i got to tell you that the last slide that shows where we are is the student impact that we have students here today want to thank them for coming that if you talk about if you lose r t i aides at the elementary school that will impact a thousand students if you lose these positions will have over seventy five percent of our students in class sizes bigger than the school we would like to see we would have nine hundred fifty students impacted by the loss of the team model at the high school would have twelve hundred students in class sizes above twenty seven in just math in english at the high school we have two hundred eleven students not able to take a p courses at the high school that are vital and we promised them that they would be there for this success next year as seniors to move on to higher ed we would have a lack of course offerings that would impact every single child high school seniors will only be able to take five courses the schedule has seven slots but will only let them take five classes because there's not enough staff to provide those types of courses so there are real students in the hallway i was at the high school is sitting in the cafeteria is sitting in the library in r t h it's five past i'm up probably thirty seven seconds over my time i can only say out loud that i appreciate the dialogue that this community is having about whether or not  this is a good move for the district in for the town i respect that everybody has a view of what is best for the town and i'm glad that we're having that discussion today it's my job to advocate for the schools but it's also my job to be a respectful and efficient member of the tax dollars so i pledge that if any of these funds that are not spent on the students that go out of district if that number goes from ninety seven to ninety two and we save three hundred thousand dollars because we actually had children either move out of town or the numbers last i will put that money into the revolving account that we will establish as a town so we can extend this money for future years it's not in my best interest as your superintendent it's not in my best interest for her a taxpayer for you to spend that money on things that we didn't say we would so i make that pledge to work with townhall i make that pledge to make sure that we give our children what they need and i appreciate your time and your efforts and i thank you very very much approval f y seventeen continuation of the increased funding for roads and sidewalks addition of another hundred twenty thousand so that we can bond another five hundred thousand for other capital projects in addition of that the money that's in destabilisation fund could actually be extended to accommodate potential budget items in zero eighteen then and only nineteen if for example revenue this is based on projected revenue growth of two and a length than we did of the league of women voters and i know that's not a good format but you know two or three minutes snippets is very hard to have a real conversation like to have tonight is i'm glad that the town is engaging in a very serious very  underwood building committee town meeting member precinct one in the soft touch you can't say no and i'm here again tonight to talk to you about the override and why you should vote yes i thought about doing an entire powerpoint presentation but i think that's really the only slide that i want for tonight despite all the figures and facts and every side's throwing out a lot of numbers and honestly the thing is very simple really at its basis i'm the yes is to keep the schools as they're currently funded which has been as a mr failing as stated have been cut over the past number of years for various ways to fix roads and sidewalks into some long range planning voting no is to cut those that do the cuts that are failing just stated i'm not going to go through that all again and to have the roads deteriorate further the sidewalks to cherry further and to take more of a short sighted approach to things with me tonight i guess daniel vernix high school senior the possessor of the infamous level this last time about the the deteriorating condition of our roads and i can tell you that the tear rating condition of the roads have been continuing so i found another one  situation is such for the financial task force and you heard david hale talk about it with thirteen people with a four person advisory panel did a lot of work over the past year people from all across the political spectrum in they came up with a bunch of ideas on how to fix some of the problems that we seem to have in town one of them was a four point five million dollar override which was actually already right sized to a much larger number coupled with some other structural and other changes and reforms which which i support and the first thing that this like would have taken out of the box out of that list is the four point five million dollar overwrite piece and that's what's before you on the ballot right now the the override is only one of many of those recommendations we don't want to stop the process of long range planning by stopping the very  first recommendation that comes out of that financial task force report now i've heard from from the no side i mean you heard last time that they want to have more study but they want to take more time and come up with a different solution to the things we just did the study we don't want we don't need to keep repeating i think bump to be honest with you i think belmont's number one export seems to be studies that we take and shelve and don't do anything on the problem going to we did the pool we found up peter caspian a pulled out in one nine hundred ninety three study redesign a whole new underwood pool and it went in  shelf and nothing happened the studies are great you know like a sunset they go up on the shelf and the really pretty to look at but they don't accomplish anything what we need is not study what we need is to act it's not like you know the house is on fire the firemen show up and they're like well this is somewhat of a dire situation particularly on the school side it's not a time to cheap out it's also a time to stand up and do what we need to do here to accomplish the goals of the town now i've also heard the argument that you know if we if we do the override that we're going to somehow price middle class people out of town or something like that but the thing is that the cuts are going to make it such i don't think the middle class people necessarily to be the town that they want i mean i think i talked about this last time when i was here we were over at the the treasury where i got this letter from some people from brighton unsolicited i'm my neighbors got it as well asking you know saying they wanted to take their kids and move to a place with better schools and was my house for sale which it's not but i guess it depends on the price right but nevertheless they were saying that i think what you're seeing is people of middle class who are willing to move into belmont and pay more to get the services and it's harder for them necessarily to scrape the money together but i think you're seeing an example of that there are a lot of people maybe in the room who fall within that category likewise voting no would push down teacher salaries if that's one of the things that they're trying to do here again making it harder for them to afford to live here working class people that's who we're trying to help but we also need to preserve the town we need to preserve what we've got here which isn't really all that you know roads and sidewalks aside so i think both sides in the interest of the comedy here i think both sides actually do have some things in common right i think we all agree the overrides going to increase taxes i think the answer to that would probably be  d the thing is that the increase in taxes is six hundred forty four dollars and forty cents for the average taxpayer so says the board of assessors march ninth two thousand and fifteen in this memo an override analysis to the board selectmen six forty four forty so the i don't think it's fair i think that the figure of this eight hundred something figure you're hearing i don't think it's fair because that's including what i can tell the c p a and the two and a half override figure that's in there every year those aren't on the ballot just so we're clear those are sunk costs you've already voted the c p a that's already in there the two and a half override that we do that every year it's already in there all that's on the ballot is the six hundred forty four dollars and forty cents to preserve the schools and the roads and the sidewalks that's what's in the that's what's on the ballot for april seventh we also i think we all agree it seems to be that we agree that we need an override it sounds like we're talking about an amount possibly but i guess if there are people out there who think that they don't want to override or they don't want any tax increase i don't think either side is really making that case right now but i think what you're hearing is that the four point five million dollars over it is already what i'm saying is the reduced amount recommended by the financial taskforce put on by the and put on the ballot by the by the selectmen there is no other override on the ballot when you go to vote it's going to say four point five yes or no there's no guarantee that there's no other there's no other override actually when we did some studies the work committee a number of years ago about the last override we were looking what other towns had done towns where they had done different values on the override the override failed i don't think if you were going to come back and try to do another override that you're going to get any over right now that's what your goal is that's fine but i think we need to be clear on what we're talking about i think third i think both sides agree we need a long range plan i that's what i've been hearing i think we all agree on that i think we have one the financial is to stretch it over time it's not meant to just cover just next year we're not trying to put a band aid on the problem we're trying to set up some money to solve the problem in a larger sense in the longer term so by doing that we will will be actually helping ourselves in the long run not have to do this over and over again and you heard we got we heard from will brown's burger and from mike widmer as well that the increase in state aid that the governors put forward is not a certain thing they've got  they've got to fund the t they've got lots of other things that they need to do it may not come through believe me i hope it does i hope the revenue goes way way up and then we can stretch that four point five million dollars as long as we possibly can it's not an argument not to do it because it's an argument to do it the revenue assumptions on that financial the financial taskforce are made i think we're proprium conservative you can't do is assume we're going to get some money that we don't know we're going to get and then get caught short in the middle of the year next year we're already five hundred thousand dollars short this year and there's only so much money we have to plug holes like that now we have some issues and i know that you've heard them before that these these kingly are issues that i talk about where people you know rage at things that we can't control this you know spit fire spit rain the all the stuff like the teachers unions and the step in lean system and that sort of thing but we really you know these are issues that are larger in the reform issues and i support going forward on them the problem is like i said in the house is on fire we need to do something now we need to act now we can still do those other things i mean if we could renegotiate the teacher's contract that would be nice but the teachers contract goes for two more years whether you like it or don't like it we have to pay it and we don't have in we're in a deficit next year we can't pay it if we don't do this without making cuts secondly the step in lane system that the unions use i'm not terribly in favor of it either however almost every other city in town of massachusetts has it this is a state problem it's not going to be addressed certainly not in the short term certainly not just by kicking it down the can can down the road one year i've talked about the revenue issue the revenues come in higher rate doesn't mean you vote no i think it means you vote yes thank you so if we assume  that the departments can solve the problem solve all problems you know i heard that there's a management issue it's a management issue you know the problem is i don't know who the management problem is i don't see it being the town administrator the board of selectmen the work committee the school committee it sounds like everybody is doing pretty good job you know we talk we have no override since two thousand and two it was zero percent health care growth a level one school system a aaa bond rating per people spending twelve percent below the state average taxes that are tax rate two hundred  sixty fifth out of three hundred fifty one cities and towns you should be so mismanaged i think this is actually a pretty good situation that we have right here i don't think it's a management problem the problem is that matter is some of the things that dr phil  showing which is the just the enrollment and the other issues that we were attacking were approaching plus some of the other fundamental issues built into the budget let's assume the no numbers are correct for the sake of argument obviously i don't agree with them but i let's assume that they're true it doesn't change the choice right the choice is still you keep the schools the same and you fix the roads and sidewalks or you make the cuts you heard about and you don't fix the roads and sidewalks the number can be this big number can be that big number could be a hundred per household or six hundred rasul it doesn't you know in the big picture the question is really what do you value what do you want to do a or b yes or no that's all that's on the ballot i wish we could have yes but on the ballot but you don't it's yes or no i was going to go through and list all of the all of the things that we're going to be cut but i think mr failon did that and likewise as i started doing i start actually bore myself going through the long list because it's so voluminous it's like forty nine line item cuts in the schools it's just  mind numbing it's so long so it's all really a question i think of what you value here it's good education costs money i think we can all agree roads cost money schools cost money do you want those things or not i mean that's really what we're here for an april seventh to vote is do you want these things or not we used to invest in the town for a while we stopped investing in the town things degrade it and now unfortunately we kind of have to play catch up it's unfortunate the chickens have come home to roost but you've seen the numbers and they just have i think yes is the way forward is the action it's moving forward and looking at long range planning and no it's just sort of the same old system we're used to just shove things and kick the can down the road you know roads we used to be able to just do little repairs on nafta be entirely replaced because we've ignored the problem for so long that it's deteriorated past the point of a repair into a replacement your vote will have a real local immediate impact on your life i think whether you vote yes or no no is a gamble i think knows an unwarranted risk i think that i think we need to make a long range planning choice and we need you to vote yes on april seventh to note i think both sides would like you to know that actually  question on the back of the ballot i think the easy way to remember that is back to the override vote ye pretty please proceed we're going to get here we go i am a town meeting member precinct three member i am the vice chair of the planning board former member of the warrant committee former chair of the warren committee my one of my particular claims to fame is former chair  the ward committee is that i was chair of the year that first the town accountant and then the town administrator left as the assistant pounded ministry background was in human resources and therefore selected members of the war committee were charged with actually putting together the revenue projections and the revenue portion of the budget so i have seen a great deal of the revenue projections and the town budget i'd like to introduce three other members of the vote no committee who will also be resource people during the question session roughly magick ian who's our treasurer member the warrant committee and down meeting member member of the warren committee town meeting member and chair of the education subcommittee and jim gamble town meeting member member of the warrant committee our purpose tonight we have we have three  first slide particularly in light of the last couple minutes is just to remind you belmont a wonderful time we do an amazing number of things well our public safety responses to minutes as chief mclaughlin says were out and about our schools are terrific contrary to what you've heard we do support them annual budget increases for the last ten years for the schools have been over four percent and that's not easy to do in a two and a half percent environment the student teacher ratio is under sixteen just under sixteen and if we were a country admittedly a small country we would be the you've all seen these tests on which american students do not do as well as students in other countries if belmont were a country our students would be the best in the world we beat singapore shanghai and hong kong one could spend a lot of time going through this i just want to call out two of my favorites we have almost forty percent rental housing that makes us an economically diverse community in the way that other communities that have schools and services of our quality are not we have belmont which is an absolutely wonderful occasion and demonstrates what a welcoming town we are and we have the highest library of any town in the middle men network next and we'll move along next ok the that's that's call one the other things we want to accomplish tonight are first to make it clear what the committee's starting point is so we agree we need to fund the level service budgets for the schools we need to identify another one point seven million dollars in revenues for the schools in twenty sixteen the school budgets the bus is in a ditch we need to pull that out and pulling it out is the priority what we don't agree on next slide is best way to do that so for the remainder of my time i want to destroy explain why we think a four point five million dollar override is a bad way to solve the towns and the schools issues and in a more positive vein to describe the alternative that we hope you will vote and hope you will support next slide the number this is our list if there were worlds and time enough i'd go through every one in detail but let me just pick one and the re five and six hopefully there will be questions on the others first the financial can we have no we have admiration for many sections of the path of the financial task force report we believe the financial projections  slide are simply too pessimistic the revenue forecasts are lower than the last four years there are significant believe below the levels of the last ten years and that included quite a recession i think we've talked about that at some length but it is important next sli when we have when we need one point seven million dollars for next year and we're voting four point five there is a great deal of undoes needed money floating around it can be put into a fund that fund can be labeled anything people want to let you label it but the fact is it's money on which there is no particular claim and i think if we reflect on our own personal experience when there  money around that sort of an allocated a variety of things tend to happen to it and most of them aren't good next slide in next life and we've talked about the drivers of school costs but the key and certainly in rome it matters certainly matters certainly special ed matters but the key driver is teacher compensation a four point five million dollar override will ratify the hardliners in the teachers union who say just keep on going keep on going push through five percent five and a half percent increases per year by asking belmont voters to pay on the average eight hundred fifty four dollars more next year by emboldening the unions and setting the town setting the schools up for another very expensive collective bargaining settlement we escalate the tongue costs and when the moment comes when finally massachusetts finally we get our chance to build our height when the mass school building authority finally sends us our letter saying we're ready to go for the high school and it's time to go to the voters and ask them for another one thousand and seventy two dollars would there's a risk they won't want to do it if their taxes have gone up by five and six percent a year each year in previous years next life and finally i was at one of these meetings and someone said to me you can't afford the increase you should move out of belmont i think that's a very i think that misstates the fundamental  underpinnings of belmont success we're a town that succeeds with no commercial base no industrial sick base and here's the secret of our success we get people to move here they send their children to the schools their youngest child graduates from belmont high school and then they stay for another thirty years having these people leave is not a good idea next light  that's those are our concerns with the four point five million dollars override i want to spend the rest of my time on what we think is the road better taken and it's a three step process the first is to vote on it  seven the second is on april eighth to ask we asked the board of selectmen to put together a group to begin the following process the first is to look revenue forecast that's in the town that you've all seen says revenues are going to increase by one point eight million dollars by one point eight percent that is an astonishingly low number for a town where revenues have regularly increased by three point five percent if revenue in f y twenty sixteen had been forecast to grow at the rate of the last four years and we all understand even the fed has had to say things are getting better things are getting better we would have a one point six one million more to spin if there were not a very extra a very conservative or as have new estimate we'd like this working group that the selectmen would put together to go back in the budget and see how much of a problem we truly have after we screw up the revenue forecasts i have a couple ideas on who might be part of that group we have we will on a week from tomorrow have a new school committee may i would say all the school committee members with m b a s to the front i understand that the new school committee member is has an m b a from someplace out west and has done a certain amount of work in business he might make a contribution there are numerous others who've done this before and could be pulled together could go back david are you again part of the mandate is to look at cost solutions to look at whether there are there is spending we would look if the group should look at every new ad in the but in the proposed budget see whether there should be some real allocations from one department to another the budget committee has been at work on the budget there may be some insights there and look at anything else that comes to mind if at the end it is at that point that the selecting it would we would support calling a special election to put a reasonable and justified override on the ballot whose sources everyone would have been able to see and that is in proportion to the need what's the benefits of these approaches the first is that belmont continues to be a town for all we're not going to double people's taxes in the next ten or eleven years we're not going to jeopardize critical capital projects seeing it all in front give people more trusting town government learning more about the schools which would be one outcome of this process and by learning more i mean people who aren't in the schools it's an amazing school system the more people learn about it the more they will support it and finally preparation for twenty seventeen and beyond let me end with one example superintendent failon has talked about the english language learners and the choir it's those creates if we're looking beyond twenty sixteen here's a question suppose there were i suppose superintendent your charge were to as well by english language learners as we're doing now but there were no state mandates could you do as well for less money and if the answer to that is yes and i am not presuming that yes but if it is we have a new administration in the state house it is time to ask our state representatives to seek a waiver and to be more imaginative about the way we approach these things that's the that's our preferred alternative we think the town's better off we ask for your no vote on april seventh because that's the only road in again want to thank the selectmen and town administrator and now i want find we want to introduce rafi the rest of our committee again in just remind you that they're available for questions and now we really look forward to the question you both committees for your presentation that was really good and thank you liz for staying with me and the fifteen minutes i was also really got now the questions will be what we're going to ask is that everybody this is a question and answer session please have a question it's not about speeches it's about asking a question i will get an answer to quickly as possible if somebody asked the same question before you please don't ask it again i was just trying to get people out of here in a decent time with that please identify yourself and ask your question my name is greg stone a funny thing happened to me on the way here my clothes were as white as my hair but i fell into a pothole i actually want to give mr mann jakey an opportunity to confirm or deny a rumor i heard from the high school today is a true sir that your son and namesake is in favor of the override heard from the no people seems to impugn the credibility of a rather star studded task force that mr billow put together and there seems to be an assumption that the assumptions contained in that were or are invalid now it's been said that economists don't predict the future because they know but only because they're asked and so i would ask the know people to tell us why they think this just to clarify there are four sections of the financial taskforce that we think are valuable and a major contribution but two observations the forecasts in the tax pass force economic projections are a sharp break with history and if you break sharply with history you need to have a good reason that's point to the second is that a hundred  seventy seven page report there are perhaps six pages devoted to the cost side and to produce a long term financial plan one has to l expenditure side perhaps revenues could come in higher based on the stroke experience and kind of looking having work closely with david every single line item and trying to understand exactly what things may have steve stood i mean i  that but i felt comfortable with the financial model and i think it is conservative on the revenue side frankly and perhaps will come in better under the she would ministration but you've seen were stated has gone over time so we can debate the line  add it you know wherever we feel comfortable enough to move forward where they stood today thank  and i don't like to know that there is no other election on the ballot there's one question on the ballot is four point five million dollars you're assuming that should that override fail that there will be some other one which we don't know that people would campaign for and i don't know who that would be and that it would pass and i think history and other towns are shown that it would not so i think this is your chance to vote it's on the ballot now at four point five this i teachers we're not going to have the school system we have now and i'm wondering if there is a concern on your part in terms of what kind of impact that's going to have a morale of the factory and staff or you revenue estimate baked into the twenty sixteen budget is so conservative that that is achievable and to go back to the point that adam made a moment ago suppose we fell sh and asked the selectmen to call a special election who would go what would happen who would work for it i understand this is not the first choice of anyone who's in favor of the four point five million but if that were off the table and the only choice was to vote for some override or no override perhaps not happily i believe the people would come and they would vote because it's so much better for the schools than the alternatives in the end people will not damage the schools and if the required revenue is not found in the budget which i believe it can be people will come and they will vote think of it this way if all the people who plan to vote no come out and vote yes it'll probably p fact if we're not successful we're going to have to do something we can't just throw up our hands and ignore it so thank you liz and others who i've worked with over the years respect and admire the work committee because i think this board will lead to look for ways to work together if your facts were unsuccessful on the april action to figure out a way forward we're ready and i would also note the one point seven does not touch the roads or the or the sidewalks or the capital budget money it's also a one year band aid you're going to be right back to the problem where you w dockings i'd like to i'd like to just state that i think the if i understand the arguments they based on the optimism of the no committee is based on a lot of fairly rosy assumptions and  wishful thinking about the good will of voters should the overripe fail to pass and i want to know what guarantees the committee can give us that the schools will be funded adequately next year should be over i feel and i'd like to make one more point i saw community which are children who don't vote and really an agreement that we educate them minimally as well as we ourselves were and i can tell you i am a product of public schools i never had a point in my high school career where i was limited taking five courses and sitting idly in the hallways so can you answer my question regarding the guarantees for the funding of the school yeah i pointed it out earlier i want to know what guarantee the committee can make as to the adequate funding for the school should be over i felt thank you list would you like to respond yes the world has few guarantees but hype this is not a world of guarantees but it's a world of very high probability as i've explained how conservative the revenue estimate is one point eight percent growth is a rate of growth that we haven't seen in belmont literally for years and i've shown that i growth in twenty sixteen is simply what it's been in the last three or four years it will have one point six million dollars for the schools simply on the revenue line before we've looked at anything else a very large override poses risks like that exclusion for a high school renovation we just desperately need it so we're choosing among risks we're not choosing a world without risks but we want to do a full long range multi year four point million dollar long range plan not a one year band aid that's not going to solve the underlying problems to be honest we couldn't build a beautiful high school i mean you have a deficient program what's the point as you make it the bottom up approach i think david undertook was sound as we look at each one m to where the revenue may fall out granted it absolutely is on the conservative side but i don't think it's that as construed as perhaps to be suggested thank you my name is andy and i have a question for the no group when you calculated that the average class at the belmont school system is sixteen point one students to each teacher ar calculating into that the severely disabled children that are required and mandated to have one teacher with them in order to teach them and also the students that are so ill that they are taught in the hospital system is that part of your average lives would you like to respond with your permission i'd like to ask the figure that was used was a was a student to teacher ratio was to class size because when you get to class size you're talking about how the harvard utilizes a staff ok so i suppose that you actually not class sizes a student to teacher ratio there's a differen  tats the stay keep sinister for statistics as well what we're saying from a funding point of view is that that's how much that's how many positions are funded through the budget ok and the next question i have is let's say that with this new administration we could get more creative and perhaps there wouldn't be required e s l teachers that we could come up with new methods for that and that struck me kind of made me nervous because i remember a time when i went to school when the disabled children were in the back room in a cinder block room learning how to nail into wood and i have a son with cerebral palsy who's going to be going to georgetown who would have had we reconfigured based on a new administration ways to handle things that cost money but  some of us think are good thing to do is our question or the question is is this the kind of thing when you talk about replacing your se years and and maybe coming up with new methods with this be something because we look at how much it costs to take care of disabled children that you might wan try to find a way to reconfigure just again to be clear i did not put that on the list up to plenty of ways to protect the schools in twenty sixteen i asked the superintendent whether that might be something for him to think about in twenty seventeen and i think it most unlikely that if he thought about it and developed an alternative approach that it would run any risk of damaging children i am not proposing to do that myself i'm proposing to ask the superintendent to think about it so you'd encourage you to think a different strategy ok i just thank you and sure that we're not on that issue that the the if you saw the boston globe this morning about how the justice department's going after boston for not providing the proper number teachers for english language learners this is the exact kind of unfunded mandate that frustrates everybody but the government comes down on you if you don't do it we have to do it whether we like it or not and it's costing money as those the number of those kids goes up and up thank you yes this my name is julia while i have a question i'd like to talk about what impact you know what happen in so i think that's a really great question and i'm so glad that there are so many high school students who are here and middle and elementary and i think that if you ask any of them about the impact they would say that it is going to be really significant that there's hundreds of students who want to take it danced are in a way which classes who are going to be able to take them also you saw my calculus textbook and that is the current budget right now in belmont has had their education chipped at for the past few years and right now we're at a breaking point it's so i think it's up to you whether you want to continue this great tradition of education in the town to want or whether you want to let it  yes i'll resist the temptation to say and young man did that book look better when we gave it to you in september but i get two points we are not proposing cutting the there is just no external measure soft or hard achievement of students in any school system that indicates that belmont education it's not of the highest quality it's theirs it's a great school system and it provides an amazing education please hi my name's nova i'm currently a junior from on high school so you talked about how money you going to school but i maybe i misunderstood you but i don't quite see how go back to the immediately seems like something that if it works it would a fact but i still have another year about one high school so what money you going to my education next year and my classmates education because i seems like we're suffering in the very near future and you don't really seem to have an immediate solution to our problems  you're directing that question to me as i was no can ok liz liz yes the solution we're talking about is directed to the school year beginning july one twenty fifteen that is your senior year and we wish you the most successful possible senior year with sufficient revenues to support the level service budget where's the money coming from to support that year i don't understand the money is coming the money will come in over the course of the year right now the town is forecasting that we'll have one point eight percent more money than we did this year that is a very low number by any standard and if we simply assume that life in belmont will be at least as good as it has been last year there will be an additional one point six million to support the schools that's not quite to the one point seven that the superintendent has up there but it is close enough to believe that there would be sufficient shark term cost savings to close the gap but you're taking a big gamble though because there's no guarantee that the money is coming in and then maybe would be good for you but forget the software because no one point if they do some one point seven or one point six miracle money drops out of the sky like that or some override phantom override that's not on the ballot happens the next group behind you is going to get stuck with it you've already suffered people on it how long did it take the task force to come up with four and a half million think the task force will continue with some format of the work a lot of the foundation work that was done can be leveraged for you know additional work if we're not successful in april we can sort of jump up i think that i think where the disagreement is frankly is just in the financial projections i think that you know what i think you heard from lives to support all the other recommendations some not as teachable as others you know in terms of some of the task force findings and so we appreciate that i think it's really in the f hi i'm sammy i'm an eighth grader at the middle school and so you settle there we're going to cut stephanie from the education system that's been said to you that's a fact that well it's ok but how will my college education be affected because i'm going to go through the school for the next four years probably guaranteed and if this override doesn't pass and there's not enough money then i won't get an education and then i won't be able to go to college and how is that going to it's not that i won't go to a good call how's that going to affect me personally because i don't get a vote and i don't get decide whether or not well well just to be clear regardless of what  happens you're you're going to get a college education problem i guess but you know we understand that there are projected you know cuts that would affect somebodies ability to have the best resume forward going to college and we get that but i'll let liz respond to that because she has her own answer if you were say a extremely precocious fourth grader who had come to ask a question let me give you the answer i give you if you were a fourth grader because they have an even longer time in the system which i think is what you're fundamentally asking about the one of the issues with passing a four point five million dollar override which greatly exceeds the needs of the school the the level service budget of the school next year is that it can go you have no guarantee that that large yellow slight that large one designated slice of the pie is going to the schools this is not a ballot question as it currently stands the guarantees the money will go to the schools furthermore if there is not some cost containment on the salary side it will be very difficult to sustain the schools doing doing things that set the stage for the next collective bargaining agreement is very much in the long current in the interests of someone who is in grade eight you know yeah we will never do long range planning if we're always concerned about where the money that's not used in year one gets put and how it's going to be used in future years we will never do it we've talked about this this is their money is not this four point five billion dollars is not to do just next year it's not the band aid that you're hearing from the no campaign this is to doom but you're planning to go into a stabilization fund or some other revolving follow that will sit and it can be accessed in the future like we did in what two thousand and two we passed the get the trash pick up override and that is still being used to do the traffic nobody picked it up and used it to plug holes elsewhere in the budget we looked into this in the public service subcommittee of the work committee there's hope exercises in a way of breaking what's already been fixed in the school system we're all kind of happy with the school system though it's suffered all these why would you want to mess with a good thing and that the school system has been funded at the budgets have increased to four point one percent some things have gone away and some things have been added to the school spends more than a million dollars on technology that it didn't spend ten years ago it's a more complex picture of the world's and different place thank you thank you  question last i have three children last year in fees for the school system i paid one thousand six hundred fifty dollars i live within walking distance of all three schools if i had needed a bus then i would have had paid at least two thousand two hundred twenty five dollars that's been for several years i would like to have your thoughts on the fact that the school families are in fact because of the large fees that they've been paying increasingly over the years are in fact supporting the quality school system here and in fact supporting the property values of the town so that now we're asking for an override which on average my understanding is the yes campaign says six hundred forty dollars in the no campaign says eight hundred something dollars so let's just say seven hundred twenty five so i'd like to understand and have some reaction from you as to the fact that the school families are in fact supporting to a very large extent the quality of the school system here and in fact supporting property values in the town absolutely no choice that we had to and since then there have been implemented activity fees and the fees have gone up considerably over time and it is absolutely true that parents families are paying a substantial amount to send their kids to what are reportedly public schools and that is true not only in belmont it's true throughout the commonwealth i think to a large extent proposition two and a half has squeezed budgets over the years and there simply hasn't been enough revenue to support the kinds of services that at one time were provided by the public dollars and parents have been asked to support the school budget in various ways there's a lot of fund raising that goes on when i was on the school committee we had every year sheet that showed just what the extra money was that came in and it's very substantial it's not enough to balance the budget but it's very very substantial and it parents are being asked more and more to to add to it i will also say  i was on the original financial task force in one nine hundred ninety five we came out with our report and to be honest with you this report looks almost identical some of the numbers have changed but the town situation has not the revenue does not rise to meet the needs of the expense budget and that's been true for a long time and we've been able to things out we've had a few small overrides over time but this override asks us to actually take a crack at changing our situation of the structural structural deficit excuse me and it's really time the town did this we really need to understand that we have not had enough money to support the more complicated than the school budget i mean people are moving in the belmont because of the proximity to to to a cambridge to boston for jobs because of access off to redwood because of everything liz liz it's said about this is this is a great town so i think it's really hard to say the property values are going to change dramatically based on what happens next tuesday in the just in terms of the vote the second point is that you know that your concern about what parents are paying is is is a just a great concern  we've got to take a look at it at the overall on household help of a budget level which doesn't good property taxes i'm very sensitive to the concern about the fees and i think that's going to be a question that's going to be with us on april eighth whether this vote passes yes or no and i and i would love to spend some time working working with the school committee trying to find ways of i'm trying to make that burden burden less on the families get i think it unlikely that we will need an override i think it unlikely that a second override that was more closely tied to the needs of the schools would fail as to what is here here is the as to how high school student should spend the free periods they have if this is a question and it's really not about the upcoming election contest it's going to be fallout no my question was not about the upcoming election  it's really a question for the superintendent and for the school staff as to how much free time and how much structured time is truly the best this is been going on for a long time you know we cut like in the last few years we cut elementary fifth grade for language and replaced it with study hall which is basically sitting around time i have two high school kids myself and currently they do stand in the hallway thankfully this year they got benches which was actually a a band aid another band aid approach i mean there's no there's no june override just so we're clear right now there's a four point five million dollar override april seventh and it's yes or no that's the override we're not trying to do some bamby we're trying to do long range planning that's what this is about we're not trying to just cover some deficit for next year thank hi my name is james kitsch and i'm currently a freshman at the my high school and i just want to talk about the class size and the teacher cuts i looked at this afternoon and currently in my math class there are twenty seven kids in my english class there are twenty nine kids and in my world history class there are thirty one kids in my world history class there been multiple days where i have not been fine been able to find a seat for this first couple five minutes because a chair or a desk has been moved for some reason and if you are right does not pass i understand that over twenty teachers will be caught and i love my teachers every single one of them and i would not want to see a and my question is what would you say to a high school student whose whose class sizes are going to become going to skyrocket next year and it's become even harder for them to participate and get a quality personal education and are going to have to choose between for me orchestra in a foreign language in junior senior year what would you say to them i don't have a vote i don't have a say in this matter except what i can tell my parents i want to thank you very much liz would you like them for that or somebody else on your team but i do in the spring and i go to school budget line by line try to understand what they're doing ok where they're increasing where they're cutting i've looked at the budgets this year i've provided the current staffing levels get part time teachers you get teachers who are allocated across different different programs are full of patients it's how the budget is made up the told duction k to twelve is twenty point eight i don't know where the other numbers came from all of those approximate six point seven net reduction in teacher hours teacher f t s it's not twenty teachers ok those are cuts across the budget again i will repeat we don't believe those cuts in necessary we believe they're based on worst case scenarios and that if this is a budget if this override is passed in some ways in my view this overwrites clouding the discussion we should be talking much much further finer distinctions about ok how much twenty's needed where's it need to go what's the real need here where there are pockets of money that are that are available where the monies that maybe have been allocated but not spent we're talking about budget why there are quite clear answers to be had  frankly there were answers that as as rafi hit note it noted at the league night for those of you who watched we have a process we go through virtually every year the budget the comes to us in february on the school side particularly how budgeting is done budgeting has to be done on the margin but it has to be done in terms of looking at the detail the detail here is that you're not going to lose twenty teachers out of the system even if the worst case scenario happens on that many teachers you know they're not going to have that many teachers to be deuced ours these are the numbers pardon me simply not so not that not as dire as that are being exaggerated because they're being out there it being done in the name of an override with your real id the four point five million is more is about one point six million that even the that's not me that's the school committee the school department that's what's going to happen if you vote no on the override this is it now i mean usually economics say that you economics is a dismal science i think that the projections that you're hearing about this found money  state in this revenue projections are coming in are just guesses to be honest with the fans projections a fancy way of saying we're making a guess we're going to take a big risk if you're going to vote no and think that money's going to come in and it doesn't because this is what you're go and they're putting it out in black and white i was talking to somebody who knows a teacher of his principle over to school in another town where an override failed and just talking to the coast odeon who got laid off in the custody is like well you know i didn't think you'd actually lay me off according to the department of massachusetts and the massachusetts department of education we're at seventeen point one per student but more importantly that puts us at the bottom of the list we're way at the bottom we can see the bottom from our town all of our peers have better student teacher ratios our peers spend more money on their students and my question is where do you get your where at what point do we decide that we're spending too little on our students and when do we decide that we want to we want to do the same thing that our towns are here towns or do you are thank you for that i think mr superintendent this might be best for you to answer it's about student teacher ratios these thoughts the facts the student teacher ratio according to the department of elementary and secondary ed two thousand and thirteen fourteen school year has belmont at seventeen point one students per class in the state average at thirteen point six six we are at the bottom out of five out of six when it comes to student teacher ratio and page six only has four entries so that puts us probably in the bottom ten percent of class size in the state that's a state thirty three percent renters in belmont actually it's you know at some level world renters you could never actually you know pay off your home you're only having every month so the question is about the conservative revenue estimates  because in the past year or so i wouldn't come up for years but i'm currently in the process of upgrading and know about the housing market housing prices have gone up like crazy i don't know over ten percent twenty percent something you know larger in some cases and here's  technical question i'm not sure which side is going to win on this question but those go into our assessment and are those going to be increasing our taxes anyway are taxes going to be going up because of the housing market i mean mostly for the no campaign but really for both i'm going to make an observation first in a town meeting member named paul roberts wrote an excellent article called the deconstruction of belmont schools and it talked about all the services that have been cut and eroded along the way over the years i would submit that the same is probably true on the town side seems to me  and by the way i do appreciate the the intelligence and the integrity and the sincerity of both groups it seems to me that the argument for not doing an override is maybe those revenue concern assumptions are too conservative and will have more revenue or maybe they'll be some cost savings and therefore will be a lot of money sloshing around in the system that's not designated my question would be if the override were to pass and that were to be true why couldn't we put our trust and faith in our appointed officials on the warren committee the elected officials on a board of selectmen and the town meeting members to have a slightly lower increase in tax revenue i mean if the issue is that there's going to be less revenue there's going to be revenue sloshing around and there's not going to be good uses for there aren't really compelling services that we can apply that money to we have the option to have a slightly lower increase in our tax rate going forward that if we don't use that a lower tax rate then it suggests that there are services that the community values that we can apply that money to seems to me that the the no has a lot of risk that the services could get cut because the revenue doesn't come and the i future override doesn't pass if we approve the override and it's too generous it seems to me that all we've done is borrow from the taxpayers for one year as an insurance policy to avoid those cuts and we can give them back that increase the following year with a lower rate of tax if you believe there is any world in which here's a bet unfortunately you can only happen for my lifetime which is probably shorter than yours what would you be prepared to bet that in my lifetime that levy limit never goes down we'll tax to the limit every single year i believe and mr kale would know this the only city in math what is the in massachusetts that doesn't tax to the levy limit cambridge everybody else does jack it's a hypothetical possibility but not a real one well it's a real one i would also no happen but if we end up with too much money in the system we can stretch the four point five million dollars longer we can get it past twenty to twenty one thousand you see all the kids the kindergarten class the students larger than the current senior class the high school the bubbles going to keep coming just appoint the young lady in the back in the black you're going to be the last question thank you we just need to get people out here and i said my name is here of a very simple question we want to here we need more money than what we do and when catalyst that would be his last if what we said in our slides and what we would do would be to be part of a group that asked the selectmen to put to call a special election and put an appropriately sized override on the ballot which the financial task force did a four point five million dollars and spent a year doing tha an answer that two point eight you are one point seven million dollars if that's what the dire need i hear in this room tonight we could come up with the other two point eight we could pull off a sidewalk one more year and then what liz gets through with her committee and says ok and on us comes back this report was done last much and you had this report you the government had this report when you came to town meeting in m is absolutely the truth all the other reports have been present if you watch a test which means i don't think you attended any that means there were does way working through the numbers we were trying to sharpen a pencil to a very significant extent for the sixteen budget david kill could attest to that it would numbers were changing constantly some points of the david there we just have to conclude and present these findings we can't continue to you know fine tune these numbers any more than we've done at this point in time so with all due respect you're here with all due respect no you're paid twelve thousand a year in taxes now i pay twelve sex plus two and a half if you add it up it's one hundred eighty bucks a year on top of the six on so it gets to be six seven nine eleven hundred on top of my twelve to twelve to to  on items same as the over writers and that's misleading for you to say it's a three year plan it's a three year plan which is four point five million but the four by four point five million is there every year i'll let mr kale explain why it goes forward to four point five million but we're only calling it a three year plan i didn't go to school so i don't know about map but i got some out i raised my family at my house and they're all doing well so again if the override is successful the four point five million would be added to the total levy and that would be allowed to increase by two and a half percent every year every year for yes this is a permanent increase in the press in the property tax levy that's the first time it's other than my say no but the three year plan and the three year plan basically is based on expenditures that's right a three year plan means we're not going to just put it in the general fund and play pool with it we're going to put it for roads and sidewalks etc for the next three years i force that we didn't have we just got we can look at that for the next year we don't need a new all right a new vote next april we can put on a legitimate two and a half that we've  cadillac budget this is not even your father's oldsmobile budget we've lost elementary like rare games we've lost national history de blas fifth grade languages they talk about seven classes at the high school there's nobody taking seven classes in grades  through twelve currently at the high school everybody's taking six possibly going to five if this goes through in eleven and twelve but right now the entire nine hundred twelfth grade is taken sixty percent of the athletic budget is funded by fees my son point six million and you need one point seven million then what i am hearing is that you're saying there's going to be another hundred thousand dollars chipped away as we've chipped and chipped and chipped the things i mentioned are not to hire all these teachers back it's not possible to have i really need a question now in addition the roads are not trivial anybody who's driven like streets a lake stream militia hauling i'm getting there says the capital budget is insufficient so if we vote no and chip away still at the schools how do we solve the structural problems where is everything else coming from that we're losing the structural question please and there's more than one point six million million is the number that we support we're not trying to nickel and dime one hundred thousand dollars away and second here's a question if things have been chipped away and chipped away and chipped away you'd expect to see some evidence of that in the performance and you don't could see the evidence of it when the they don't have substitutes about my high school anymore so if the teacher is not out they have a free so my kid sits in the hallway when the teacher is out sick or at a conference or something because they don't have recommendation for the four point five i would request that if this doesn't pass which i hope that it does that the committee go back and consider doing smaller overrides each year because that is how we got ourselves in this predicament in the first place i have been a school business manager in two other communities i have worked in communities where that has been done and while everyone doesn't get everything that they want every year everybody gets a little something yes it goes into the base permanently and it's a little easier to stomach then asking and taking the risk of losing a four point five million dollar override and our children are the big losers when that happens my question specifically which i drove down here for at the last minute was what about time on learning i'm very concerned and i don't have high school children yet my children are in the elementary schools but time of learning is the requirement that the state puts of how many hours a child must have time for instruction if we are only offering our children four out of seven classes we are not meeting our time on learning i heard on a previous a previous tape that i watched that rafi i believe said oh well i'm sure that the state when our school committee wouldn't let of the current high school configuration of schedules we are barely making our time on learning expect what would happen under the new one i believe that our eye was to be at risk would be at risk and so i would encourage that if this doesn't win that those people who would like to support it call the state let's make it happen folks all right thank you i said i said she was the last one i heard you say that when i