is next to our gender citizens concerns don't see any citizens here we do not right now have any adjustments to the agenda of a free chairs report from the walter beacon a school in watertown that's going to be coming and they're sending about their program and other programs that are available on march st is the deadline for meaning and i would stand keep outstanding teacher with the service here and all that she's done serving on the work committee and the high school building committee and the fighting itself or the curriculum instruction that's a committee and all the things that the school committee accomplished while you were here as so we do not have student representatives report superintendents report did not have ok so we do not have any unfinished business so a vote on the policies at our last meeting we looked at the past use our educational opportunities for military children educational opportunities for children in foster care and homeless students which are all in our pockets as exhibit a b and c these are all proposed model policies from the department of elementary and secondary education that was based on a recent hot it that we talked about their last meeting and so at this meeting since we had the initial discussion tonight would and to before we vote people have any discussion that they want to have about tonight as well demand some of these transit issues may be related for students who might fall under these policies is there any update on what we have for transportation is that  eight others in favor so the next is a vote on the disposal of surplus technology items and from the information provided by stevens our director of technology the equipment on this list is either non functioning it's not compatible with our system systems the equipment in general is from six to ten years old free because of where the scrap metal content in some cases or some residual component value out of us and that's not that's what the situation is here any any student information that would otherwise be on these computers has been white on hard drives been destroyed or race to protect all student do it again this is just a routine matter but the laws require that before we can dispose of it  some kind of synergy in terms of cost savings i know that to score top technology direct is collaborate regularly on a whole host of different matters and so i think we're really we're hitting all the we want to go broke supporting the film once a school building committees request for having the school they replace the spring they would like us to have over me by the deadline of the st so at that high school or preschool lower school so much junior senior high school in north bellmore junior senior high schools or so they all revolve around trying to capture that don't want high as what name of their own to call where they going to school but doing so good in a way that our graduates will be able to say that they graduated from belmont high if that's what they always thought they were going to do and they might want to keep that name moving forward so some of we're moving forward and so that's why we're putting a timeline on this process to be able to have the time recognizing the building by its new title as soon as we are so we can report back out with this  of respect for the students who are in the school right now i would think that it would be change moving forward and i haven't thought that conversation through my head but i think it might be respectful to let the folks who are going to government graduate from  so yeah so maybe we can go to our subcommittee please on updates and then we'll come back ok so the finance subcommittee keep you on a report on the meetings  you know that i remember you were talked about the budget which i think you were just going to go over  revenues and having really thoughtful conversations about what kind of information that we feel we need to have the call centers for us with to help guide us through the next few years when the budget may get a little h over proves is one that has i think depleted the end of the resources from the over i five years ago and so next year will be a very interesting year to talk about not only our fiscal twenty one dollars will play out but hopefully w amused even reconciling with what that work was and checking on some things that may not have followed through or come out the way we expected and so a good process that's going so next that the community path after eight months i will just note that this will be similar to the report out from the community path and leslie is here with other members of that committee and so if people i think as we are making decisions whether it's sort of south carolina man on the school property i think it will be really important to understand exactly what  diagrams or plans to understand exactly what they characterise the group i think you can have a simple comparison is you can have a kitchen but do you want to have a small  solution questions from us or i just told you we have a lot of good discussion at our last meeting and so that it would be important for her to come tonight and if people did have specific questions about the work that they doing she probably would be the best to answer members of the committee would be the best to answer that i thought that was still part of the discussion but no the decision that's like me to have to make is between the north and the south part of what informs that are the constraints at the east and the french and mahoney property on the north the pure code and greatest cape on the south however there are parts of the eight hundred and fifty feet between alexander avenue and the french mahoney property in the north and about two thousand and fifty feet between alexander avenue and the pier coach building on the south that's about seventy percent of the guidelines for rail with trail could be met that would include a twenty five dollars foot offset from the path a sixteen foot wide path which is what's recommended by the in the belmont community pasties ability study two foot shoulders on either if what's available on the south is substantially different from that more constrained narrower closer to the path in my opinion at least that should be part of the selectmen evaluation of north versus south and that's why i think it's was there just supporting what leslie said i think it would be very helpful to understand exactly what the ask of the school committee is and i think would be helpful for the public to understand the implications of that for a wide path would be how close to the rail it would be what with the nature of the experience  so but when you're closer to that than twenty five feet they require a solid wall separating the path from the train if you're twenty five feet it can be a fence so any way a narrow path with walls  tall buildings on either side is is a different experience from a wider path that has room for landscaping that would be a qualitatively different experience the path that we're talking about that glen clancy shared  something that was drawn by the architects for the high school building committee not not by the firm that we're in the process of hiring to design the paths so what we should it's great that they're thinking about it and thinking about where the space could be but we should not think of that as in any way representing the design of that the path it's just it's just to present conceptually where where it might go and what the available space might be boundary marked with a red dotted line as well as a significant most of the path would be on the thirty foot property the st thirty foot buffer owned by the  the thirty's and not actually were two points st of all the property line varies as as shown on the left there where there's a little zig but if it's not parallel to the tracks the whole way the town maps show that mostly on n b t a property the fence would come down a retaining wall would go up on the north side of the road to provide a level path there probably be a fence on the high school side of that path to prevent people from falling off and there would be a wall between the path and the railroad and there would be eight feet wide path which is a minimum path for the bank and then there a the existence of the path pushes the the road south in the road pushes the sidewalk south and so on right but i think but i think you know just to answer your question i think you'll be extremely  school committee whether the school committee would be able to consider this property surplus to its needs to carry out its educational mission under massachusetts state law  that school committee that said the the selectmen should be in charge of you know posing the here's what we want here's the land that we need from the school committee to complete a path yes or no when we're looking at a map drawn by the high school building you know where the path might go by the high school building committee that's that should not be considered the design of the path the selectmen should in my opinion should ask deficit huge benefits of the community it's been something that people been working on for years and years and years it really feels like it's this books so the good news is one day which is the end of the house in the kept moving towards the bridge seems to have solving when they decide one of those if it is solved then they do need to come to the school with me and say if we do choose self that we want to choose so this is what it might look like can we start to talk about sharing that space and look at the impact be it kind of feels like that's where we are but the selectmen need to come to you before the sixty days are up so we can move forward with our pm we've had to write in a lot of language that it's still being decided which is awkward actually it's very exciting that said we've also it's our understanding that it would be very difficult maybe impossible to get one a the underpass and the route across the campus to concord ave funded as an independent project we would need to go to the boston metropolitan planning organization with a combined one a plus one b designed to get the project funded so yes we have the funding to do the design but we are understanding it is that if there would be very challenging to get funded as a one off we'll need th know so what so what happened is is is it will brownsburg or talking with past stock got them to allow us to separate the two projects because we hadn't belmont hadn't come to a decision about north or south east of alexander ave and so that allowed us to get to to file our project initiation form a project need form with so we'll just know that we have been standing by provided that wonderful background with by friedman and now press that you know just so that we have for our minutes as to who it is yeah thank you thank you wrestling no i'm the chair of the community pat project to me i just want to you know the community path project committee which obviously we're representing here and i you know it is is not taking any sort of position on whether it should be north or south for the stretch that we're talking about that's not that's not within our our charge as a committee we are charged by the board to implement what what they decide so i just want to echo the point that vince made earlier that this does sort of as a board decision they have well and those those two things would would apparently influence their decision so i and and as leslie pointed out it is my understanding that the board has made some progress i don't know of what nature but but some progress with with the peer owners such that it may be a possibility that that issue which which you know at least to me seemed possibly insurmountable may be surmountable and so i do think it will be important for this committee the school committee to engage with the board to you know provide input to your thinking about about the possibility that the path does go on the southern route and you know i totally agree with my colleagues that i would hope that they would make a specific request of you but  traffic pattern or i think it's a new there runs behind the building and that's when you know oh ok so that's that's just on me i didn't i didn't recognize that that that was you know so constrained back there i'm i'm  not i guess confident that the selectmen are aware of you know this level of detail on the so you know as part of that conversation with the building committee i  hope they can you know be made aware because i do think it's important i guess eleven question i have is you know is this is this configuration sad i mean is this  flexibility to go to a a one way so that that has been in place for quite quite since the beginning of the site to move forward i do know that the building committee has tried to make efforts to see  where they could be flexible in that if in fact the power was going to be on the south side and so that's where i think the meetings that that's where this came about that they were just trying to take a little harder look at that that the distances between the tracks of conversation before but i do believe that if the question is is it going to be to a road in the back the answer is yes probably i would say that they would say yes and how can we help if it is on the sell side to make this half work if it's the plundering i do you just want to really emphasize that this is still one project right one and one view together is one is the project that the town has formally submitted to to the state and that's that's why as leslie mentioned the r f p is drafted for one a plus one b and why the you know resolution on again emphasize the point that we are in order to actually get the underpass constructed and paid for by state federal highway dollars it is going to need to be a part of th assume the path itself does not need to travel through the underpass so in order for the underpass to be fun the ball and you know we've we've just leaves room for it to to be on the north side and not just th mean you know we appreciate certainly the school committee taking taking this up and being interested and involved and i you know i hope there there can be some you know  there public meeting i mean that that was a part of a part of the motion that they all voted on i do i do think and and part the reason that they and this is you know this is presumption on my part but i think a part of the reason why they impose that deadline is because they knew they knew that we were in the process of drafting an r p and they knew that a decision would be certainly useful for us to have and  relatively near future as we as the town engages designs until there's more of them we at our meeting we learned that it might impede getting funding and it might change the amount of funding if we did have a decision so we pushed them to make a decision and then we had a split decision that two dollars to one dollar south to north and sixty days to figure out southeast viable so that still put us off not having a decision to do in spring the town also submitted an application for a state grant called a master l's grant to fund a portion of the one piece and they had they had indicated that basically we should know what what we're applying for so we were hoping to mend that as soon as we had a decision but we don't really have a decision gets we can amend it so each time it gets pushed off we have the potential of not into different possibilities is that something that someone has a plan to make and if they do will be need before we have to vote on this options well i think i think this sort of speaks to part of the problem that all of us have have had on that that that kind of level of detail is  literally what happens during design and we're you know we're engaged and we're trying to engage a consultant to to do that but we can't you know we've got to choose we've always had this sort of chicken egg problem strokes of it are that the the the recommended with the path itself is you know per the feasibility study that the town has is sixteen feet it needs as events mentioned it needs to be offset from the rail by twenty five feet and then there's their shoulders and that's that's the amount of space you're talking about my understanding from any archer at par is as a rule just a rule of thumb write that in an ideal world if you're looking out the south side portion that we're talking about here you're looking at about a ten foot wide stretch of high school property that that is from the m b t a line ten feet from that on to the high school property for centrally the with for i mean the length of the of the high school to have that recommended way now obviously as portrayed here with the with the you know two way drive behind the high school that is not going to be possible for at least the stretch but other than that that's that's like the ideal ask right you want the sixteen feet and on the north side as as i think vince mentioned earlier there is room for that sixteen feet and tell you get to essentially the end of channing road where the where the french property starts and then allow for there to be fifteen feet from the railroad track fifteen feet from the road track a solid barrier eighty feet a path with too few childers on each side so that's what you're done side next to the road here right because it be elevated and then a barrier on the track side that's cut that's kind of what you're probably looking at for this  portion on the south side i think and then you know if there's more room as you go either way it's spreads back out to twenty five feet with no barrier because you're twenty five feet away and the wider the wider path so i think what you're looking at here is the the pinch point on the south side so it's the fifteen feet away and then eight feet minimum to the the grid most likely range is much more flexible yeah it would it would just be you know a ramp down essentially as you as you see where because if if this does happen on the south side the ability of those two teams to work together i think would be very valuable you know if it comes to that and i will say that you know the other thing about design is that with these kind of projects you know you had design and the designer may find something as a part of that process that changes everything right  just to andrea's point that we need to see what we're looking at in this section not plan because this is we have this gigantic project and we don't want to short change it by any means and the new traffic pattern in the back which has gotten a lot of attention certainly talked a lot about that over the past year and we have have before so knowing those dimensions are really important says important property you think maybe it's just one section but until really really very sturdy you'll be hard in terms of timing it might also be helpful to know that as soon as we can release the r f p leslie mentioned a few of the steps that why we haven't released it yet we were hoping to have the design firms give their their proposals by the st town meeting that will not quite happen were a little behind that schedule but as soon as we can release the r f p we'll be sixty days until we have designers offer to do this project and then we can pick one and move forward but we can't do anything until we get there are a few released which is why we are still having to put language in saying it's not a percent certain which route and we don't know how that's going to affect be that's much further out there that's still about a year and a half away but we're trying to move this along so that we can get a designer and then you can get more of the answers you're looking for but we can't do that even heard that you think we need drawings of some sort where other information because i think that's important to know we're going forward this i mean for me i would like to know what the two alternatives are because i think it's hard to make a choice that obviously is going to really cram things at the back of the school property when there is a really good other option i think knowing what the exact comparison is would be helpful and i know that it's personal opinion not speaking for the committee but that you know that the both the north or the south side just have tradeoffs neither of them is perfect i think at a at a really high level what you're looking at on the north side you know to sort of try and answer your question at least from my view you know you're looking at a significant potential point at the brighton street and on the north side next to the french money property based on you know the fact that what thousand two hundred dollars yards potentially then the rest of the way on the north side you have the room for a full sixteen foot path and twenty five foot offset rights and get past that initial pension point and designed you know there's obviously a butters with with significant concerns about this and you know that the design process is again a chance to engage with with them and hopefully hopefully address their concerns and then but just speaking on on sort of what you're looking at you know potentially there is maybe significant you know retaining walls necessary accent or on the north side so that that's just a part of that mix because the grating issue on the south side assuming and it's a big assumption assuming you can solve the pure code issue you don't have a  pension point at the beginning because presumably a portion of the building which would literally not be there would come down and then you have room for the full recommended you know twenty five all the way until i think really you get to this next question is just and and so you know both the north in the south have these pretty long pension points that you're going to have to deal with and then both have sections that you know the recommended with sets on and so you know they're just neither of them slake no this is perfect and that's that's part of that's why why th on so you know i don't know some ways it's just it's it's really it's really again just speaking for me not not for the committee or anyone else i think it's i think it's a tough decision there's there are sort of competing concerns on both sides and disadvantage advantages i agree with was really that the par summary lays out some of those and from from the engineers perspective but that's kind of where i the track fifteen feet that's the absolute bare well that's what the guidelines parr's indicated who knows maybe there's flexibility there but the guidelines say the narrowest of can do is fifteen about what's happening with the traffic flow for the high school so maybe a high school building high school committee question this is the sidewalk seems like the bare minimum for accessibility back there and and i don't know what kind of measures are in place for that traffic flow in the back out i don't recall from the presentation how heavy it is back there my recollection was soon as into subpoenaed most of the circulation would be at the drivers etc so we're really having this conversation about what's on site which are safe what's best but it is the expectation that road will be used as it to a road to get folks to be able to go in drop off the exit in in either direction pick up or drop off or somehow utilize it not better so it may reduce the traffic back there but it is still i believe with with that many folks going on site for seven to twelve configuration i've tried to go to a lot of the high school mean building meetings but i haven't recently are you anticipating bike paths separately from cars and walking all through the entire property narrow and then just accessibility as i look at the parking areas it looks like the people getting out of their cars are going through the parking lots to to get to the buildings th do we have a motion to accept this field trip grant for seven hundred dollars an hour yes kate the nd andrea all those in favor is going to turn out seven hundred dollars but three percent and that four percent comment is that acknowledgement that we would charge the seven percent increase in tuition costs that we expect that will actually encourage to circuit breaker funds because we've been able