good evening i'd like to call the meeting of the school committee to order at seven o seven pm when we start the meeting we first start with the pledge of allegiance  so next on our agenda our citizens concerns and the citizens concerns to address now are related to the first few biz items on our agenda because we will have a forum about the rink which will then have people be able to come and speak to that issue but if anyone has any other concerns to bring to the school committee right now that doesn't deal with the proposal for a race is your time to do that to anyone come up so we will move to adjustments to the agenda which we do not have any adjustments to the agenda we do not have any unfinished business so the first item on of major business is the two thousand and one thousand two thousand and film on high school program of studies which is exhibit a we did the school committee did at our last meeting discuss and several presentations on the program so tonight would be about having a discussion business which is what most of the people are here to address talk about tonight is a public forum on the proposal for a new ring many of you may know that the belmont use hockey came to the board of selectmen the school committee meeting to present to us an idea for a new rink so what would happen next is because it's a public it could be possibly a public ask questions we would ask that if there is a particular group that is being representative represented that maybe one or two people from that group or organization would come up that people are open to come but try to how about now ok so before i begin just a couple of quick notes i think you all realize that we grossly underestimated the turnout this evening and as a result the handouts fell short of the number of people in the room we would ask you to please if you could share kind of looking with your neighbor or you know obviously pay attention to the screen as i movie through the slides i think we'll post this presentation on our website and community development tomorrow morning in case anybody wants to have a hard copy of it in the future  the other thing that i ask is if you could hold your questions until the end there are several people here that have specific information about certain things about what you're going to hear in the presentation and i think i would just in the interest of efficiency would be better if we defer everything until the end and gave those experts an opportunity to to answer your questions directly so i'm glen clancy i'm the director of community development and i'm here to walk you through a presentation on not only the current skating rink and the condition of the rink but also a couple of potential sites too to reconstruct a skating rink if if this conversation progresses that far  just talking about the existing skating rink talking about some of those existing conditions the building itself was is from one thousand nine hundred sixty eight it was originally built as a tennis facility the  can imagine a building of that age one thousand nine hundred eighty eight has a lot of deficiencies when you compare amenities that you find in a current building handicap accessibility americans with disabilities act that this building is deficient on several fronts when you look at those requirements the improvements that have been made to the building over the years and particularly to the skating rink have really been sort of a band aid type i think if you go back and look at the the improvements all the repairs that have been made over the years and there was always sort of underlying expectation that this was something temporary and that would ultimately lead to a new facility maintenance the roof leaks which creates an unsafe condition because the leaking roof impacts the quality of the ice surface of the players or on of the facility in general is compromised because of the leaking roof into quoted equipment and utilities are costly to maintain is insufficient a lack of insulation it impacts the experience as well as the energy efficiency if any of you have attended events in the rake you know how cold that rink is i have got some pictures to show you in a little bit that will give you some explanation as to why that is the siding of the building is deteriorating once again going back to hundred sixty eight that siding was a chain link fence that was covered with a corrugated metal a lot of that system is still in place today are or intended to be in place today and you just just porosity of the of the structure itself a lot of animals and birds find their way into that facility which once again doesn't make it a very pleasant experience for the people inside programming the building is not fully  utilized i mentioned before skating in tennis the tennis piece went out i would say at least ten years ago so it's a skating rink facility the skating rink itself is probably functions maybe four months of the year so you've got eight months of the year that public works and the town has to maintain that building but it's really not used for those eight months some of the pictures i was mentioning if you look at the the picture on the left hand side just shows you the general conditions inside the building because of the size of the building because of what the recreation and public works has to do within that building any of the the operational type of things that occur in that building there's really no place to housing the equipment any materials and as you can see what ends up happening is things are stored stockpiled in any available space the slide in the middle  that is your very well organized lost and found department in the rink it's tucked in next to the bleachers that the picture on the right shows some of the structural  condition that is what it looks like another set of pictures here the picture on the left it shows you the insulation system that was installed on the ceiling the roof of the building you can see where it's peeling away not only does that stuff peel away but  falls away creates hazardous conditions and not only for the players on the ice but also for people that are in the building itself that picture in the middle you can see that little gap that's one of those side walls with a chain link fence in the corrugated metal not very energy efficient not not by any means a barrier to keep the cold out picture on the right this is one of the more interesting elements of the rink that skylight over the ice surface obviously lets sunlight into the building the sunlight when it hits the ice is not a good combination for if you're trying to do anything on that ice surface so that's been a constant challenge for the people maintaining the building and maintaining the ice surface so as susan mentioned that rink would be developed privately but would allow the town the opportunity to use the facility for whatever means they need whether it's high school whether it's recreational use or anything else along those lines and so  it's a public private partnership is the term i'll just briefly we on the screen a long term contract between a private party and a government entity for providing a public asset or service in which the private party bears the risk and management responsibility that is what has been proposed at the town of belmont and that is what we're talking about this evening so one of the benefits of a public private partnership is no additional capital required from the town the risk the financial risk is on the developer the developer would build the building the developer would handle all the site work would do everything necessary to get a new skating rink constructed maintenance operation costs would be borne by the developer once again so the town departments the town itself would not have to fund any of the maintenance issues or any of the maintenance and upkeep of the building that would be on the developer the ability to bring the facility online faster obviously with a debt exclusion recently passed for a brand new high school other capital needs that are facing the town of belmont when you begin to try to slot in a brand new skating rink and try to figure out a timeline to achieve something like that a private developer that's solely interested in the sky on a skating rink could get this thing done a lot quicker behind we've put some pros and cons lights together for each site's all the pros of the existing site the existing location of the skating rink continue contiguous to the high school campus if your high school athlete and you are playing hockey or doing anything that involves the rink itself for all intent and purposes that site is part of your campus it's right there for your use and benefit proximity to other town amenities you're located across the street from the library or down the street from belmont center if you're a parent who is dropping someone off a some kind of an event or an activity you're not you know a prisoner to the site so to speak you have some alternatives and some some ways you can spend your time while your son or daughter is of the things that the developer has discussed is creating an area on the site where there would be offs off street parking which obviously would would take the burden off of the adjoining neighborhood potential access and drop off improvement same idea right now of the drop off activity occurs right along concord avenue with with parking lots in off off street parking available at the site it would remove that activity from the roadway and put it onto the site  economic synergy with belmont center so you've got an event at the skating rink you have restaurants you have coffee shops you have what you have smaller shops within that don't want center itself so there there was a synergy between the activities that would be occurring at the skating rink in the close proximity to belmont center is a convenience there if you want to have to get togethers if you want to just meet with other parents and have a coffee or something while events were occurring  you have an easy opportunity to do that because of belmont center and you know given what is ultimately the goal of a new facility you know that could have a significant impact on some of the businesses in belmont center just by increasing the amount of foot traffic they receive the cons of the existing location increased traffic as i mentioned earlier right now the building is essentially four months of the year the programming is is essentially restricted to high school sports recreation activities the private developer would have a desire to expand the use of that site the activities that would occur in the skating rink because you know at the end of the day this is an endeavor to try to you know make some money as a private developer the offset to that obviously  would have access to these facilities last about that it field space the size of the site now with rank sets is not sufficient to provide the offsite parking that would be necessary and also  the size of the facility of a developer is talking about this currently one sheet of ice the developer would like to have an additional half sheet of ice which provides a further opportunity for developing skills and you know just other available to people using the rake a small cafe or a warm room slash restaurant kind of a thing to provide refreshments is also desired and so all of this adds up to a larger footprint and once you enlarge the fo once you win large the size of the site there's going to be some impact on the playing fields that impact has not been determined fully at this point proximity to residential area it's right across the street everyone knows i mean if you're familiar with the current location of the skating rink then you know that putting a skating rink back on that site it's your it's essentially same proximity to what you're accustomed to today the other side is the former incinerator site this is the site of lot of you have heard this site discussed off and on for several years this is the site that's currently the being analyzed for design of a cap through the environmental protection so this site has to be kept for g e piece requirements the board of selectmen have been discussing potential post closure uses for that site for several months a skating rink has been one of the  of the things that's been discussed as a potential for post  you to lexington and then here is the former incinerator site here so the pros of the incinerator continuity of programming if the the new skating rink is constructed on the incinerators site and everything goes favorably the current skating rink would continue to be used once the new facility was built on the incinerator site you obviously shut the old one down and you can move right into this you wouldn't move any you would lose any continuity in your programming can accommodate parking and building you know because it's a it's a virgin site in the sense that there's really nothing else going on up there it's not the same situation as you find on a concrete avenue at the high school you're not impacting any existing uses you've got virtually a clean slate and therefore you can accommodate your building and your parking potential for private funding to cap the site as of right now there's approximately eight hundred thousand dollars shortfall between what is available in the landfill stabilization fund if a town meeting members out of here you'll know that occasionally will come before you and ask for money to be released from that landfill stabilization fund that money was the money set aside to cap the site that the balance in that in that fund right now is approximately eight hundred thousand dollars short of what we're estimating will be required to cap the site so a private development at the incinerator site would help close that gap for the town when we ultimately have to cap that site frees up land at the existing site obviously if the skating rink relocates the incinerator site the current parcel would be cleared and that land would become available to the high school campus the cons of the incinerator site traffic increase you know the incinerate a site for all intent purposes has been dormant for many years it hasn't functioned it hasn't function doesn't incinerate a site or a transfer station for many years  the primary activity on that site has been a leaf composting operation by public works which happens in the fall there has been some transporting in and out of some fill but by and large it's been a it's been a relatively quiet site you introduce a use like a skating rink introduce a use you know that's going to have you know the frequency of use that a skating rink would bring you're going to notice an increase in traffic up there d p two to three year  permanent process so i mentioned that we have to cap that cypress requirements and that in and of itself is a process if you introduce the construction of a skating rink that's going to have its own separate path of permit ing and approvals by g e p because any closure use they have to sign off on because it could potentially impact the integrity of the cap on the site a skating rink because it is a building because it will include parking parking lots and things of that nature  expectation is that the approval process through g e p would be longer than for example if you want to go to the other extreme and say you're going to leave it is open space so there will be some level of review and approval beyond just the capping that would increase increased construction costs due to soil conditions so obviously the high school site the current site we know this i can dish and there's a building sitting on the building has sat on that site for years without incident the incinerator there is approximately twenty five feet of fill on that site and that fill sits on top of the historic wetland area we know in that fill there is actually we know we know that there is  other material in there there is a concern that you know there's a concern that we don't know enough about the soil conditions to know what a foundation system is going to look like to support a skating  rink skating week you can't have settlement you have to can only have very little settlement because any settlements going to impact the integrity of the ice surface itself and so one of the concerns is what does it look like subsurface we have some borings about those borders were really done to look at the material from an environmental standpoint there are no boring as yet that were done to look at soil conditions for foundations in construction so there is a concern that that the fill on that site is going to increase the cost of construction on a building versus that same building on the high school site where the rain currently exists the town to fund side borings so you know as you move to a point where you want to put out an hour of p the tao would have to fund the borings on that site to look at the subsurface soil conditions and provide that information in the hour of peace so anyone who answers that our fee what is working off the same information so there is some cost attached to that  we haven't priced that out but that is an additional expense that the town would have to incur transportation requirements auto dependent you know the so this ties back to the existing site at the high school if you're a high school athlete you can walk to the oversees assets owned by the state in this case this was an asset owned by the state that the town of beaumont through state legislature through legislation was able to gain ownership of this happened only within the last couple of years some of you may be familiar with that process part of that process specified that the town of beaumont could only use this site for recreational use municipal use public works uses they were very specific  explicit about how the town could use the site one of the things that we're not clear on and which we're continuing to try to run this down with de kim is whether or not something like a skating facility which is a public private partnership whether that is something that meets the requirement of all the criteria that was specified in that legislation if he can come back and says that no we think this is a profit making venture and it and it's contrary to what our intentions were then the decision has been made for us at this point we're continuing to push forward with the idea that because there will be a municipal component in the skating rink that that would be enough but is it is something that we have to nail down and we're in the process of  doing so that public private partnership so the public private partner we tried to lay out the steps on how to work through that process engage the public is step one you know is always and probably should be step one here we have this evening at step one select the site we've talked about two sites ultimately the board of selectmen in the school committee are going to have to choose which site develop a program so we know it's a skating rink what we don't know is how much of that rink is going to be required for high school sports for youth hockey for recreation how much the developer of that site's going to want for themselves to be able to market in the end get their money on their investment that type of programming is stuff that needs to be identified so it can be put in an r f p so those first three steps one two and three they inform number four which is drafting the our people once you get everything that you need out of steps one two and three you can draft that are pay that's advertised and put out to bid anyone can respond to the hour of peace and i've mentioned that there is someone that has come forward and has an interest in developing this site by no means is  does that person or that entity have exclusive rights to the site once the r p is advertised and put on the street anyone that has an interest and has an ability to do something within the region the request in that proposal can put a bid in can put an offer  and they become part of that evaluation process step seven select a proposal you know once the proposals are evaluated in their scored alternately a determination is made on which proposal is the one the towel except because we're talking about public property here whether it's the current site or the former incinerator site that's how meeting has to have the ultimate say on that and then assuming everything goes well at town meeting the board of selectmen the current location perhaps it's too early to say that's where it needs to i know there was like an option a option b an option c one of the options was to sort of tuck the rink behind next to the left of the saw the softball field behind the that the current site for the week at the high school campus is where it's currently located told me i would differ because the other point i want to make is that if he wasn't there right then that whole s i can speak to it from the belmont high school building committee process so when we drove forward to site design on that campus nothing has been slated and were finalized west of here so the east of existing building is right now that is sort of very clearly laid out the idea from the designers was to leave west of harris field relatively fluid to potentially accommodate the rink if this was ultimately the location there are some expectations as to what that area will encompass both in terms of some fields as well as certain parking expectations so there are certain requirements for any design that we have to make been just a small question that has to do with the incinerator site so it was my understanding that if the rink stays in the current location that the locker rooms that were built there could be used by multiple teams not just talk and because of the proximity to the school that there would be maybe offseason uses it would that then go i assume that would go away if the drink is that at that instant i'm going to have to defer to someone in recreational public works yeah this may just be me but i was this i was picturing that new rink at the existing site would have locker rooms built in those locker rooms could then be used by other and shower what could be used by other teams when the rink if they're not used by hockey i'll take a shot at it i think again a lot of the specifics have not yet been determined but if you think of the conceptual vision here that was the idea that that facility could provide additional programming opportunities whether that's locker rooms or space to integrate into the educational program the athletic program a lot of that there would be have to be specified in the r p and there and whoever response to the r p would have to stipulate what they intend to put in there and then we can evaluate whether or not that is complimentary and what the community ultimately so sorry so just to clarify so that  pro to the existing site and a kind to the incinerator potentially yes if i may i think glenn just for the public's benefit there is a been talk about using the incinerator site as a possible area for high school construction purposes and that could delay the use of the incinerator site for any other purpose you want to flush that out so people know in advance of the discussion sure so i guess we i guess we haven't quite confirmed that the incinerator site is available for that use you know we got a respite of about three years when the ownership question came up and we had to work through the state legislature to work out the ownership of the site ultimately through g cam that period has passed we we are and we have now become reengage with the kind of backed off on us for that period of time they understood they were ownership questions in the town was working through them they also understand now that that is behind us what we don't know at this point is the timing of when d e p express expects us to begin capping that site versus the time period that the high school would need that site for a lay down or a storage purpose and so we're working through that but patrice and i are actually meeting tomorrow with the environmental engineer who is working with us on the capping of the site to try to work through and see whether we can get an answer as to whether that site would be available to the high school but as i sit here tonight i don't have a firm answer on those i guess it would be sort of a maybe come on for the incinerator site if it turned out that the incinerator site needed to be used  during the construction of the high school which they could then delay anything happening there for years yeah i think that's true i think that's true you know we intend to demolish the incinerate a building this year which you know so one of the concerns i have is is you know because of that operation that sites probably out of commission for this year when you think about the activity that's going to be necessary to access that building demolish it and do what's required  yeah this there's a there's a lot of uncertainty with the timing in the availability of that incinerator site and we were trying our best to work through  that i know when we've been contemplating the construction timeline for the belmont high school one of the considerations was time because construction cost at least for schools as i understand it has been increasing three to four percent each year so every year that you delay i guess i guess you'd expected be some similarity you know whether it's you know indeed a three or four percent increment annually i really don't know your labor cost i'm sure of a lot to do with that whether a private entity would have to satisfy your prevailing wage requirements like a missile project would have to i guess i don't know fully what the impact would be i mean certainly in a good economy your prices are going to increases no question about that  so maybe you can just clarify something which is that my understanding is that if you have a public private partnership that the entity the organization that manages the rink after thirty years those types of details are found in the lease that ultimately the town would draft for us for the arrangement with the developer you know i'm not even sure for example if there are two years is is the term but i  understand the point of the question and i think the town has the ability to put that in the lease and into contemplate you know what happens once that lease is up once the  which the rink is one but playing fields for soccer and other such things are not one of them there is one of them that's remaining is open meadow field you know field field not playing field  so kate just to elaborate a little mountain when you evaluate the cost of maintaining the fields well cost to install cost to maintain facilities that would have to be constructed along with the playing field some kind of bathroom facilities and then if they sport i would like to say that first of all we have a lot of folks in the audience today it to bring them up to date with some of the history i know that the group in front of us has been very patient waiting for discussion on this topic in a public way so i want to thank them for their patience has been failing for a period of time the group did come forward a few years ago right when the high school project came online the group was very patient with trying to  it the building committees designed for footprint for the new high school and now that that footprint has been set in the building committee has made i designed of that site able to receive  a rink if it chose to be rebuilt on that site available to do so in could connect to it i think all of these the good things of the town combining these types of programs is helpful combining the assets of the timers and is very very helpful i'd like to thank the groups that came out and presented they did present to the school committee last june they presented to the board of selectmen leave in july and you know this should be a good news story for the time that we are talking about replacing a town asset  with some very good options that could in fact be at no cost the taxpayer in general and now just really focusing on how we can do that in the best way to marshal the resources and the time and the commitment of the time to make it happen so would like to thank those folks very much for taking all the time as relates to fields in what would be lost and what would be gained i think that we would have to engage the building community a little bit if we did decide that it would go on the high school site and it should be noted that  the school committee did vote in the fall that they voted positive to be open to having the site be at the high school location as it presently is but maybe different footprint to try to make more sense out of the landscape and out of the use of available fields and obviously this would benefit greatly the student athletes at belmont high the boys and girls hockey teams to the park and recreation department and the majority user which is our belmont youth hockey program so  is an option to have a public private partnership potentially for the high school site in a public private partnership potentially for the incinerator site if the town chose to do nothing into a begin to play in building the rink on the current site i think it would be relatively new here so you're saying fifty years of fees would say thirty years a few years would reimburse that cost i i really appreciate that you look at me when you ask those questions where use my above my pay grade line but i think the obvious answer is that given the challenges that face the town given the three hundred million dollars debt exclusion that just passed i think the burden on the residential community in belmont right now is so high  the expectation that another six to eight million dollars borrowing could go through a could be handled i think i think there's concerns whether that could happen and so this is this is an opportunity to get an asset that the town needs and wants but the town doesn't have and do you know how much like what the percentage you'd expect to get from each if you do public partnership i do not think and i just had a couple comments so i mean i think it's a fair question and i think all along as we were thinking about not only the high school bill there's a library that likely may come forward at some point in time even though we had successful over you know few years ago from an operating point of view were likely in need of something like that in the future as well so when you think about all of the cost to our taxpayers we started to generate this idea but can we do this combined with you know maybe bum what you talking association of some of the private organization that's out there and have this build not to be sort of burd  borne the cost of it borne by the taxpayer and as you structured a private you know public partnership whereby you structure something whereby we don't lose any access at all to the facility zero that you know it's run by you know a credible organization we have dollars bill this idea seemed to sort of take hold you know while three or four or five years ago i was one of the ones that sort of pushed this i think it makes abundant sense for us if we structure in the right way we have the right organization doing the right thing for the community  there would not be a burden on the taxpayer and we still have incredible we can build an incredible rink if it's written in half that we can all have access to that the schools can have access to that the public can have access to that's money that has multiple programs beyond what it is today so that was the thinking back four or five years ago and i think we're still here today and from my point of view i think a public private partnership if it's structured in the right way makes a mess but it's a fair question  of the reasons why i came here tonight is because i bred one of the articles saying that you're looking to build a state of the art rink i saw the picture of a rendering it had beautiful glass windows you know very our modern art kind of architecture  i've played in think counted forty out of the hundred fifty rinks in the state the last decade and i have not seen anything as beautiful as that at the same time it sounds like sixty million dollars might be the cost was for that kind of building but what about a plain old brick and mortar building simple facilities something that has a locker room for locker rooms that relatively sizable you know showers and from what i know referring to is maybe what the private developer would be building which we're not paying for so honestly if they want to build the taj mahal rink on their dime that's fine by me but i mean we if we were building the rink i would not support tilting that kind of i think there's a certain baseline dollar figure you're just not  know i think it's also important to note that because the size of the site hasn't been determined yet so so if it stays on this current location there will be a parcel of land ultimately that is delineate d for the new wink and then the expectation is whether a response to the request for proposal would build a facility that is appropriate for that size i think what you saw was probably you know the taj mahal of drinks or somebody the greatest wish list for what a rink would be but ultimately they'd have to build something that is appropriate for the site the size of the site the location of the site i wouldn't expect that the end result would resemble what you saw pictures of  pat murphy i was just wondering does anybody know if the incinerator site was chosen what the length the time approximately the time to get that built would be a big number of years i still look at it and i think in talking to the environmental consultant about the process to work through the e p just to cap the site add on to that a review and approval process for a skating rink i think our expectation is that somewhere in the range of four to five  versus the current state like estimate how long would take for that approximately a couple years as opposed to four or five yeah well it's considerably less of course because there's no there's no outside agency that would be involved in that process it would really be it would be determined on how quickly the town could make a decision you know execute the documents in the agreements turn it over to a developer to construct so because unlike just the mere fact that you know the ranks pretty much been bandied at all these times and sure enough for most likely going to fail pretty soon i think another pro would be the fact that you could get it done a lot quicker on the current site as oppose the incinerator site less likely have to feel you're losing everything in its entirety i would assume that would be another heard especially from that organization is that they just want to commit the past me a great point this week i was sure the capital budget committee having served in the board for nine years at some point it may they believe it we fail to the point where we might say which we have you know through a contract in agreement no no if the same access that we have today if not more in a brand new facility that's not only is for hockey ice skating but other programs tennis we think about other recreational activities that improve the quality of life for residents you know i think mitigate some of the con of not owning the building in whether there's any kind of reversion part of that you know perhaps there could be  also two things i mean one is that you have to negotiate an agreement that someone will build and respond they are p if you make it to one side you're not going to get any better so there has to be something in it for the developer so we may you know we have to think about how much we push for and how much we can actually get which is a risk that you put out an r f p and no one responds because it's too one sided the second thing is to keep in mind this is not a unique idea right there a lot of towns around us that have this public private partnership for skating rinks and seems to work well i've taken my kids to birthday parties in other towns out them and it seems to work i should note john marshall is here in his first day who is our new assistant town administrator who's being tasked mostly with recreation issues and we stole him from the lovely town of arlington where he ran the rec department i'm sure he could tell you they have a public private rink in arlington now and one of them does was at lexington's one of the towns around here i've been to that has it so this isn't this isn't something weird that we're coming up with that's never been done before it's actually been done a bit but as mark said i what they would like to see done and how i'd like to be structured i recognize as well that there's going to be an r p process and but again i want to understand what's the downside what there's no free lunch so what what how much of our lunch are they eating what i don't even understand what it is that they're expecting are they going to expect to make a profit in certain number of years what would they ask in monetary terms that  we wouldn't be able to get in the times of it yeah i think the way that they what they would be i can't speak for them because i don't i don't know them that well i haven't spoke to them about it but i mean in this sort of situation they would be getting revenues from the time the belmont's not using the rank on a sheet and a half so they could rent out for two different things birthday parties pop private skating i don't know outside men's leagues or women's leagues you want to come and use it if they had a food facility there like the boston skating club does we actually have like a restaurant they could get all the revenue from that they would get the revenue from skate rentals which is an amenity we currently don't have so if we had public free skate at the rink that was privately run there actually be a skate rental component which they would get the money from charge admission whatever it may be for them if they had something like a vent they rented out for events otherwise if they weren't going to have it year round i don't know if they're intending to around or not we haven't even got that's a negotiation as well so they would certainly would not do it if they did not make the money to repay the the bill on the loan to build the building to service the debt thank you for the term of art yeah if you weren't so if they weren't as i said you have to be careful how you structure the r f p itself because otherwise no one will bid if they can't make the numbers work so we would have to think about that we obviously can't put out a bid legally for just one person it's got to be out there for anybody who wants to bid their you know if there are multiple bidders that may be better for us because you know at some level there's incompet i think i think that someone has maybe has come forward and said they'd be interested hasn't seen the hour of peace and they haven't seen what we're proposing or where we're going to put it or how big it's going to be so some sort of general statement of of interest is good to know but the devil is definitely in the details in this and we don't have we could put if we put out the r p we could say it's only open from this time of day in the morning to this time at night it's only open these days it's open year round it's not open year round we can put it out there with whatever parameters we want but you have to make it something that would entice someone to actually won't give us the hours we want and that becomes a discussion we'll have to have at some point but i think you're right kate i mean you saw that with the underwood pool where the the in the later years of the pool the number of memberships just nosedived assumes we open the new pool like tripled  so and is now beyond where it was before the pools started to decline so i think if you give them a good product people will use it i just like to add one note that as we look at the pros and cons of the high school site at our december eighteenth school committee meeting when the school committee voted that they would want to explore this issue we came up with the pros and cons list ourselves and the pros we've been talking a lot about tonight having it on the campus having it walking distance being part of the city between the town center and the other amenities are all the things i find to be exciting about the project and the amenities that maybe the recreation department in the school department could gain during the half a sheep being not ice during the summer of the fall we could have other teams use it differently are all exciting but we should keep in mind that there is a high school project going on and the fields that are west of harris field are essential to keep the teams playing on fields during the time of construction so there's going to be a little bit of pain while we go through this if it doesn't fact with the high school site that we're all going to have to be patient with how we can organize the high school sports and the youth sports on the weekends with that we're going to be really looking for patches of grass to play soccer fields market across and it will all go away after a couple years the wall look back in a few years and say wow this is going to be a great place to live and grow your family beautiful school beautiful amenities the inside pool the outside pool the rink it's just going to be amazing but as we're reminded some of the cons are just that that scheduling that that organizing the the two construction sites  one space with the high school project the ice rink it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done it's just something that we should all keep in mind as we work through this director right now the f one thousand barges sixty thousand to maintain the rink thank you very much sixty sixty eight thousand for me is not to maintain the rank and that includes like plowing  as well as the interior no just so with this public partner public private partnership you would save sixty eight thousand dollars a year maintaining the rink facility and also some additional for maintaining the site the plowing and  would you think you would see increased revenue for the town from people signing up for activities in beautified speak for the if they had the additional space and the like to how she think in run more programs  could utilize that plus if it's more than four months and obviously we've got you know he's gaining camps and all that stuff so there's the the the sky's the limit when you have the ability to have  are my three economic questions i think those are great numbers for everyone to keep in mind i would like to say i think the pictures are pretty self evident but i would like to remind everyone that this is an active safety issue i was out there on opening day i had my finger up to the first knuck in the eyes and i don't want to say the town you can only do so much with the building i'm not not a reflection of the people who work there i know there of all of them you guys work very hard to patch together a very dilapidated site there's not a reflection on that in any way but the site is i have pictures of you know rain coming in underneath i went to do the little kid skate the other day and there's a bird feces on the equipment and i'm putting out i regularly pick up birds nests birds feathers bert's feces pieces of insulation off the ice fresh after it's been zamboni and so i want everyone to know this is an active safety situation for our little kids and adults that are out there and i want to advocate for the current site because i love the that's actually why my husband and i moved here we live in zone or we can walk to everything and i think the village feel is huge and the last comment i have is that our family that it seems here like there are a lot of people here is how we're going to hockey facility hockey facility but this is reused for everyone i will tell you that my family my daughter started skating two days before she turned two so she was one year old and my mother is eighty one and she comes to family skates so our family of five plus my mother six we use it from age one to age eighty one so this is a benefit to everybody who lives in our town it's not just  under the gun on the incinerator site because they're operating on different timetables the high school's got its own project timeline but so does the incinerator site and we have to cap it because we contaminated it over the decades and we have deadlines that we have to meet with the department of environmental protection so we to choose a post closure use of that incinerator site in the next few months so at some point i mean and glenn's got the whole detail the schedule but at some point we have to make we have five remaining choices one of which is the rink we also i don't know we touched on the little bit but we do have from langdon a report glenn touched on a little bit about the site and suitability for a rink which wasn't terribly enthusiastic in favor of that being a good place to put a rink just structurally glenn sort of touched on the bit about the soil conditions if you in the extreme expense it could be to put a building like that on ash basically so i mean we so what we have it still on our list of five but we're going to be in the next month or two making a decision on these five remaining and choosing one and you know some point if it's not the rank then when i just to answer the question about the sequencing so we're talking about two different sites one site the incinerator site is much larger than the site on with existing link is we do feel that the site needs to be selected first because the site is going to drive the size of a building that you would be allowed to build and then therefore the building is the size of the building will drive the programming that you can get in the building and the size of the building will be driven by how much of a site you have to build on yeah but i thought it would be make it would make more sense you would parallel  program how much time is needed for our recreation program and how much needed for high school student athletes to try to develop you know what does our count at the time i would want to have secured for the community regardless of site and  that that was the big piece of what would be driving the ice time you know what what do we think i want you talking needs what do we think the high school needs what is pocket rec need and then when you add that half a sheet you start to think about other types of a new program that we don't have now that would be kind of a variable that we would want to explore a little bit further if it was incinerated site or the high school site but i think that we would want to make sure that we understood the needs of all those three programs before we move forward into the r p process to make sure that we were settled on those things on behalf of everybody in the town parking there's still a lot of unknowns because we didn't even started high school so how big the facility can actually even become that said to me looks very small unless we carve a lot of space in the back or for ice and a half for a restaurant for their seems seems like to be very ambitious for how how small in basically you're showing a bigger footprint obviously whether all of those amenities are only some of those amenities a part of that that would be one of the questions we would talk about and also how much how much acreage or land or field space would we want to give up and how much would we want to keep what would be displaced would be another conversation that we need to have and how we can organize and i think the folks that draw upon the plenary design organized a nice traffic loop that came off of concord out to allow people to drop off and pick up to get  off the street and provided some parking over by behind the mobil station so there is the potential for added parking reduce traffic conflicts by bringing the cars to pick up and drop off off whether or not out on to the site and back and  n still providing a sheet in half with playing field space left for at least two of the three fields that we had hoped to have on that on that space so there is some room to have that conversation in i think that that will be what the next step is to really get down to the to the facts about square footage type of program use parking traffic traffic conflicts with walkers bikers cars parking cars pulling in an arctic setter that that's the disses the beginning of that dialogue i was wondering because  a lot bigger i assume that you're going to be having a lot higher i mean much higher need for parking just because all of a sudden seventh and eighth grade parents are coming in as well so do we actually know how much parking we're going to need to do on the high school side at least leaving the same footprint so we we were at the planning board last week and it was determined that we would go for i believe four hundred parking spots on the site when the high school was completed which is enough space for nine to twelve staff in the seven or eight staff in visitors that would come to the school and some student parking and there is a high school traffic working group that's been working on the ability to utilize get out of a pick up and drop off and potentially student parking and so we're really talking about all those things in combination to try to make sure that we have enough parking in fluid traffic motion in safety for bikers and walkers who are going to the rink or going to the high school or going to the field house or going to the pool so all those things have been talked about it's a busy site and do you have any idea how many parking spots we have now we have i believe three hundred seventy six but i know the sort of the crowd who might know better than example if we would put certain programs for the kids in belmont and say oh recreation department is offering learn to skate some other programs that you never had do we actually get to keep this because of this private down in recreation department in that way obviously boarding developing their process i think that's what we have to figure out during the our peace process right so we will negotiate as part of that are certain amount of time for the schools or my time for the rec department and where that sort of revenue flows would be tonight yeah although as adam says and mentioned earlier we will have to make a decision particularly incinerator in the very near future thank you very much i will know one of the thing in if i may in response to your question there's certainly a tension with a larger rink in what that might consume in terms of site space and what that would displace one of the considerations is not just to build you know attractive rink that meets the needs of the town but also to create enough programming space with to generate sufficient revenues to allow the developer to service the debt that they will take on for construct and one of the things that has been floated is you know could you do a single sheet of ice does that in of itself produce enough revenue to service the debt i think it's something that's still under evaluation but some of the preliminary estimates using kind of market rates around where i stand typically goes for well construction costs even in a simpler rink would likely be is that it would be hard for that revenue to condition you know something could happen and for us to be taking it back right is it needs to be rebuilt again i don't know that it would be at the same spot so that is a danger of the writer for virgin that if you thirty years it returns to us they will build a building that will last thirty years and then we will get a place that's falling apart you have to keep that in mind you may not want to but i'm jane auti and i'd like to pursue the question of the fields and the space is right here that will be losing fields and yet the new high school will have two more grades there i would assume that there would be a need for more fields and that indeed building the skating rink at the other location the incinerator location would free up and give the school a lot more flexibility as far as the sporting program the tennis courts are already gone but where are all these games and for the children going to be scheduled if indeed a lot of that space is taken by a very large or even not so large building and the other point being with the incinerator site plenty of towns now have  buildings and apartment buildings and recreation on old dumps i think there's nothing that cannot be handled as far as preparing a site and if the contract the private person is doing so much of the money and the funding then why wouldn't the town have the opportunity to make sure that site was available and was properly fitted for a good big building and lots of parking people don't walk that much to the skating rink especially those who are playing hockey the amount of a quick minute and everything that they are carrying it is a driving situation and to add more traffic to a larger building a larger facility on that site and to put make more parking tarring everything over i think limits the flexibility for the future for the high school or the and large high school with seventh and eighth grades and it's very shortsighted and just seems to me that the incinerator site is of is a great opportunity to build this dream palace and have the private contractor if indeed we go that way do a lot of the paying for it but the fields and take away some of the open space that is associated with that large six class school building it just seems very short sighted just as a response if you go on the bell on high school building committee website you can see the site plan that shows what would be there if the ring stays where it is and to the west of harris field is the rink and then there is a j v softball team and a j v softball field a j v baseball field in a sub varsity  soccer field that could be used for field hockey soccer lacrosse sticks out or if there are going to be other fields on the site that would provide the overall site for the town of the schools to be very generous with field sylvia vasa the baseball field east of the behind the school and harris field so we have a real good amount of athletic space that we're really trying to squeeze into that site there would be probably the loss of either the j v softball field the j v baseball field varsity soccer field that would be next to the rink one of those might not fit if we did add the ranks so there is going to be a give and take to some of this that i think people have to decide how they feel about whether or not it's going to be a field space that would like to keep on the si the hockey coach at belmont for seventy four to two thousand and four fourteen so i certainly spent a lot of time out that old boy facility and serve this well over the many years but it simply needs to be replaced i felt this group for bringing this to the forefront to have something that's law been kicked down the road for a long long time and we're all here tonight i think it's a common goal that we'd all like to have an ice rink in a new ranking and how we get to that point there's a discussion i am a little bit disappointed that the town doesn't feel a little bit responsible that they should provide a skating rink to the town when the pool was i was on the recreation commission of a twenty one yes i was the chairman of the joint we rehabbed that pool about fifteen years ago spent about three hundred thousand dollars and we got through another fifteen the as i have and we have a beautiful facility right now with  was deteriorating the town stepped up and spent i think five six million dollars and built a beautiful pool and i think that's that's that's great so now we're faced with a rank that we have it's been part of  disappointed that we haven't done our homework here in the conversation it seems like it's a pretty foregone conclusion that the rigors of me down a private private fund because we seem to that's the easiest way out of it number two the impact maybe it directed to glenn the impact on how many parking spots that will take where we put that new rincon and from my understanding and be correct me if i'm wrong that rink will not be on its current location it's supposed to be put across the street from the library and if that is the case how many parking spots are we going to take on that  we're then going to wipe out our ability to have a softball field and another soccer field on that land because we've moved that rink over i think that was a really important questions before we decide if that facility and i'll go on record i really would like t facility to be there but not if it impacts so much of the field thank you fields there was really better for the town i also think that of course if the skating so it became worse and worse as time went on but i think the town should really consider rebuilding the hockey rink on site will find out something else for the tennis courts if you do that but  think that a small smaller facility sim similar to what we have now would really serve the times needs i think it's very difficult to actually control the develop a however nice they are however well meaning they are they need to make money so the question would be far because people who live across the street from the rank and along conquered ave how late in the evening will that rink be open will it be open till midnight every night so that people can come and have a game at ten thirty which happens in many of these public private rinks they are not open at the times that they're open now they are open all the time i have a grandson who plays in minneapolis my husband and i went to visit him and we went to his hockey game he's only eleven years old the rink is a prop public private partnership it was a madhouse children were coming children were going children were playing people were standing around eating people were milling around it's it's a whole different concept when you have that kind of a rink where there is a coffee shop where people can sit and wait their turn it's very very different from what you have now so i think if we're going to do a public private partnership the town really needs to make the decision first as to what they want and tell the developer what they want do we really need a thirty seat coffee shop on concord ave when glen was talking about he was saying all the kids play you could run around to stab x and get a cup of coffee but not if you can set it to thirty c coffee shop in the in the rank so the town really needs to put down what it wants how late they think that should run at night how many days is it going to be open all through june and a lot of to make it work will it stop again the first of september i mean all of that needs to be sorted out before you come up with an r f p and i think the town and the people in the have to know exactly what the parameters of a public private partnership thank you i think that's exactly so i mean the are of people would have to have all of that put into it before it went out and those are the kind of details that would that would be part of that and then you would see if anybody would bid it or a few to one side or not i mean that's what we'll have to do if we go that route hi folks my name's dan mclaughlin i'm a lifelong resident of belmont  want to thank you guys for bracing the public private partnership and i hope we get this rink is really an embarrassment for the anybody who's spent a lot of time in there it's not just birds it's rats i've seen rats run across people's feet it's horrible and i think from what i can see on the site so i hope that we can go through the process of selecting a site relatively soon because i really don't hear anything other than field space that's a pro for the incinerator site the expense of the bust people up there we have no idea what can be built there anybody who's done any development knows that when you're talking about contaminated site you capitan now we're putting a shovel in the ground the permanent process is going to be a nightmare and i think when you have a kind of a blank slate to the west of harris field i can imagine you can't develop a site plan that keeps the fields intact you know that the ranks are rectangular building and maybe it needs to be built along the railroad tracks it's amazing what you can fit into a well designed site so i hope we can do this this would be a great thing for the town it's the type of thing that could keep our real estate values up a little bit i know other people who live in towns that don't have ranks if they got four or five kids playing hockey it's a nightmare to be driving a half hour in traffic every night to  t and i like the current site that underpass underneath the railroad tracks i mean when i was a kid we used to walk to the right walk to public skating i know kids don't walk anywhere anymore but it would be to the one book neighborhoods to the wellington neighborhoods and i just i would welcome having them rent that was a madhouse because our rink is an entirely different kind of parents have been here my entire family actually more than fifty five years i'd like to say thank you to mr superintend failon first off for all his efforts and everything he does say thank you to mr susan bird's cox and her school committee for everything that they do and i'd like to think miss norton here for her new year on to the board and making a difference but also like to say thank you to most of all right for all the work that he's done and all the time and effort that he's put into this since what but i couldn't disagree with you more because that's life it's agree to disagree right here ok so excuse me for a minute i get multiple learning disabilities so if my a t v kicks in  so i have a few questions haven't looked into an r f p at all because we're just beginning the process on step one ok but right now it's thirty years right no no no no because i'm sorry lisa my father is going to be we've been throwing around a number just to have a conversation there's no number but have you looked enjoy ninety nine and because we haven't looked into any length of time right now i'm not a lawyer i mean real estate but if you look into the ninety nine year lease which again i don't know one hundred percent but that said the we all know what's going on in the town we all know the issues down the rink and i think what sarah lemieux brought up was the safety issue so i got one last what would happen if a child got injured down there what's the protocol is there anything in place mrs chairman cox because the school committee is fifty one percent of the town's budget so you guys got a little leverage right so my question is what's the protocol in general in municipal government if you have an accident on town property whether it's school property a town property and i would defer this also to your selectman or school committee and we have a ton of ministry here that you would let them know if something happened if there was an injury administration there and they would bring it to our attention and you could bring it to the school committees attention to all of my attention is the superintendent and you could bring it to the town administrative detention as the person who is in charge of running quote the town so i don't think school committee and bo are very different in this or that in this situation i think it's a town that you would have to bring it to their attention and i respect i think you know i have requested a meeting with the entire school committee and no one's getting back to me  being in the town this long i find this truly unacceptable and disrespectful so i'll ask one time in front of everybody here is there a chance that i could have a meeting with the entire school committee because i'm worried about children getting and there's a lot of spots down there that have open you know hope whatever i mean i've taken multiple pictures sarah has i think everybody in this room out there no one wants to get into confrontation here where a town and i think everybody should be inclusive and welcome all walks of life committee this is we're a public entity and so and elected officials and everything we do is needs to be open if people want to have a discussion with the entire school committee they would come to our meetings as people are tonight to either all of our meetings we invite citizens concerns to be addressed by the school committee to the school committee we would then either pass those concerns on to the administration who handles them initially and then maybe you would the school committee would need to be involved but all of our meetings all of our discussions are in a public forum because we are elected officials so you know a meeting with the entire school committee would be something like this today tonight why can't it be private because again we're a public an get i totally understand all that but you know if you're a lifelong resident in this town and you've been here for that long i don't understand why you guys control all this and if we want to speak up a little bit to give our opinion and we want to just sit down face to face for a meeting was my being tonight i don't think anybody's denying you the opportunity to meet with the school committee as mr police that there are open meeting requirements that need to be met people come and address the school committee or the board selectmen or any public and the city will look into that legal issue other than that i just like to say it's been a pleasure to live in this town for as long as i have i'd like to meet the entire school committee actually and again i can moore enough for all the efforts he's done over the last bunch of years he's put a lot of time into this an effort so again we're doing this for the children right but safety is extremely important ok well i don't think you should rebuild it that's just my opinion it needs to be no brand new and it's not just a rink it's a recreation center for the whole town to have meetings yoga whatever maybe invite all the new people in town to welcome everybody because that's what i grew up with here in the town my cousin packer up with my horror the french is you name it programs for the kids and do it entirely on a volunteer basis to be honest i can barely skate i don't know much about hockey at all my kids somehow ended up playing the game soley because a lot of the adults that are sitting behind us and they they've sort of stepped forward on a volunteer basis providing a service to the whole town making kids fall in love with a sport some water that you see with belmont soccer associates you see a thriving program you go over there saturday mornings and seven degree weather and literally hundreds of kids going into that dilapidated rink that's really cold and not very safe soley because all these adults have come together to really make them love the game to make them enjoying it and creating memories are in coach monaghan and the rest of the over there that i think is really special in that group  has come forward to to try to make that that program continue i just hope that the discussions and the red tape and there's plenty of ways you could delay this for another five to ten years that the committee can see through it towards the most expedient and the