so my name is mike crowley and i'm an almost two member or two year member resident of belmont i lived in washington d c for many years and have about twenty three twenty four years of experience with the office of management and budget and i was looking for a way to try to help out and so a lot of my background is budgeting also public safety policy and i'm excited about lost the previous meeting i will have i'm inclined to have a heart stop at nine thirty and if we haven't finished that's our problem it's our fault then we'll resume next week or the next meeting but i do want to stop at nine thirty and i'd like to also be as open as possible members of the public to that end if there is a member of the public complete we'll pick it up at the meeting following and in terms of frequency of meeting i think we should meet often enough but not more often than necessary so  on the minutes per open meeting or just summaries there not birthday them their summaries of the most salient points that are covered and then when we then if they are substantial if someone sends me a read submitted minutes after the hour after we approved it so so if we have made a mistake that we have a mechanism to correct  use our next agenda item is discussion of the town meeting warrant article to withdraw from the minuteman school district i have copies of the warrant if anybody wants to review it although it's pretty straightforward by sort of town meeting in belmont would withdraw from the minuteman district in terms of organizing the discussion tonight to say that i was not expecting to hold a vote on this question tonight my my intention is to have a discussion  to have the fullest love the most informed group possible the selectmen are meeting tomorrow going to be a minuteman presentation next week and then there's going to be a week that hasn't been confirmed but i expect there will be another league seventeenth is just a question of timing because i have a conflict on wednesdays in the fall as you may know that i teach b c and i just barely get over here by seven thirty so i would like to be present for seventeenth would work especially if the form is definitely over by on the clock because we are supposed to be out of the building fairly soon afterwards but the vote will be quick so that's a possibility the forum will be here at seven pm in the a policy regarding capital charge for the minuteman school which is a formula that may be a little bit complicated but sure how many people in the room are familiar with it but i thought the wo discussing what does he actually has now allowed for minuteman of course the district wide vote was held in september where belmont voted not people in this room have some pretty strong views on the man nonetheless i think it's worthwhile both for our own benefit and for members of the public who may want to speak  review the developments since our last meeting in september so that would include the yes the formular plus other items of what i think are factual nature that i think are knowing and discussing so what happened in the last week or two was the education subcommittee of the war committee met to draw memorandum and i constructed a spreadsheet that i think has some usefulness that i can also discuss but i think at this point i would like to actually turn the lead over to   meetings and i should say that while the education subcommittee discuss these issues generally and take various suggestions for the document the documents  for me i mean i mean even beyond that i mean i think i think i heard and took into account some something that i'm thomas that were raised at their end but the goal is really really just as a primary sources and figure out what what are things that we can that we can that we can put down that come from that come from that come from that that come from those those are sources and i mean i certainly when it went in to it with an attitude that i would that i would bring bring back what i found whether it was going to strengthen or or strengthen or and we can we can  the other documents are you know i just really said just shows some of the work some of the work that i did using using using other things like i'm reading the reading the regulations or the regional agreement or going on through with the fiscal seventeen budget for minuteman is to support it so the first the first topic of this is this is on the facts page and one of the questions that keeps that will look different at different points in time but we have the fiscal seventeen budget in front of us and so and so and so i just sort of walk through that and said what you know what would it look like from a member on going on back and into working it through the the that the specific allocation for the you know for the for the in different towns to get to get just just in general just how far and how far all of the revenues that that that they budgeted to collect before they start adding in the assessment and then i just went through and looked at the assessments or looked at the spending that  was that was before the transportation cost because that's a big difference between a member and a between a member and their non non member and also putting aside the capital charges because because this question is really focusing on the operating the operator on the phone the operating to issue and then all of that work is in that two page sheet that's what's called the analysis of the fiscal seventeen plus transportation because nonmember towns are responsible for their bus transportation and then the counterpart calculation on the member side no  i i left out the transportation for the non members and i stopped with the in the in the on the member side i left out the transportation piece ok so sorry so on the non ember side it's it's the tuition which is set by plus the sped increment on the on the member side it's the assessment divided by the number of students which i gather is different from the number that mike had used some work that he had done before and that explains part of the difference i think for what it's worth  you know and so and so they create this budget with a with a projected in rome and they have nonmember member towns and in and and so this is not this is in terms of what is the burden that is going to be borne by by the member towns of vs vs versus the nonmember towns and that in that sense on a per capital basis the actual formula we're has for your forty four year rolling in rolled it numbers and that was put in there to help towns with their with with their budgeting process but if you're comparing the nonmember cost which is on a per capita you know as of the current year snapshot then it seems like that the best cleanest way to have the apples to apples is to use that same notion of you know let's take a look at the number of member students that this budget says that they're going to serve and what is the per student cost you know so i don't really know exactly the math that you've done i see it a little bit differently  if you look at the budget if you if you want to compare the cost from my perspective i'm i'm more interested in the cost of belmont versus what it would be for belmont as a nonmember not versus what or what a generic member pays versus what a generic nonmember pays the generic member versus just not generic nonmember to me is far less relevant than belmont as a member versus belmont as a nonmember so if you think about belmont as a member anything in fiscal seventeen is seven or ninety five thousand six hundred fifty four dollars that is our total assessment and you can divide that either by the current number of students or just twenty six you can divide that by the four your average number of students would as jack point out just twenty nine if you use the higher number which is this where your number you get twenty seven thousand four hundred thirty six dollars that's what we pay per student right now that includes transportation and include special education which education and you know capital to fair enough but all i'm saying is we're paying for sixteen assessment was eight hundred thirty one thousand five hundred thirty five dollars so he said if you use the same twenty nine students just for simple math you go from twenty seven thousand dollars for thirty six but isn't this year last year was twenty eight thousand six hundred  seventy three so that you get to put is transportation and include special education of transportation is roughly a thousand dollars a student approximately as special education is forty five hundred dollars a student divide that by roughly half because there are roughly half the students for special education so in the numbers that i share before if you look at watertown's sixteen thousand for fifty four you add in one thousand dollars you got in twenty to fifty you get just under twenty thousand dollars so watertown pays just under twenty thousand dollars we pay twenty seven twenty eight twenty nine thousand dollars per student that's not a five thousand our difference from my perspective relative to the water that it begins begins because you were asking and in answering a different question i'm not taking a look at what the budget you know with the budget looks like using that as using that as a reference just to try to provide some information that is that is that is that really can be looked at as an apple basis and i'm not and i'm not trying to spin it one way or one way or one way or the other i'm just saying you know this is this is what the budget looks like and then and then the next question is ok how do we think that they will perform relative to their budget what does this mean in terms of what they would have to do in terms of finding some operational the fissions these to sort of make it better to to be able to be able to be able to be able to close that gap i mean i'm trying to use you know this sixty page budget but document that's chock full chock full of information and imma try to boil it down into some way that we can start to we can sort of to work with it and it's and it's just a different kind of question i know one thing a total of what i would love them all stopped actually like i think there is a way to reconcile these numbers on it which is as i understand it that the tuition costs sorry the transportation costs  closer to three thousand dollars per student and there is a legacy capital charge of about a thousand dollars per student loan for an escrow investment which belmont will pay what they were a member not because it was in her past so those two items alone are on the order of three thousand dollars which bring which gets you taking off your numbers gets you much closer to jim's twenty three six thirteen and i think i think once you realize when you take account of the items that are included that the differences can be reconciled so the but the goal here was to exclude transportation and have to take up this  component which was surprisingly large ok so i mean so i mean so that's what it is that the two page sheet shows you how that budgets broken in major major categories you know if you want to think about what what would mina man have to change in terms of the internal operations you know you would have to i mean and where were possible cost savings there because i think whether we're a member or a nonmember we have an interest in minuteman running a more efficient ship ship there and it's a question as that i mean how how how much it of either cost savings or you know or new non non assessment revenue they have to have to sort of this specific example close to close that gap you know jim i'm having a hard time understanding your last sentence here ok i'm just wondering if past people have pointed out that the nonmember tuition rate has actually been dropping dropping in on the dollar terms ok so another field trip or bit of investigation that i did i went to the monthly board meeting of the board of the board forum dessie and in just speaking as a town meeting member during the public public on comments i said you know we have a town meeting i'm coming up there one of the things i mean one of the kinds of concerns we're dealing with as a town meeting is that it looks like there's a financial incentive to move from member to nonmember status and do they have to have a comment or further further information about that and  the chair paul sagan asked the staff to sort of make sure that they got back to us to us on to it to meet on a timely basis and so i learned i learned a lot about about about the history and one of the things is that the board you know all of the regulations were we're dealing with now the capitol the the prohibition on the freshman from the you know from the boca towns come here they were they were all passed compassionate reviewed  by the board last less than a year and so there they are one of their points was we're finished actively reviewing and thinking about changing the regulations as applied here and they also sort of gave the color that a couple of years ago the nonmember tuition was closer to one hundred fifty percent and through that rulemaking process there was back and forth you know should be higher should be lower and there was there was a decision to move it down to one hundred twenty five m percent and and it's been gradually stepping down for the past for the past couple of years which is why that dollar number has been dropping but what they're saying now is that they're finished with that and that the one twenty five is a one hundred twenty five on top of one hundred twenty five percent is a number that we can count on going forward and so it should rise gradually with with inflation and so and so it was it really is a way to sort of summarize that the trend of the past couple years where that nonmember to ration has been falling is past and it should stay at that level what is the current your foundation i just don't understand the hundred twenty five percent that's i mean that's a foundation budget i mean that's just a huge that's a huge topic lisa laurie you can help me out here if you want but but but the but  schools than they do than they do for other kinds of schools and and you know and so that number right now as you know has four fifth's times sixteen thousand four hundred sixty four and you might also add that  as a result of this hundred twenty five percent of policy it looks like a minuteman to wish and was reduced from what it was a few years ago but there's now a tier if you look at the data now there's about ten schools that are all set at this level so there's minutemen and group of other schools that are in it here that's sixteen and some whatever the number is for this year and that will step forward incremented some way going forward but it's seems unlikely to have said to expect there to be some significant increase in the tuition level beyond a place for some similar kind of adjustment and you know the tuition gap were to be closed that would be more likely to come from the minuteman realizing operational savings it's not because the tuition for nonmembers will rise to close that gap and and this hundred twenty five cat  is is i mean that the new regional i'm in agreement has what's called the belmont proviso where it says that nonmembers should be paying at least the average cost but it also says subject to state law and right and and and so i was just getting trying to get a sense as to whether there is some prospect that that that would be lifted and and we could charge what with the new m agreement as and and and i came out of this thinking no no i think we should plan on the one hundred twenty five constructing their their budget last spring they had a total projected in roman of six thirty five of which three eighty two were coming from member towns and two fifty three coming from non member towns and that's why you know now we have reached the school year and so we have new numbers and so and so that sheet that i provided that's called up up up date of minute by minute man in rome and shows that that they're that they're about on target in terms of the member but they're far but they're but they're fifty three below with their projected you know in in  the terms of the you know in terms of the members and and then and then later in the afternoon i don't know if anyone had time to see it yet but they actually sent me the breakdown by class and by tao and with that when i take a look at it i think of that gap of you know that that fifty three boston member towns i would say twenty is sort of due to the freshmen being told to stay home in the other thirty three and in terms of in terms of in terms of updates you know if and if they have for if the actual member is for more than they projected last last spring when you know if that if we wanted to revise what the what the what the actual actual forecast is those extra four members should probably add one hundred thirty three thousand dollars to  revenue received but then you have to but but it's way offset by the fact that they have fifty three fewer nonmember students and so they're losing the losing the nonmember tuition and and i'm using the same forty eight percent which would be a deficit there of one hundred eighty seven thousand so so the net an adjustment just in terms of going from their budget of last spring to where they stand now in terms of the woman shows a shortfall of become seventy two hundred yeah ok so in so and so also the way that the not the other thing that the learned the way that the nonmember tuition revenue rolls into the budget it's it sliding lending  one year so i mean so so their actual is for for for fiscal year seventeen are probably going to be pretty much non target but when they're building their budget for next year the members are the member that the member assessment just based on this fact that them alone is going to have to go up i think just maybe just say that and important issue in all of this is whether the school is at capacity or not and as i he announced a capital charge policy just before the district wide election which was a little bit confusing because it was based on some false assumptions  the spirit i think is make sense the idea is that a capital charge of the allowed but there will be two different charges one called type  the the idea is that a member of town a nonmember in the type a category for purposes of a capital charge would be treated the same as a member town and a type a town i think the biggest example would be watertown the type b town is different a town that currently offers five or more folk at type programs which are called chapters seventy four programs i gather because there are already offering some number of occasional programs and possibly for other reasons a type b town gets a twenty five percent discount off of the type a charged in terms of what the number actually looks like the calculation in the letter from does is just wrong so let me tell you what it's based on the wrong assumptions or i should say parameters about the amount of debt and so forth if you do it in a way that reflects the actual debt that's going to be incurred and take account of this type a versus type b discount you get a capital charge for type a nonmembers and implicitly members of approximately nine thousand dollars per student and the type b nonmember charge is approximately sixty eight hundred dollars now exactly what those capital charges are will also vary based on the enrollment assumptions so what i just told you one thousand and sixty eight hundred is based on full on roman with and assume split between type and type b towns that seems charge goes up so one illustration i made is to assume five hundred fifty one students instead of six hundred twenty eight which is approximately the enrollment that you would get if all of the duckling towns and belmont put their children back to minuteman as type and type and the remaining nonmembers students reflect one hundred seventy students that were in the minuteman pro forma that we saw on the screen that even in the spring they were only projecting one hundred seventy students if you put all that together you get five hundred fifty one students total and the type a non member couple charge rises to approximately ten thousand two hundred and the type the nonmember charges about seventy six hundred men of course you can make different scenarios but that gives you an idea of the sensitivity on that basis i let me just say also i have i have no reason to believe that the capital charges will not be  imposed they will be imposed there was a separate question that came out of the educational subcommittee meeting that we put directly to minutemen which is since minuteman does i think have legal discretion to offer lower tuitions to nonmember towns would they cut side deals where they would give a break on tuitions to offset the capital charge and we put that question directly to the superintendent and his answer was that when he first came in some of those deals existed but he eliminated them some years ago and they're not coming ruling it allows the districts to charge one hundred percent of the capital charter seventy five percent of captain charge based on that they don't know whether taipei or type b doesn't actually specified that that is what they will charge the district actually decides what they will charge and that's and then it can be it can be changed based on certainly be changed based on the school committee and so when you say i have no reason to believe  children to cambridge and pay eleven thousand three hundred sixty six dollars into it which is this fiscal seventy two asians and they have the alternatives of sending the kids a bit then where minute minute costs roughly what's call in deciding which school to go to and my understanding at this point is that the the  clarify understanding is as long as we are a member of the district or even if we withdrew after the vote in a couple week and a half after it is we still have those three years that students in belmont must attend the minuteman school unless we do not or minuteman does not offer a program that the student wishes to be a part of so then they can look elsewhere but at least through one thousand and twenty we're required to send students there  family cheese minuteman over cambridge for example well the superintendent will give a wonderful presentation about the pathway in the plan that he's coming up with so my understanding again and i think since this is all crystal ball stuff at the moment because the vote hasn't happened yet we as a district will make decisions about the schools that we might want to enter into partnerships with so that hasn't happened yet no formal great everyman's have been made and so if i think it would fall into the same category if we have agreements with a district or two to send students to those districts if there's programming offered at those districts those are the schools that students would go to if there is not a suitable program then the parents would have an opportunity to seek out alternative schools that offer those programs but many members from minuteman to cambridge is going under the assumption that they have no preference for from one school to the other may be that they that they have a strong samples so if we have both of those relationships both of them offer carpentry or whatever does the parent does the family choose which one they go to or does the district choose which one they get i don't have any answer to that question that's a great question because i don't know the menu of the offerings well enough to say whether we would choose specific schools that complement each other or i don't think we'd want to be in competition they instituted because i think your i students right it's thirty so that in my mind would be your graduations that would be the freshman who are entering this fall so if you just look at that our friend the him again i think it has been said many times but one of the things that is happened to minutemen with a change in the regulation that requires students to stay at their home district if they offer a certified doc to certify the program is that they must do their exploratory in their home district and then frankly i think we can debate whether or not if you stay in your home district for a year as an exploratory stupid you must do what you decide to go somewhere else or not i think typically the  you find your major you state your district so just to point out that the freshmen are rolling out of district because of because of the several factors we're down to thirty so in some point for years if you just extrapolate we're going to have you know so i guess the whole point is is two years three years ago before the policy change there were eight hundred students in the minuteman two hundred jack kirkwood five but a majority of the students want there are other districts because they are coming because of the change in regulation so i guess the question we're talking about is is that if this holds true to the numbers one twenty one thirty one forty whatever the number is and you build a school for six twenty eight then it appears that at least for three years four years five years six years as i think it's been said belmont has the option to go to midnight as an ol district just never and this should be plenty of seats there so if in fact then i think again i'll speak for myself i think clearly the superintendent is going to outline a plan a process that i think for some reason he can he keeps getting forgotten about that there's nothing that indicates especially now that we're under six hundred students at minimum and that there isn't going to be playing his seeds i distrust students of minutemen for years four years five years or six years and i guess i understand  the outcome all strategy for the period thereafter just for clarification is if someone voted to withdraw it wouldn't actually happen until twenty twenty three years anyway so we're sort of looking beyond your three right but but but no i'm but if we both now it is a commitment that we're going to that we're going to get out we that we sort of lose the free option to come to him to take it back the only way we can take number of students who want to apply next year's class and i think is this sort of the key thing is because they will be the first graduating class from the new school in the other thing just to sort of point out here is that withdraw and we send a notice to the towns then the towns must either call a town meeting we need a majority of them to say we can go there most either call a town meeting and say  that was in a very unique circumstances right now but rather that there is a three year hiatus you are out there july first and which falls three full years after th i mean that when he talked about that fifty thousand dollars number i mean that's you know that what i'm saying there is that that if we stay in we are i mean we are a member for thirty years we pay the debt for thirty years and it's and it's a way of thinking about what is the minimum commitment we're making if we stay here and sign on to the debt taking the main driver up that is the one percent that for the purpose of calculating your with your debt call as having that one student and you can take a look at that formula lots of different ways under under load and roll in under under you're committing to thirty years of paying at least fifty thousand dollars per a year if we send zero students that is money money that's gone if we are spending students that's fifty thousand dollars that  fifty thousand dollars as far as b goes that the new grace period to withdraw to sort of it sounds like this is a one way street if we get out but the thing is that when a man is trying to get towns to join so of three we vote to get out and three years from now  somehow be unlikely or less likely to be able to get back in because i tried to say and i'm not i'm not trying to i'm not going to go that far i mean if that if we then if we do both to go and if we you know want to come back  not i would want to make sure that path were as smooth as possible don't you think that they desperately would want us to come back and no i don't share that you know ok division they are holding  huge debt without the help of don't you know i don't know that i mean i mean we should we should we shouldn't decide as a town meeting at this point whether people and we should wait until we get closer to until twenty twenty or twenty twenty one of the earliest because that's when the school's expected to be completed that leaves open the first what happens in the years prior when  being issued last being heard actually go to school and the answer seems to be the remaining member towns during the construction period are one hundred percent responsible for any financing costs incurred during that time and because the financing plan is not fully specified at this point but the idea seems to be that and then they would build the school everyone else would increase the financing capital charges for three years we wouldn't but we'd still get the center students there and in two thousand and twenty one if let's say we can't find another alternative we could just go back at me and say oh we couldn't find the full use of the school nine students and multiply you multiply that out that's two hundred sixty one thousand dollars that we would be having to pay in capital charge but as you correctly point out it's probably not all being heard in year one right there's probably i mean this is this is and this is an issue that i see in weather where there were a member or a nonmember but and especially if we stayed as a member you know i i would want to make sure that there's always there's a provision if swirling around in this discussion and it's it's very interesting i think that it's very clear that if you just look at next year it's cheaper for belmont to withdraw from the district and paying a lower encourage districts to establish their own programs there are two things there is the the freshman year policy and there's also the lower capital cost for those who have programs in their  district if they come in as nonmember towns and so the future of who's going to be filling these seats and how many seats are going to be necessary it seems to me is something that will develop is something that's flexible right now and not able to be you know and it seems to me that at this point with this these figures in front of us the sensible thing for belmont to do is to withdraw and then to see how it goes over the next three years and who is actually filling those seats and what the does the policies develop as they go over time and what it will look like and i don't see that we've got a lot of  brutal eventually from from ending our membership in the district you know they're obviously are always there and i don't think that we should view those savings have you know i haven't been dealing with this issue is a pretty previous member i mean as a member of the our committee previous to their vote i do have some knowledge and that's when someone's digging into this issue on my own as a private citizen as well the town meeting member and i have talked to folks in some of the other towns including you know both some folks in the leadership positions as well as those folks that are just citizens you know  just think that if we expect to move three years out after taking a boat and resume membership on that first trip i think it has to be more of an open question i think three years of the brand spanking got that facility is going to look awfully attractive minuteman already has an attractive school from a number of her struggles they offer far more programs and really good programs to give the town's can't offer on their own and behind the ultimate oresteia you i mean i mean that's i mean that's how they treated treated pretty have declared powers in the agreement and and and so and it's a question to be decided that it would make sense from my point of view that the same treatment would be the regulations say save the letter that was sent out in september is simply a rule implementing what the regulations already said and that and that was frankly some of the frustration of the summer was that you don't that i could point to the regulation that that had this capital charge with with those terms in it and people said well well it's a going to happen but the surprise to some people was that actually dessie follow through on what their board had already voted and what was already in the regulation and they just wrote the rule that was the in limitation of how that was going to work and so and so this it is not a factor you know if you want to speculate about whether minuteman fought so hard for this capital charge and i'm going to charge watertown the response is going to be which is sure i'm happy to pay nine or ten thousand dollars apple charge for my c c students so you're but didn't you i mean have you talked to watertown about this i personally have not but others have and will and one does not have soothsayer to understand that when someone is going to impose a you know very very very very large charge they will logically seek a negotiated lara lower number and they because they have a very large her students will have negotiated power as will all the other never comes but setting that aside moment i think that the core thing that we ultimately need to think about as a community and we'll talk about a time meeting is that we have before it's now a decision so we're either going to lock ourselves into a debt situation for the next thirty years or we're going to withdraw and therefore have option value in a variety of ways it is based on that on the one twenty five the foundation budget is pretty clear that we're going to have a lower tuition raid of between five and eight thousand dollars depending how you want to count to ten thousand dollars if you use just the current year number but cost five hundred thousand dollars of lower tuition every year for the foreseeable future as you and he correctly pointed out we will be avoiding debt for the next three years at a minimum of some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars we will avoid capital if supply and demand as i was saying before means that the capital charge is not fully charged you know remember towns which i believe is some to the school which is meaningfully less expensive when i see what i mean the country twenty thousand dollars per student last expensive so we might send some of the two minutes on whether or not to send all of our students to two two or three other schools that are twenty thousand dollars per student less expensive and if all the really after learning much more information over the next several years about whether or not a big sense that maybe makes sense to stay can harm pretty confident that since no other town in the last thirty years situation so i think that to me the case is deeply compelling from an economic perspective that we should be not locking ourselves into a third year situation we have an extraordinary opportunity now that some people in a capital charge they made this down but your capital construction renovation increment to be added to the two issues that they may do it and then if you read over the interpretation here it says if we decide this is this if we decide it's in the public interest to build a larger school to accommodate a significant number of nonresident students a decision that must be ratified by the district and the s b a and this department then the capital construction increment provides a mechanism for nonmember towns to pay their fair share it is their word for it ok i mean just just on that i mean that if you finish reading what the regulation says that just goes on and and and and lays out exactly what the calculate if they will enter says how they w capital charge if we stay and i certainly don't want to get out but this is a right it's not they haven't made the decision yet i don't think this memo as was my memory of reading anything thank you for giving up my memory this read it was well this isn't helpful at just look at the merits i am troubled by the idea of telling never towns that you know what you pay for it will come as i had when this first came up in the spring the development of the major development to me since the summer was what appears to be the the main strategy of simply putting students back to minuteman by what i would call would save some money now how much money would be saved clearly that is can be calculated precisely and if one says a couple charges will be imposed that changes everything for what it's worth i'm getting in the delta between being a member town and not river towns assuming twenty nine students and all of about two hundred thousand dollars per year and  that is a number that honestly i i would consider living with it worse five hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand dollars that starts to get beyond my comfort range for two hundred thousand dollars i think it's worth to me it just sort of comes down to which risk and you're allowed to are you willing to accept you know there's a risk a financial risk that mike has been speaking to you know two hundred thousand is probably a certainly in the same vein i think i think the operating budget question i mean that's one hundred million dollars plus and and and and that really is our main purpose is to is to take a look at that and we should be looking looking at the cost saving all throughout the budget and even over middleman just happens to be in the queue where it's on the chopping block first but i think i think you know into the collective burning crosses this this year and what they do in terms of what comes out of that is going to have an impact on the operating budget that it's going to swap whatever the minimum question is i think that  be careful about saying things like it's only two hundred thousand dollars more if it were five thousand or more you know we wouldn't worry about this much three thousand dollars is a lot of money and it's you we feel like we'd be nice to actually help them out here we have a financial future responsibility to our town and to our taxpayers and you said to me should we keep the six million dollars within belmont or should be spread the six million dollars amongst the other member towns that's not a very hard decision now that doesn't even include the capital which may or may not be charge number one and number two if we  withdraw we don't necessarily have to be happy because we won't necessarily said all of the students to minuteman if we for example send off the students commitment and have somewhere else where we didn't pay capital if that were let's say just collect ten students that we sent somewhere else we receive your nine thousand dollars that's another ninety thousand dollars times thirty years so we're talking about a lot of money this is not this is not right and you know i talk to people who are who are taxpayers in this town who are afraid to vote for a for example in the high school or to vote for an override because they feel like they cannot afford to pay their taxes they're living in pain you know paycheck to paycheck so security checks are so security checks every penny matters to them and so if we talk about you know the six million dollars that we don't have to well let me just say why i personally was prepared to look at two hundred thousand dollars because taking a breath as i actually did mention briefly in our meeting  last may before town meeting i personally would like to see certain reforms in and some of the elements finances that would be more than cover the two hundred thousand dollars but it's not something i intend to discuss tonight but let me just say that i i didn't i didn't say what i said a couple of minutes ago and i thought this way i said it because i thought that that amount actually could be covered and know i'm happy to discuss that on another occasion but as i just want to send a message that a it is a i haven't lost my mind and and then we pay this two hundred thousand then it's a wash maybe for the two hundred thousand jobs a little i mean it's two hundred thousand right now and why are the two hundred thousand that we don't need to incur i mean this is this is where i'm really hoping that  the school committee and others can sort of weigh in and to speak to the the educational consequences of never having of having a guarantee of having guaranteed access to a minute man for the next thirty years versus first as what the alternatives are i think i think there's a room at town meeting for some more conversation about about about where minuteman fits within the scope of the educational opportunities between  regular schools and and between your spent schools what is the different what is the value of having minimum as a partner rather than rather than just just as a client where the where we are secondary and in mainline there are those really sort of get to questions about how do you value whatever number people come up with out of out of this kind of kind of work and i don't think that's really what our job here it as you know was a warning to m is dire there's some consequences and you know we're all entitled to our views about about what the future is going to look like but i think it's not fair for the warrant committee to be trying to make that trade off of what value you get in terms of the educational content of what of what being a member minuteman i'm thinking that each person here probably has individual reasons for reaching their decisions i know i don't know how many people are focused on an i think that's an issue and i actually was not in my own mind i thought it was a realistic possibility that we would not take a boat but i further this morning that know i think that we have an obligation to make a recommendation on the financials perhaps other things as well but you know one thing that really concerns me is that we i think we have a reasonable handle on potential savings from associated with an exit but we don't have a good handle on it or at least i'm not aware of what the options might be in terms of you know what costs we incur save for the continuing to go to have an option should we exit should we exit we we don't we don't know we don't have any information information about about alternative options to minuteman and what those might cost we we can't say we're going to save twenty thousand per pupil if we send them your are there because we don't know what we hear in that there actually misinformation here that we need to know from the cost side maybe may i make the following suggestion actually it's one hundred fifteen what i'd like to do is ask the board of selectmen school committee updates and then in the remaining time in invite jack weiss he's in the audience you make whatever comments he would like it that he and we can from the discussion tonight thirty and after which i would encourage everybody to go not only to the league meeting but to go to the minuteman forum i see no reason to shun the shun that minuteman school in the film one i think everybody should be as informed as possible and then i imagine we will take a vote on the seventeenth and everybody should just feel that they've exhausted every opportunity to answer every question that can be answered in the time remaining but with that sa updates i can update you on the topic that seems to be of interest that everyone our committee meeting just pushing foliage under our previous extension toll brothers was to close on the purchase of the property from star legacy partners and the parking lot from the town by september thirty well there was a closing off sorts on september thirtieth what happened is the parties all closed in escrow which means that we chris star toll all delivered final negotiated documents signed drafted sealed to an escrow agent title attorney and told also wired to that escrow agents account the full purchase price for the project including you know the purchase price for the parking lot from the town so everything is held in escrow right now it's an escrow closing what hasn't been done is documents haven't been physically the registry of deeds which is of course the last step to bring finality to the closing what has held it up was negotiations with star bucks which is a tenant right in the middle of the project everyone knows entrepreneur wrote we have been informed that a new lease has been negotiated with starbucks it's been approved locally by both parties but it's waiting execution it's awaiting execution at starbucks corporate headquarters right now approval and execution and we're anticipating that that could happen any day  that said we have imposed a deadline of october nineteenth twenty first of october twenty first by which that lease has to be signed and and all the documents recorded again i always expressed optimism so we are very close to the finish line the fact that multitude of other documents and issues have been resolved and negotiated and signed sealed and delivered for recording is very encouraging but there is one remaining item and i hope that my complete the remediation of contamination on the site and to begin demolition over the winter the plan would be to pour foundations and physically begin construction by the spring the special permit has been extended by the planning board and till about mid july or so so they would have had to have poured foundations by then grow so this continues its challenges but i'm reading them so it's a delightful to have in the sense that it reflects really well in our district but it is a challenge so we're really prefer enough there with numbers just you know presenting data on our stellar performance so it's been wonderful but it's it's you know trying to many people in the district so that continues to present numbers that are expect will be of great interest to the community and to this committee  that you were looking at are historic numbers from the prior here so i don't think when you're thinking about the budget houses there's any aspect that's related to projecting out the comment that you made the about the superintendent squashing the discount that nonmember towns were getting in tuition that did happen it happened actually when i joined the school committee there were some communities watertown amongst them who were getting discounted to wish and my understanding was that and and this is hearsay but that the it was the superintendent trying to promote the continuation of  that and school committee members who stopped him so i think we have to be careful when we listen to the administration about their spin on it that the the way don president kids is treated i mean minetta doesn't project out that they just simply there are some communities who would have preferred then bank one hundred percent of the jewish employed this year apply none of it to the operating budget and so that number is that it's just what's left in until of the end of the year so there's no projection in the air associated of that with the point that that i was making there is that since they're drawing on the last years till bill coverage covered this year know i mean i think from my perspective the decedent letter notwithstanding the risks of how committed dessie has to those terms for the next thirty years because there is risk there change changes the dynamic and have belmont pushed hard for that and had we known that six months in advance i'm not sure town meeting would have voted no there's no way to to know this but i think there is an important issue as you're relates to the building project because i think what dessie did not withstanding the risk is basically said there to be no material benefit from the building capital assessment to be a nonmember versus a member of the current formula makes not member subject to the same risk of minutemen falling short of its in roman projections as the member communities so it sure does it doesn't it does it makes there's no you know there are certain obligated to send the students discussion about the risk of higher costs is it's opened up a pandora's box of baloch the total cost not just the building capital costs so we got what we wanted from a building project but now we've said but you haven't really done anything to address this inequity overall and i do think as a town it's fair for us to say do we want to exercise an option to redress that inequity by withdrawing from the district and i do think although it's perhaps not a financial issue i think the seventy two percent of the voters who voted no is a critical factor for me in order to change that seventy two percent to something less than fifty percent in order to change the outcome of that vote about a third of the people who voted no would have voted yes and where i get hung up on the rocks regardless of my personal feelings about minutemen is i have a hard time believing that if the decedent letter was more well known further in advance one third of those no voters would have voted yes and so i think that town meeting runs a real risk read that letter is in an extract what desks trying to do who believes as i feel it is protect themselves from every other building project trying to angle for this nonmember capital and so what dessie strong to say in the event that the m s b eight is proposing a school that depends on a significant number of nonmembers and in the event that the district signs on for that project we have the ability to charge that well m s p he has already mandated a school that under anybody's enrollment projections is larger then even under minute bands optimistic and wrong that will grow forty percent in three years it still leaves one hundred seventy seats for nonmember students so i think that purple is clear and i think the vote of the other nine communities to embrace the debt that the hurdles already been cleared so i think that decide to do it then this is what it would look like the this is what it would look like is new but it still says if we decide to do it and if in this be a and minimum also agree so it doesn't really honestly i've read the memo it didn't change my mind the books it didn't change anything it just sort maybe that capital charge be three thousand or two thousand or four thousand if they follow through on what they said they were going will do it is dramatically higher and it's even potentially higher than what minuteman has reduce that charge and admit man has done that in the past for tuition they have not done that recently for tuition the incidents are noble to know what they will do going forward but as written whatever happens of charges past regarding tuition by offering discounts to watertown and and there will be i think you know i'm not trying to get advocate an answer but there will be people on that school committee who will say heaven forbid if sixty watertown kids walk out the door we better give watertown a discount so that we can at least preserve their nonresident  some contribution towards capital there will absolutely be members of the school committee who will take that position i can assure you whether that will be a two thirds weighted vote of the minuteman school committee i can