have two items on the agenda and i one of them is the first item is regarding the process for calling meetings the second part of it is open so just to start off with part one let me just give a little background as to why so at the time since opec didn't seem to me to be an emergency matter we've discussed it a multiple times we had come to agreement on the issue it didn't seem really necessary or appropriate to call a special meeting of the light board to discuss an ongoing issue we had already discussed so i declined to set up a special meeting of the light board at that point on line that actually a light board meeting had been posted for this evening but not by me i contacted craig and not by craig and as it turned out the mr williams and schedule had posted an agenda for mr windsor contacted the town of that and the light department which had posted an agenda for the light board meeting for tonight at seven o'clock to discuss since we had not the chair had not called a meeting and we had not discussed having a meeting tonight i cancelled that meeting for tonight but as you can see we're actually having the meeting tonight because  it occurred to me after having discussing it and thinking about it i did not want to create a precedent whereby people other than the chair or at least a majority of the board could call a meeting of a committee so i wanted to make sure that we that i called the committee meeting for this evening to discuss the open to keep it in the proper procedure i would say i'm not sure what we're going to do with the item but we'll get to it and certainly i'll turn the floor over to mr williams when that time comes i would i would state in my opinion that it's inappropriate to have a member of the committee call a meeting i think not just this board but any border committee in the town of the it would cripple the government if any disgruntled member of  committee were to call a meeting at any time i would say that i don't know can i call a board a slight meeting or a high school building committee meeting if i sit in those committees can i cancel meetings without the chairs knowledge it just doesn't seem like that would be an appropriate or a good precedent to set in the town i would i would say just as for the way i feel personally because i can't talk to everybody outside of the meeting so unfortunately i have to do it while everybody is here which i would prefer not to do but that's the way the rules go that that i feel it's a bit of a lack of respect honestly to to call a meeting when the chair is already been asked and said no i'd say it's disrespectful to craig i say to the awkward to be doing this in the middle of our general manager search of the light department  and i think it's disrespectful for the governance of the town i just don't think that's an appropriate way to do it i think we need to follow proper process that said i'm certainly not against discussing the issue and honestly had it been brought up in it would have happily put it on the agenda even though in fact we've discussed it several times and i believe mr plume myself this have stated in the past that we don't agree with mr williams on opap with the with the light department but nevertheless i'm certainly happy to do and before we do any restructuring or structural ideas or long term financial changes to what we do i'd like to see the result of the constant to report again not a not a question on the merits of the or the lack thereof of the hope of suggestion really i just want to see how this all plays out and i think that open is not an emergency matter that needs a special meeting i believe special emergent special meetings or just for emergency matters that can't wait till the next regular meeting on the board meeting coming at seven thirty i have an item on there where i've drafted actually a rule as to how meetings can be called unfortunately i would didn't think we actually had to draft such a rule but apparently we do so i've drafted that will take it up at that time to do the business for the people and that's the oath of office i took i've been working actually you've been involved with me on on opeth almost all along three two thousand and fifteen we also received a report from the war committee on the pension obligation and then you and sammy and i and david worked to get the information on the personal health care from david cale in the town which was not exactly forthcoming at the time but we solve that issue and  then ralph reported out and they went to see wayland and then we got the kathy riley report and even adam said that i could go work with kathy what riley to look for alternatives you know some scenarios and so what's happened is we're in the middle of the budget cycle it's i realized in the last week or so that if we continue to manage the budget the way we're managing it we're sailing into troubled waters i looked at that scenario and i looked at what we did what i did was with  and it shows that if we have the enterprise funds pay their contribution that we can reduce the payment in starting in twenty twenty thirty from twelve million to six million for the next eleven years and course if you multiply six times eleven that's sixty six million dollars that happens to be right in the middle of the image to station period for the new high school and i thought it was very important that we address this in connection with the budget cycle which is quite believe we're voting on some tell her why because she can't tell you and she can't tell adam because that serial communication we cannot deliberate i also didn't call craig for the same reason not disrespect it's you know but what i do was i asked the town clerk was i permitted to do it was there a by law or regulation or state regulation that said i couldn't do it in the answer was no so then i called yours to be sure in his answer was that he didn't support the idea but there was no bylaw no state regulation no state law that would prevent prevent it from happening and then instead of disrespect that i mean we've been working on this for three years you know i i i like what you've been doing during the first year but i don't just respect you what  i was trying to do was to give us as a team the opportunity to consider what could be the second major big breakthrough in the management of the open live in you said that you and mark oppose having the light board pay for its fair share on a on a as you go basis but i don't know how you know that i mean and i i'm very sure that you didn't talk to mark about the comments we made the comments we made in these i have i have a scale i have something that i think we should consider because we're talking about sixty six million dollars in all we have to do is decide tonight that the enterprise funds can pay their fair share of opap that's all we have to do because what we're doing now is is using free cash to do that and for me that's has nothing to do with the cost the calculation has nothing to do with the cost and the the fees in the enterprise funds can cover this expense easily and if we do this we can reduce the payments in the years by sixty six million dollars and i thought it was since i was permitted to do it i thought it was worth it now you know i think if i were you and i was thinking about this later when you canceled it i thought well you know what jim has is a responsible person and i'd like to know why but you know this is exceptional like george is george told me afterward or no george told me you know the next day that it never been done in twenty five years and i know but that doesn't mean it can't be done i mean you have to think the way i think which is that if we have an opportunity the three of us to save the town sixty six million dollars in in what is going to be whether whether it's eventually becomes true or not it's scheduled it's on our balance sheet if we have the opportunity the three of us to save sixty six million dollars for the taxpayers i decided to take the chance and so by doing that we now have the opportunity tonight to vote because you c white board i envisioned that it would be convened at the same time because the like or should not make this decision without hearing from the rough rough was not involved jeff was not involved i did this on my own that's what i'm passionate about is doing what should be done that's what you were elected for that i'm elected and that's what you're not if you simply went to craig no there was no i had an agenda topic i thought really strongly about and felt as though to the meaning because i can't talk to you now i know that you could have gone to craig and said let's hear a communication to say here's an agenda topic i'd like to discuss the fact i didn't want to i didn't want to put craig in that situation because he's acting it would have been it would have been i'd say here's a topic that i think it's important for jim and him to discuss in time prior to jim leaving the board that's personal and she would have called you and then adam and said it's just you have or you it's a topic you want to discuss and this is this an as a board than you guys do if you think i'm fighting with you on this i am not i am giving you the opportunity to make the decision tonight on information that we've had in front of us for a number of months now and it it's it's clear to me that we need to make a decision and it's clear to me that unless there's a light board meeting we can't make a decision and what's going to happen next is that we're going to have to vote on the budget and what we should do in my opinion which is what i'm putting forth to both of you tonight for your consideration because we now have a meeting is is devoted up there down a light board this continues after the next election jim so we could have taken up this business at some point when the con center agreed completes its analysis we understand the issues we've been talking about for quite some time we don't have to agree on it but we have talked about it a number of times like i don't know i don't don't say that i said that because i did ok so limit your remarks to what you know i didn't i didn't say marc and i've been doing this for longer than you have i have never talked to mark about anything and he  well i mean i think i want to paint it black and then i think i think you've done a lot of good on the pension open for the town i really do and i respect your work on that in the passion of my work before i was here i worked on that report  didn't like the word action let me finish this i'm not about interest fine but i brought a focus to an issue that had not been brought a focus to in a while i worked on the on this of the work committee with greg menaces report and i'm glad that you brought it up but this is really about process this isn't about the substance of the open at least that's why i'm bringing this up tonight ok it's got to do with the process of calling meetings i think did you hear my explanation i heard i just don't agree with it i don't think that that's just because there's no rule against it doesn't mean you're allowed to do it i tell you for do it i took a chance because because what's going to happen which you're going to see tonight is that if we approve all three and you're going to hear from kathy she's going to say if floyd county makes the same calculation that he always does and consider that to  we will be able to reduce the emmerdale zation payment from twenty thirty to twenty forty one yeah sixty six million dollars for me that's worth it to take a chance and that's where i was coming from to disrespect you because i don't disrespect you and not because i did this respect mark because i don't think my only regret about working with mark watches is that we can't play golf  all i'm suggesting is it was a different way to go and i thought he heard me want to try i think i heard if we'd done it that way would be sitting here without discussing this rather than discussing this issue no because we could still post at the meeting or one of you knew why i did oh you could have gone call mark to see whether he has an interest and i would have said well for a meeting anyway let's discuss it and i didn't really want to have to post that meeting i took a chance because i thought ok well and there was you know it's not disrespectful if you have confidence in yourself and in your suggesting take them up oath simultaneously yeah rather going through it now and then going through it again it's an agenda topic at whatever time it is and i think we can remain as a as a as a as two bodies convened in the make decisions on both we lose is that there's an election on tuesday april third and everyone should go out and vote i certainly agree with that  we have number three is questions from town residents we only had one for call franklin i'm going to ask you to wait for a few minutes and we're going to do some of that but we're going to do it for me no leaves  must share let's ask david mello to come to the word table david any other sort of officers from the troop talk a little bit about the troop that's here we'll take a picture up front here one of your radio and the cub scout troop as david e mellow on the committee chair for pac three seventy seven i also work with troop three zero four my two sons are active in troop three zero four and so first had a meeting with the troop three zero four back i guess last month and they grilled me pretty well so ok well i've already hit asking questions i want to put you know the answers to these questions when i also had the pleasure last night i went to have to tell the public you're not only talking to us but you have to tell the public what your name is and you have to share the microphone with your colleague there i don't know whose quest that is just give it to me i'm going to the other way thank you but you're smart you know  can you get this on camera right here over here and the board of selectmen is right there and so we're in charge of the town administrator who's the treece and patrice is in charge of community development council on aging facilities taking care of the buildings that includes the school buildings as well human resources just because in the back turn around your way that you but that's just for the town not for the school just because not the human resources for the school information technology which is i t guys know what that is and  then we have public works and they're responsible for the cemetery the highway parks and recreation and water the board of selectmen is also we are the part commissioners we are the liquor authority in town that can get you in trouble to get away for depending on what your vote is where they were also the border survey and that's kind of there's only maybe four towns in massachusetts that have a board survey but we're one of them and what it does is if somebody wants to have a special development of their property then they have to come and talk to us and it's a pretty long process  management is the when they bring the ambulance and it's the e m s you guys know what that is right and then we have belmont light that's what mark was saying that we're the we also are the the board of  light which is the town's utility electric utility the town accountant which is the financial part of reports to us and then appointed committees and representatives report to us and we have sixty six committees now that's not exactly the way the town works because there's also a board of assessors there and they're independent and they assessed the valuation of the property in town and belmont's property has gone from four point three billion to seven point three billion in the last five years that's a sixty six percent increase there's a board of cemetery commissioners which is elected there's the belmont housing authority which is really involved with the state more than us it's also elected the town clerk which is elected those are the folks who are downstairs when you walk in the town treasure floyd carmen the board of health they're the ones who regulate the restaurants the board of libc library trustees i think peter is the director he's there you know peter you spent time in the library probably that was my favorite place when i was in high school level i would go after more in high school i would go after school and do my homework before anything else and then i could enjoy the rest of my evening it's all online  superintendent but the school committee is elected and we have the town moderator in mike wood murs the town moderator and he runs the town meeting and he also importantly appoints the capital budget committee and the warrant committee and some people think he has more power than the board of selectmen because he controls those two committees and controls the the town meeting i don't know about that but i do know that i try to manage up you know was with mike and then we have the town meeting members who are elected we have the election coming up next tuesday and if you want to know who's in charge of the town you see you see that word right there it's the voters so that's why adams said that the town elections coming up and everybody should vote you know what the population of belmont is about what would you say on average ten thousand voting well the last the presidential election we had four hundred thousand voters from so when when the presidential election takes place there's normally an eighty percent turnout but on non presidential elections the turnout is much lower in some people think that that's not it should be the reverse because your your your day to day well being is actually dependent on the town and that's why adam encouraged everyone to come and vote because you get the government you deserve if there's a point if you don't vote you can't complain about what happened sooner if one time you get to exercise the rare explicit way that the marker see that we live in as we go vote now one of the interesting things is that there is a law called the open meeting in massachusetts  has to do with something that happened in boston is my understanding years ago so since we only have three people on our board of those ten meetings going to consider an expansion to five mark and adam and i can't talk to each other so mark and i've been working together for three years and i never don't tell matters but we couldn't socially you know but we don't really you know because you know because the optics if we let's say if we went out to dinner then everybody would think that we were talking about the town so i haven't talked to mark political outside of this meeting for three years been married three years by the way cub scouts the girl scouts ask questions as well or come up you know questions what are you guys you guys have other questions how can you yes do you can get you can do community service and volunteer we have a number of opportunities if you want to get involved with the board of selectmen you can talk to patrice and also know that we had one of seven the high school students we're looking working on the food pantry and they came to one of my office hours work and they had a presentation about how they would like to move the food pantry and find a new location and then we had them come here to the board of selectmen and actually now we've had the town a minister looking to relocate the food pantry and may actually have a place for it's that's a that's something we're i suppose doing just took a project upon themselves and actually is making a difference so you don't have to wait for someone to do something you can do it yourself we have office hours the selectmen work you know i i move it around with sometimes it's here sometimes at the library sometimes it's like at the food plant at the farmers market  sometimes at the senior center beach street you know and you can always come up to one of us who's having an office hours and just have a conversation about stuff where we're accessible you have any other questions yeah ok good of pull that microphone over so the public can hear you i was wondering how does the town government fit into the i think i see how to the quick i think i can answer that question but i think adam might be better qualified since he's an attorney well i mean you know there are three levels of government there's the federal which is you know at the executive branch of the president and the legislative branch of congress the judicial branch with the courts and you've got the state government which operates the structure very similar the governors the executive state house we have town meeting there the legislature and we don't have courts obviously were town so although we have bodies that kind of are judicial certain areas for the health of make certain decisions the planning board the zoning board but we don't have like a criminal court or anything like that so and the different levels are sort of parallel in the structured similarly but they obviously the federal government can set laws that can bind with the states and the local governments can do because we can do what we want within the parameters of what th law is and you've seen probably in the news certain things where the states you know want to do things with regard to drawing up congressional districts or rules about you know your i d s and whether they're good enough in the oral drugs like if you know states that legalized marijuana but it's illegal under the federal government so there are supporters and pulls between how far states and local governments can go outside what the federal government does and that's what the courts are for the federal courts and ultimately the supreme court sometimes the cases go there and supreme court is the final say on it i would also add that we have a states and that represents our town his name is william brownsburg or it represents other towns as well so we work a lot with will and he's done a lot for this community we also have a state representative his name is david rogers so we interact with them as our see as our state representative for matters like budgets and other issues that we want to work work on so there's that there's a lot of interaction at that level and at the same at the federal level as well we have our federal our congressman right now katherine clark and our senators you know ed markey and is elizabeth warren and we could also operate with them at the federal level and they look out for the entire state what can you say about th but how i'm trying to just make it very simple but i think it's sort of what i basically said which is that the there are certain things that the that the upper levels of government can have us do and certain things that we can do beyond it oftentimes you can go  within there you can go up to it you can go more maybe sometimes you can require more like for instance the federal government will have rules on how much carbon emissions a car can have and then you have a state like california which will make it even stricter and say that you have to have even less carbon emissions on a car so you can operate sometimes it's a floor where you can't go under the federal limit of how much can come out of your tell by been a car but you can go you can require to be better but not worse and sometimes it operates the other way and sometimes these things end up as a big fight i wish i had a simple answer to it's a really actually fairly complicated question that you have asked it's federal state and local and the feds the constitution has a clause in it called the supremacy clause which says that if it's something that relates to the obligations of the federal government that they're there in charge  work at the at the cemeteries will be putting down up oh yes flags and will be marching in the parade for the great to join you will be there march rainer showing ye funding and you've spent some time with patrice explaining that's not the slide that's up there do we have it that's that's it is the went from what would be two hundred million down to ninety two million in this page is page eight of that report and what it does is it breaks down if we were funding opec which is primarily health care if we were funding it by department it tells you what the cost would be to fund it is that correct yes and so what we're focusing on now we're not focusing on the town public safety school we're only focusing on the light water and sewer cost and i wonder if you would just describe to the board in the public what what's on the seat and again i apologize to the public because it's not it's not ok so you had mentioned that we had determined liabilities for the total town of ninety three million dollars of those liabilities for the total time i'm going to use round numbers about four million were for the like department a little under two million for the water department and a little over one million for the sewer department now these are the unfunded liabilities for the total liabilities small amount of assets were allocated to each of those entities based on the free cash contributed so that's unfunded liability we did subtract the assets unfunded liability and we came up with an amount to fund that unfunded liability over a thirty year period and in addition to making that payment on the unfunded liability you also need to make a payment on really that the cost of the current benefits that are being earth and that's the normal cost line on this pa hundred fifty four thousand for the like department one hundred twenty nine thousand for the water and seventy three thousand for the sewer department right and then one important point here is that we're already paying the benefit payments yes so twelve is a total now you have to subtract the projected benefit payments which is the projection for the normal application the funding about is the total amount you get credit for those pay as you go benefits so it's the difference between the funding about and the pay as you go benefit is the additional contribution that you need to make and that's helpful to understand ok so what we're looking at is two hundred thirteen i have two hundred thirteen thousand for light thirty five for water and forty one for sewer now what happens next is that we're looking at the current plan which is from page ten of that same report i think we talked about  calculation that's done based on free cash not of the cost of the unfunded liability or the recommended contribution it's it's a calculation that has been in place since the open fund was created in it shows at two hundred fifty thousand a year through twenty twenty nine which is the end of the projected pension funding policy in then that twelve million is shifted over to open and it actually pays off by twenty forty one and the reason that worked out that way is because the liability was reduced because when we had a two hundred million dollars liability it never paid off right ok so we were very happy ralph jeff liz thank you very much again and kathy so now that's where we are then you and adam mark said that i could go to kathy which i did and we came up with this one two three four alternatives yes you recognize that page do you want me to give you a copy of the valuation ten it is reported since we knew we couldn't change two thousand and eighteen you'll see that that's two to fifty all the way across the top right we get it ok two thousand and nineteen we plug eight fifty in there just because we thought well the town might put five hundred in and the departments might be three fifty this was we were three fifty from the enterprise and five hundred from the ok it's just a number don't don't don't worry about it too much then you know i mean this is the way you have to work with stuff so you get the direction then you have alternative one alternative to alternative three an alternative for now geoff lukian asked me to get a number that would be like a mortgage payment and you know tell us how much we would have to pay in in order to have a straight line amortization of this obligation our new obligation in that is alternative for you so you see that that's four and a half million dollars right you know that's not go we don't have four and a half million dollars we know that alternative to then kathy and i in her compensation we said well what about two million dollars and then this let's ask as to escalate two million which is what we did in alternative one and i think we we must have been escalating it at it's picking up by four hundred thousand so it goes from two million to two four to two eight to to three  and then we when the payment starts kicking in and twenty thirty all the sudden that reduces that amortization to six million dollars but for alternative one we don't have that money either we can't do alternative i think that's pretty obvious because we again we don't have two million dollars to put put in so then we looked at alternative to we tried two million again we ask related to in a slower amount and what kathy did was she extended the payment from twenty forty one to twenty forty four do you see that so as a result we were able to keep the six million dollar reduction i was astounded that by putting this money in upfront that it would reduce the amortization required amortization by this amount but that's the power of compound interest as warren buffett would say or warren buffet  we call them in my french bank you know alternative three is the one that i think is the most interesting because you have to make this leap of faith it's not an alternative fact that one million dollars is the same as a fifty but it's just a way to make an estimate with me ok so then we said ok so kathy went away she would go away and then she would come back and basically we're saying that  if we put a million dollars away through twenty twenty nine and we extend the payment thirty years which would be to twenty forty seven actually it's twenty eight years we could reduce that required payment to six million dollars you see that so what this amounts to is if we can agree tonight to allow the enterprise funds to make this  these payments out of their fees what will happen to the amortization requirement on a pro forma basis is that that payment will be reduced from six million to from twelve million to s and if you're thinking about it these are the column five there is a level new years at twelve million and you do see that required payment by six times eleven which is sixty six million dollars in the fact that this happens at the same time if the high school is approved you know this will in effect contribute six million dollars in cash flow to the high school project because we already have the twelve million the twelve million will be in the the town's projections because we're making those payments to the pension fund do you see that number and where we had the most direct impact on the unfunded liability is if you plan design changes health care changes which is always the course of action we've taken we always assumed at some point you know unfunded liability is more of an estimate an actuarial estimate rather than a hard life billet we have no mandate in state law to fund it and frankly you know some would say that is long as you pain pays you go and that's all you're quite to do then you continue to fund or i guess pay your benefit payments for retirees would be great to have additional money to put aside for at t compound but i don't see jim where we're going to find edition or even six hundred in the wood goes up to a million or twenty twenty what impact can we possibly have on this liability list we've substantially put aside funds i've always looked at this way too it's almost we're making and we use this to the point of soft liability because it is an eye for natural statements but is somewhat of an estimate in sort of in the cruel an estimate hard liability by putting funds aside and when we have no requirement to do so one of the many towns in fact have other than wealthy i think it will be more funded and we're perhaps right or some communities  alternative cash flows get the liabilities fully funded by putting in even even these modest amounts sooner rather than later you're ultimately accelerating the funding really for  put into the seventy five and so i met with the water advisory committee last week last week and we we brought this up we did and i gave him a little bit of explanation what the town was looking for and we ran the numbers and if ok all right interesting that's helpful thank you so kathy even put it in seventy five can relieve some stress which would be seriously i would seriously consider doing i think the weight is a little bit more than now that the new liability as of two thousand and seventeen is down below one hundred million dollars and now that using this original schedule we can have an off entirely by twenty forty one which we couldn't do when it was almost two hundred million dollars question to the committee is since this is not a legal obligation what are the policy questions we need to consider when we look at the issue should we reduce this unfunded liability further it's not a not a requirement it's an option you can do it or not and i purred over that basic question to a committee group two people jeff libyan and tim lemon who are both our finance and economics people because jeff brought up a number of issues at the meeting of why he thought it would be a very useful thing to do to  reduce this and so i'm waiting for them to report back to us on that and they're also going to be talking about possible health plan changes or that as well and so at that point we can come back to the like when to present a report right now we certainly can't yes  and you know it's a regulated utility and they can say that they don't know where you currently are you just have one more question where are you currently putting the additional amount know my faith if i may have and i've been sort of wanted to listen to all of this first i mean when the water sewer i think we've heard this is honestly too small of to my mind to bother with i don't think that's going to make any meaningful difference as ralph had said we aren't legally required to fund are legally required to fund the pension which has been our priority and will continue to be the priority to fund through two thousand and twenty nine we i think the plan we have is sound i mean the thing is it would be great if we could fund things on a more basis save money in the long run i hear you but that would go for building the library in the police station everything else i mean if you did everything today it would be cheaper than doing it tomorrow but we can't do everything today so some things are going to get done tomorrow and it will cost more because we just don't have the money today that's just simply the way it goes and there are things we have to do now and then there are things that we may want to do but can't and you know we have to do the pension the high school is coming up on the ballot if that happens we have m s b a deadlines we have to meet those and we open one of the things we don't legally have to do at the moment and there are a lot of things we do legally have to do and since we can't do them all i would prioritize the things we legally have to do and not the ones we don't legally have to do for the moment not to say it's not an idea without merit it certainly is i understand the point and i get your question the the thing the thing is that the irony is the light department is holding the money however by keeping it the way we have it we have maximum flexibility should things go awry and we know we have budget issues up we have the concept or reviewing the town finances and making financial projections which is coming up we have the general manager for the light department being hired probably in the next month i would hate to tie the hands of the new general manager the l department who's coming in and like literally a month or two likewise the collinson report will be in in probably a month or two we have a lot that we've been working on and this is kind of just jumping out of order in my mind i have no problem taking it in the proper order in the proper place it doesn't to take a year because we have these things happening in a matter of a month or two but i don't want to do it this first now and then we tied our hands then we get the results from the collins center which says something otherwise or the new film out might general manager wants to do something different we think that's a good idea but we can't as we've already bound ourselves the money is there in the light department it isn't going anywhere it's not as if we're not collecting the opap so putting it in this account where we can't do anything with it or putting it in that account where we can it's just an accounting issue i don't see it as a substantive matter except that it ties our hands and i don't want to tie our hands when we're in the middle of flux of trying to figure out how we're going to deal with twenty twenty one or whatever that when we start to have some budget problems so that's why my i'm not saying it's not an idea without merit i'm just saying i want to see and i've said this several meetings now i want sense to do its work before we start binding our hands on financial planning going into the future because otherwise why do we get the grant to hire the concept or to do financial planning or we're just going to do it without them i thought that was the point but i've few things to say i'm thinking of the movie which and if you saw that movie you you know you understand what it means to be on point when you're on patrol you know you don't get to say oh gee i don't want to go on point tonight i'd rather have that group over there do it i don't want to go on point tonight because you know i can always go on point in the future ralph mentioned the meeting that we had with the opec committee and your charge was to figure out what the liability was and the results are historic you said that you were going to start to focus on the benefits which is what we expected you to do i said i was going to work with kathy to explore restructuring these payments so that we could reduce the liability which i've done which brings us here tonight and the three of us are in charge of the financial strategy for the town there isn't anybody else here we have the boy scouts in front of us tonight we show them how the town works we are the selection and there are no other select just the three of us were on point tonight we have an opportunity on a pro forma basis to reduce this liability in the future by fifty percent which for me is a logical conclusion to the work that's been done and the water company and the sewage company they can afford their contribution and the like company is actually collecting the money to make this payment i voted against the transfer of the funds to the capital stabilization fund for the same reason that i felt that those funds needed to be allocated to open because they've they've been collected i'm not asking for that i'm not proposing that tonight i'm proposing is that we make this incremental contribution to cut the future o my sense of this is that these obligations are unfunded mandates and they gave them to all the towns in massachusetts in every town is handling it differently don't you think  million dollars a year to take care of the liability unbeknownst to town meeting and once town meeting found out about it they fired the town administrator and i don't believe they're contributing anything right now wellesley had a referendum and got a ten year breman to no but what you do it and ralph i remember from our last meeting on the report on wayland they they said that the town manager had been fired for this but now they were grateful that he put the ten million in you remember i mean you reported that yourself and they are the ones who went to a firm in connecticut just the way we went to kathy to figure out what to do so you know you've been a selectman but you're not a sitting selectman the three of us are here it's our job to decide what to do the people we you think about unfunded liabilities like this how can this state how can gas be how can these people come to a town and say you have to put sr amount of money aside there would have required to you know you know but how can they say that and what they say is a matter of public policy is that we're concerned that when the time comes to pay your pensions you guys are going to be any condition to pay them so therefore put the money aside to make sure that the payments take place is that correct they then turn their attention to health care and they say ok if we have people who work for us for thirty years we're not sure you're going to have the money to pay for to retire in this is only retiree health care right and we're not sure that you're going to have the money to do this so therefore you you have to you have to set that money aside now how much are we required to have set aside at the end of this period i know the answer to that it's two hundred thirty two million dollars technically gaspy doesn't require the the setting aside of assets gadsby acquire is fully recognizing the unfunded liability on your financial statements right but if you had asked you fully fund it how much money do we have to have off off in the bank in the fund to make these payments well right now you have to have ninety seven million dollars in the bank if you want it to be fully funded now and then you just have to keep current but if you don't of course which is going to be three to five three to four five million the pay don't like your benefits and you know what your cost when else happens in this though is that if we don't start doing this this liability got grossed two hundred forty three million and so what we're doing by not funding it is issuing the debt equivalent of a bond every year because it adds to our that's not even our plan to that now if the point is the point i'm making is that we have to worry not statutorily required to fund this estimate i understand it's going to be a winner for you on our balance sheets and yes we could discuss what impact they may have on every other municipality  is some but there you can just continue want to pay to go until you're asked if ever it's no different than the pension obligation to fully fund it is one of your pain your current benefits your continuing to pay the benefits for your current retirees there's no obligation statutorily within gaz be to find any portion of our unfunded estimated liability and we have we've had more of an impact on that through plan design changes i don't know the answer just you know the answer to that they do since i'm from the midwest i don't know how to say the lyrics you say well rick a bell rick a worker has a funding program going for their open think it's a million dollars a year so you know even though we're nervous about this the reason we're paying ten percent of our real estate taxes to the pension  is because we didn't fund it in the past now i'm not i'm not i'm not you know i think the fact that people government accountants put these enormous unfunded mandates on towns to manage to guarantee the well being of the pensions and the health care for their employees it's it's really such a big brain that you can ask yourself how can that actually be done but the answer is that if you fund it at the beginning or you fund it on a modest basis you can really reduce the commitment that's going forward in here we have evidence of it which is calculated by our you have the kind of money that's and seven hundred twenty we want to do with the seven hundred twenty two i mean i don't know where we're going to find that kind of money jim we don't have it i mean twenty twenty one is a significant deficit i understand the alternatives are you see in the calculations i understand how it's compound it's great to be able to reduce the so called this estimate by fifty percent we don't have the money to do that well we do have the money for the enterprise funds to pay because work like i mean that we're collecting and the like there's so many other things we need to suggesting jim at the end of the day when the column center is done in the new general managers and with the light we hire the general manager for the light department but i don't see why we need to jump the gun now i mean if i were going into battle i do my intelligence first to gather all the information and then act i would make a plan i wouldn't jump out there and just hope everything went to right i understand that you're absolutely right about framing the question you're absolutely right but like i said i mean the library cost a million dollars a year every year we don't build a new library for example but we're not because you're not suggesting building a library next year because that would most plans have been squeezed dry so you know trying to make i don't think there's much left to do in the design and of this it's you know getting the money working for you so i hear all the pieces yeah but your is a reason to fund just it doesn't have to be what the retirement system looks like that is my point is that i mean i don't want to miss i don't want to need to do something in the entire hands when we have experts analyzing our town and its future financially and the answer is coming fairly soon in the next month or two why we need to jump answer in april or may i think i can say here you know i think i'm well i'm open minded about using the enterprise funds but i'm willing to wait pace and went out and just said because if we're collecting it anyway i'd like to understand what the impact is to the light department operations if we redirect those makes it doesn't make sense to me i don't need to hear from the college center to know that providing water and sewage added to minimalist level which is for their retirees makes sense i don't need that information from the collinson or i don't need it for the like company because i was chairman white company too and i've been on a permanent audit committee and i've been involved with this for over four years i know what i'm t and i don't need anybody else's opinion the decision is here in front of us but as we were explaining to the boy scouts it's a it's a triad so three people at least two people have to agree yeah so i would ask you to consider water and sewer tonight i'd rather wait and i mean i think i think it has a lot of i want to say now let me say this to you i think this idea of using enterprise funds has a lot of m on this matter and yeah i'm sure their point of view in hearing all of this as i said i think we'll probably have a couple different points of view i think we'll have people who would like to see for more government and also some i think what kathy said really this is the use of free cash to pay for open in two thousand and fifteen sixteen and seventeen and you'll see that water sewer and light are charged it so if that's if that's an issue that we could separately we could separately account for these assets within right i mean if we wanted to do this we would separately account for we would set up an open account like department we would set up a don't have a county  i think it's i just want to read cathy a set isn't really anything we can put we've used the warren buffett analogy it's all about compound ing and i don't look at it of we're going to fund it or not fund it we have a plan to fund the right now which i personally think there's risk several of you that you know in whatever it is twenty years fifteen years in this big pot of money is going to come from the pensions off the pension payment and we're going to put all of it i just think there might be competing priorities that we just don't know about so that to me it at the end the amount that we have to pay going forward for opec for the next you know fifty plus years comes down a lot and frees up a lot of cash so it to me it's about mitigating risk it's not solving the problem i think that is that's well said yes ok no i have another question which is you know what if the board decides to do the enterprise fund is there time after the con center to hopefully have some experience in this to make the recommendations and to get it in to the one thousand budget or not i say i mean you know i think would have to see that i mean i think sure it will be on the like department that's not is there on the calendar year yeah mass really do the like department of water source mall and if we decide to do this and i could see myself movement in that direction absolutely i think it's such a small amount or ninety well if we did if we missed nineteen it's not that we're missing all that significant amount we can create a policy going forward for twenty and forward to his do as jeff you just indicated eloquently you know putting the additional amounts aside makes a cent makes sense a thing is you know you need ten meeting approval of what we have to have a maybe a fall town meeting anyway we don't  has indicated i agree that we have to run our town exactly what mine understanding you know some of the other policies and some of the other communities have taken up to make it sounds like the enterprise fund is w and i say reduce the amounts that we put in that they say we trend upward trend what we've historically put aside on the town side right so we know what that is approximately and we have a sense at least based on the current actual report we discussed this we said we were going to wait until march fifteenth when the state issued its guidelines and that we would then hear what those guidelines were in decide what to do and we had  a report from the trees on the ten administrators docket but we ran out of time and patrice is going to tell us now what what happened but just now you're going to what happened was the state issued the guidelines ahead of march fifteenth correct but then we haven't had a chance to talk about the guidelines that were issued  then we received a citizens petition today but i'll let you describe all of it ok i don't think we have anything to vote on tonight i don't think there's anything for us to do so you go ahead and tell us what the situation is please so as i indicated i think your last meeting carol control commission finalized some regulations there are a couple that they've kind of have tentatively decided and some they didn't i know the home delivery and the other uses so if for example using using certain cannabis items in certain other businesses that has been held off until i think a certain  opinion a lot of the towns are still kind of in this weird area where we're not exactly sure what's going to happen with those two items which are pretty crucial adams and i know that was something you had discussed at your board meeting prior there was an opt out all opt out citizens petition that was received and certified today in the town clerk's office so we will have a special meaning within the annual we have to meet only the because they have to be exact they have to be exact in wording towns have if the election votes one way and timing was another townsend had to go back and fix it so to have the town meeting approve language that goes on ballot just makes it a little bit twenty sixth two thousand and eighteen at three twenty six pm by pam eager to amend the general bylaws adding section sixty dash one of seven prohibiting all types of marijuana establishment as defined by mass general chapter ninety four g registered voters those citizens can require the board of selectmen to call a town meeting within sixty days is my understanding we're not required to do anything scuse the special meeting who caused the special tell me if you will depends on the duration of time for a town meeting and i'd want to be looking at the statutes before i answered to brian cushman town clerk so i think the statute that you're looking for is thirty nine ten probably right so it's forty five days from today the town meeting has to have happened you know who's responsible for calling the board the answer but i want to be clear for the public so everyone understands if tell me this is a majority vote by town meeting for a general by law yes it is so if there is a fifty one percent vote to do this what happens next it is a selectman would then determine whether to put it forth on the election ballot and so it's up to the three voters to decide what to do the three select  people don't believe that the november sixteenth ballot did that so you know i'm a man of the people so i'm just following the rules here many people are in percent of forty thousand people voted to decriminalize marijuana in belmont it was look at the fifty two percent of the four notwithstanding how i feel about this fifty two percent of fourteen thousand people voted to decriminalize marijuana that's how i look at it i'm interested to hear what tommy has to say on it but fifty two percent of fourteen thousand whatever that number is is a pretty fair representation of this community well i disagree because i don't think that's what was on the ballot in november which it also doesn't represent my personal view i'm here to represent the other six recently disagree and i think that  you know everybody wants to hold hands around the pond and i think if town meeting votes to have such a  pretty open mind about that but i'm still going with fifty two percent or forty thousand the other thing i did say at the last meeting which i was happy to see the canvas control commission at least has brought some sensibility to this matter is i was very much against home delivery because i don't think it can be ad and i was very much against social use establishment i can see us agreeing to some type of medical marijuana dispensary or a retail establishment which i think based on the rules environment no more than one perhaps in this community is correct based on the number of women the licenses isn't it it's one it's one so but i was very i would have sat here tonight saying we need an opt out vote on home delivery and social use established was because i was not in favor of those printer boyd is we put in article in the warrant i think which was the right thing to do this board to extend the moratorium to the end of the calendar year to get as much input as possible from the residents to the plan can regulate say we wouldn't have an area with that we wouldn't be able to like it or not are obligated to do anything that the ballot question alone would be marked as if town meeting voted to not opt out correct let's say they defeat the citizens petition  have one question i want to ask you it does say in the er new regulations i think this is the case that the if there was going to be an applicant right they have to hold community outreach means in the proposed host community within six months of the application to the cannabis control commission which would be taking applications as a people for us right correct and to have us completed in community agreement with the misspelling prior to applying to the c c c for a license how community remember that his community agreement is essentially a contract and who who enters in the host community who ever in your mean yes party can enter into contracts so i would assume would be the board of select so if we don't enter into a host community agreement with someone there perhaps we don't want to enter into they can apply for a license is that correct i think that is one gift that the canvas control commission may have given to the palate is that of the command we have to because it wasn't that way or no i think it's some understanding in terms of what type of a snappish it would be and have a host communicating a contract if you will with this particular applicant so so called out because they haven't yet applied and then they once they have that host agreement in place board of health thank you very much in addition to that with the host agreement there's an additional three percent that goes directly to the town coffers and i would not be three percent on and that's a five year agreement that we have an article in the ward for that does not need to be renewed by the i should also tell you as long as i'm sitting here that approx me an hour ago the board of health passed regulations regarding a do adult use marijuana for the town and the so we will be in fact protected if obviously it's opt out it just sits there and nobody uses it and one of the things that was included in it which we were allowed to do because of this is that the minimum age for purchasing belmont will be twenty five really on what good ok so we have every opportunity through you know you're saying we can regulate and police can regulate it we don't have enough resources if in fact cannabis control commission at some point decides that that's the direction they want to go in do we have to go to an opt out for that if you wanted to ban certain types of the stablish ment's what i think folks are calling a partial ban then you would need to go through the same process as the full blown opt out that you're discussing now so they could sort of sort of if you will believe this in over time and we're sitting near never sitting at this table saying geez i don't know if i want that i don't know if i want this that's really just there or there are many boards of select persons all over the state that are having the same struggles that you're clearly ok thank you thank me  so if i sure that's really helpful because if you think about this for a moment right considering these women with this board is against home delivery if you were a man this article or have a second order that beings will do every which is not currently something that i mean any time meeting member could amend this article to just say opt out and out of the words for home delivery only and then the fed amendment passed that would be what would you know if the canvass control commission were to change its regulations at some point whenever and they said no we were favor of home delivery and also social use cafes in every town in this come world has to scramble to call a special time meeting if you prefer fact it wants to you know the board wants to call it  very clean process and keep in mind here i'm going to complicate one more time belmont has there are many questions going to be on the november ballot and belmont is pushing to get it right it could be twenty one have been certified it's obviously going to be in the teens and this article that if that amendment is defeated that doesn't mean the article the original motion is defeated rose rose back to the original that's correct and then you can with regard to that question if cambridge does not have a home delivery opt out and they allow it can they deliver in belmont i do not know that is i think that right you can't get is that i think there's an answer that question what that means is that we can have our own business here in town together but you can't have the delivery trucks leaving from but that doesn't know so i mean they can't come from another town i get it out of my understanding about you know we could at least regulate home delivery within our town meaning that business is that by the chair or by a majority of the committee and that would resolve ambiguity that it's a very simple straightforward and then one fine with the rule and i guess i knew that since she's here anyway i figured if anyone had any questions on the l if that's one point i could make again nina pickering cut from town councils office the boards can communicate with staff and amongst each other about putting about the administrative matters with respect to meetings so putting agenda policy i think it would be binding if we passed well ok i mean it's not like it's we we can bind planning yes all committees and boards and commissions in the town it's just somewhere precedent is there other towns have these kinds of policies  most other towns we deal with certainly follow the standard practice of chair or long with staff coordinate and call the meetings although they have never seen it done before without ensuring that a quorum of the rest of the board can attend ok i'm not aware of any of our other towns that have specific policy i believe this sometimes may have a  law that lays it out in each of the separate border commission sections that say who can call on any particular border commission who can call a meeting but i have not seen  that any selectman can put an agenda item on the on the right you know has been the case and in the spirit again as i as i said i do this for the common good and i expected you all on reflection to understand that because it was a sixty six million dollars issue which i think we needed to discuss tonight because i would like to see the enterprise fund begin to fund their obligations to the reasons that were outlined i did not get support for this idea from anyone i didn't get support for from george but i was told which i still believe to be true that there is nothing to prevent correct i believe george stated that there was no state or local by law that prohibited it i think he would chafe at the idea that because something isn't explicitly prohibited it's thereby were which thereby comes to the question of judgment and i was elected by over four thousand people to do my work i consider this to be a very important item i supported making adam chairman of the like company i think he's done a great job at it i also agreed with the idea of the selectmen can put items on  agenda but if you don't have an agenda if you don't have a meeting you can't put your your issue on the on the agenda because the meeting doesn't exist so as i talk as i said before and this may never happen again  made your comments i'm making money ok thank you very much so i i don't support this because i think it's something that should be addressed by town meeting and  e i don't think protocol should set the precedent and you know if you keep thinking about what could have happened is the chair does have the right to call the meeting or not so if you decided to i don't want to discuss the soap of item which jim really wants to discuss but i can't know why he wanted to discuss it you could have said ok i'm just not going to call the meeting and mark if mark agreed not to call the meeting then we wouldn't have the meeting so i think this is a sledgehammer on the fly and i'm not in favor of it but you've had the meeting i'm not going to get into it i mean i think we do i think we do need this rule i don't think you need to go to town meeting we don't go to town meeting just at the other select when the rules are the rules as to how process and procedure works with committees i don't think this is a huge deal to be honest i always thought that this was the rule putting topics on an agenda if there is a meeting so i don't view it as being that egregious i'm ok if the change needs to be made but i don't think it should be made over this this  jessica is just jessica in the chief in the system chief and sean all right and what is the library the library budget discussion is the library budget discussion  minute wait all right so what do you guys want to do next the second session just goes all right moves you can go interject a session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union personnel but to conduct a collective members and represents the increase of seven point zero one percent over the three years the key highlights of the agreement are coal increases of one point two five in the first year of percent and year to two percent in year three the addition of a senior member step as well as a consolidation of all of the e m t stipends paid to the members have also made some slight changes to education sense of longevity payments and some other small from the contracts and we've also implemented an early retirement notification center of article which will assist the town with filling vacancies as members retire from the town who are here tonight  and what we want to remind you to do is to introduce yourselves and then also we're talking to the public as well as to us and so we know we read the information we know what the budget is so you remarks are primarily for the public ok good evening piers because i know the director the belmont public library with me is gail men and mary stearns are members of the board a library trustees so we just came to review our do our annual budget review with you i passed out one page two sided document same as last year one side just has some usage highlights and the other side has some non salary increases highlighted in green just can see quickly without having to go through every line where the increase the non salary increases are already through everyone but i encourage you to go through every  from the library based on the f y which reflected on this it was more like five hundred sixty two which i think is the second best year in the last twenty years so i'm very proud of that our ranks number four in the state for circulation per open hour and  out of something like three hundred seventy five public libraries in addition we signed up an additional eleven hundred sixty eight people for library cards sorry fourteen percent increase in electronic media going back to the amount of library card signed up we now see sixty three percent of our residents with library cards so that's something that we're happy about as well there's some other usage highlights the talk about how many people attended the library twenty thousand attended eight hundred eleven meetings eighteen thousand one hundred ninety eight children teens and adults attended six hundred eighteen concerts story times book clubs and other library programs just just as a few of the highlights i think one of the statistics we're most proud of is that belmont has the eleventh best circulation in the commonwealth and that includes compares with all the large cities bes five ways i just want to get it right in front of me is five ways that we meet the state's requirement one of them is to have a certain appropriation from the town and down on the others in order to be certified by the state are to meet all the minimum standards of free public library service that means we don't charge for anything that we do in the lab or that i don't have equal access another is that we remain open a certain number of hours per week that we allow nonresidents to come and borrow materials that we expend a certain percentage of our budget based on our population on materials so that's books movies electronic resources so forth and the last is that you have a director with a master's degree in library science so in order to be be year we have to supplemental budget request one is would like to extend the hours to children from his open on to include thursday evenings so presently the library the main library is open from nine to nine monday through thursday and the children is open monday through wednesday just until eight pm so we can offer a little bit of extra service for those working families last year as well we know last year you last year supplemental request was to add additional hours to one constantly from children's patrons i can say i was i did office hours at the library at the flat room which is right across the hall from the entrance to the children's room one of thursday night from six thirty eight thirty in the children's room closed and people mothers and parents and kids kept coming up and like i've seen i was there and i saw people rattling the door wondering why it was closed so i mean we had this discussion last year in so what was it what was the impact of the increase in i expected whatever we approved last years of supplemental requests just to go into the regular did what you said you had a what would we approved last year for the same reason that i was taught last year you took one part time children's librarian position that was fifteen hours and you made it nineteen hours so you gave that person more time in the building and that took our administrative person in that department and gave them more ability to do administrative work as opposed to being on the desk those those hours so that sort of the last minute meeting  happened that's for salaries correct or talk about them and we celebrate with yeah so we have a minimum wage positions of the library that are usually occupied by teenagers and they get they're just putting books away on the on the shelf that's where the majority of the librarians i know started their their trade and the state minimum wage i believe is eleven dollars an hour but a longstanding practice is the the minimum wage positions at the library pay the federal minimum wage which is seven twenty five an hour so it's problematic i mean i don't think we do that i don't honest it's been a below the state minimum wage and as a governmental entity i don't understand it but that's what's been happening  many people this is teenagers yeah so it varies i think we probably have over the course of the year i mean they work very limited hours since while it's five thousand eight hundred fifty dollars i think the better question mark is there are minimum pays minimum wage or it doesn't you can't it seems like the kind of the understand the difference of the federal and the state and what we're paying currently is federal for the library you know whether the positions i'm assuming the election workers get an increase here that we need all the workers that are doing this work we do so this would mean that be less workers i mean we would spend less money training and hiring people because seven twenty five an hour any time somebody offers them basically any other job in town thank you for your support is julie le may and right next to her is our health director question it's my left is our fabulous veterans agent bob often so we're here for both budget so if you want to just do bob's  that's up to you know you are good so let's start off with the health department supplemental budget requests we have to both of which of course are palatable the rodent one is probably  surprise that we are asking for ten thousand dollars line item to allow us to continue to address what is unfortunately a continuing problem which is never hear a little bit more from the highway department remember that that j and i said you said it your table here several months ago and i indicated to you that it's a good idea to put a line item in to the highway department's budget for right control because they're spending a lot of time and manpower's our line item is going to be allow us to continue to address the rat situations in people's homes this is where our focus is we we you know our staff doesn't go out to the parks that's where the highwaymen do their good job we go in and address people's individual homes streets you know mapping monitoring e for we've been extremely fortunate to have a summer in turn that still with us in the dead of winter and who is doing a magnificent job interacting with the citizens except for i'm sure we don't have to tell you about the red problem in town that weekend if you want us to joey's park it's because the food is brought in and left there and yeah for what from what i observed going there there was a lot of trash on the ground a lot of like even orange peels just food wrappers left over so that's a food source for them so we're we're considering what do they call the other carrying carry carry and carry out so that you know because it's obvious having receptacles there is no working and we know carrie and carry out may not work either because but i think you know it's almost as if the folks who are using the park certain of them are in you know just disadvantaging everyone else because we can't have the kids there with with the rats and mice and to that point the ten thousand dollars we're asking for is public education because that's a big part of what does is she not only answers the phone and deals with the individual citizens but she's out there educating is really just that i mean david it's really kate this issue within here remain within the i mean you have food water shelter so you do that they're going to move to a different you know we're going to we're never going to kill them all if you kill them all then others will come it's but if your next door neighbor thin his compost pile which is nothing more than him throwing scraps in the corner of the backyards a good idea that's where we intervene if we can go through an abandoned garage we intervene joey's park we work with the highway department that's really more they're bailing now we've investigation that's involved it's self reported by a neighbor most likely that's experiencing a problem with rats if we can get on to the caller's property we can take a look over the property line into the neighbor's yard if there's an issue if we see what do you do you write it would you do we try to provide education that's the first step so it's a neighbor will knock on their door and try to talk to them if they're not there we have a door hanger it's a green tag and we can check off  a list of items that we're concerned about if that doesn't work will issue an order letter and they'll have to comply with that otherwise we end up in court with him which is in order to do for you in order  letter allows us to more authoritatively address the problem so if the compost bin for example is the problem we can ask that it's removed from the property within a certain period of time and take them to court if they don't total so far this year we've had about fifteen complaints which is more than double what it was this time last year similar to some moves to the construction of the bradford but i understand that's not me because evidence is always important you know real evidence so i mean definitely construction will disperse them but the big hot spot has been the whole beach maple street area which is still pretty far from that particular construction because i was no unfortunately here and can make you so that's a supplemental time going right we also are asking for a thirty nine hundred dollars supplement for the hoarding to cluttering support group was someone let you speak a little more about granting a similar request from thirty nine hundred would get us to support groups they're led by our social or our town social worker that we do share with the council on aging they've been incredibly popular and productive and it's something that groups of the help change it's amazing it's amazing that so many of these people want to help the you know it's an overwhelming situation that when we're able to get into the houses they just stand in the middle of this clutter and  i won't take the time to describe it because it's something you could possibly live in and they're just overwhelmed they don't know what to do so they want people to come in and help them organize they want people to come in and help them remove things you know not every single one of them i mean some of them are unfortunately mentally ill enough that they don't but an awful lot of them appreciate the help one of the resources we've used quite a bit is the boys up at belmont hill school and they literally as part of their community service come down and fill dumpsters while the owner standing there that helps and it helps just a little path through just and it's just how you describe a head and see it where the entire house is just a little path through boxes and and where do they start an open packages in an open and sort of th is papers yes just really sad you know well allow me to remind you unfortunately that someone died because of a hoarding issue unconquered ave and they weren't able to reach the kitchen anymore they were cooking with a sterno which was allowed to stay alert they could not reach their kitchen they could not reach their kitchen they were cooking with the light they left it on and it burned the house down on concrete i'm not far from where you live i remember so i mean that's an extreme case wes how many are we dealing with now we have roughly four active cases right now that's four that's been report d correct i meant it yeah easily twenty thirty times in this town of varying really that much but again it becomes it's a mental illness and it becomes a cyclical thing and that's the beauty of these support groups i know people here support groups  you know we sit around and sing kumbaya to each other but the truth is in this particular case people really marcy or grooved i understand i understand i understand i think i have the brownies out of the back of the room right now i think you need some brownies mark health insurance which we hear from everybody sure so it's one of the big drivers was weights and measures which we currently share with the town of arlington but over the past month or so we've been trying to figure out an alternative plan and we're actually happy to announce tonight that we're going to partner with the town of brookline and we're going to be able to for the most part keep costs in line with what they were last year so is this number going to change that number is going to change  so i think the short answer is probably yes yes i think it's very degrees and you know we were talking about the fact and so funny because we were talking in the hall before with jay from highway you know five years ago the word rat wasn't on anybody's vocabulary and i was spending an inordinate amount of time with that for the last two years why well we can talk about construction we can talk about climate we can talk about of or you know people have been suddenly started throwing food in parks you know they've been doing it for a long time it's probably a wave type of thing that you know maybe five years ago waltham had a mall and now the rats you know got tired of waltham and came to belmont so it's a very fair question mr chair and the short answer is here who is another perfect example of how belmont gets five hundred fifty percent from practically every employee on our staff bob came in to a position that had been somewhat abandoned we've gone through ups and downs with this position  before it came to the board of health and now and he has taken and he hasn't just run with it he's exploded with it and i think the statistics you have in here as well as are the evidence that you've seen he's created reach you know outreach at the beach street center he's reinvigorated the program of getting the funds that are right we deserve to buy our veterans you know we if you general i don't know we have over six hundred veterans in this town you know this is a population that deserves not only our admiration but any help we can possibly able to give me over the last three years as well as help obama but i i want to say a person thank you very much because i know that you are moving on from your position but i greatly appreciate the support of yourself and others in the south the bomb of the because you guys have helped me to move this program from where we were when i first came in three years ago to where we are today when i started this position in fifteen hours it was really an eye opener for me to see the responsibilities that the job did intil but in learning about the job and working with the community working with the v f w work with people like angelo and others in the community i've been able to get my arms around the problem and you know we are raising awareness i know i myself have a good amount of visibility in and  people know me now but that's part of what outreach is all about we're starting to reach out to others with the senior center we're starting to have activities like the veterans breakfast that we just started the town of belmont to just become recognized most recently in the last couple  years as a as the purple heart community you know i've learned more and more about the elder population within this town that veterans all the veteran spouse of themselves have a need for veterans v a benefits and entitlements that they don't even not even aware of so the more outreach that you do the more opportunity is there to help people that deserve that even though the world war two and korean veterans they never ask for anything but you know they are entitled than they do have these especially the senior spouses of those veterans who have passed on they don't know that there was assistance out there for them and yes this may in fact be an affluent community but that doesn't mean there's not a financial need of our veterans and their family members that are out there currently i'm servicing seven chapter one fifteen recipients those chapter one fifteen recipients are are getting income from the town of don't want that reimbursed that at seventy five percent i probably with a population of over twenty one thousand and i know it's higher than that but at twenty one thousand the state has an average of maybe twenty one i probably would have twenty one chapter one fifty recipients with the population that this town has as i stated about the population state law requires that the town has a full time veteran service officer they could in fact they could in fact penalize us at the rate of return of reimbursement to us and only reimbursed at fifty percent if they chose to do that they don't do that they reimburse at the seventy five percent ra however i will say that i do think it would be something that we might want to consider at some point to become a district with another contiguous community because that's also very helpful and i think it is true but there's quite a number of veterans that are not aware of the benefits that we do offer them that the and that they are entitled to lash it with the help of the interned that we haven't dealt with pov and breed this is something that recreated far us working with us to reach out to veterans in this community vietnam veterans are the largest population of veterans that  hundred over six hundred veterans but there are many other not only vietnam veterans but because of the war on terror for the last fifteen years we have many god reserve personnel that have been out on multiple deployments they are not aware either of the veterans benefits that they are entitled to or their children or even their their spouses would be eligible for i must tell you that i know that the v f w the dominant veterans memorial that's you know being worked to be developed in this town is significantly raising awareness of veterans and home port veterans in this community are angelo joe white chip guard that many of the people in the v f w they're helping me to get this word out i'm helping them with that particular initiative but you know through this this is how we're we're trying to get the word out but i i will tell you that one thousand hours is just not cutting it and i really think that we all were to our veterans in this town to be able to you know provide these benefits to them let them know about the benefits that are available i want to we as the top of the veterans coffee hour at the belmont scene is that the it's become quite popular we get in the direction of veterans who have had for years long with each other but never knew that these other people they're having lunch with were veterans as well now that we have these every month we have the spouses of those veterans that are curious it's not only the doenitz that draw them in is the news that is sharing this information about you know veterans and veterans benefits and they want to know more about that we have the new housing authority director talk with me we're going to try to institute some type of regular meeting space at the housing authority as well for veterans because they're eligible i would like to see that they get priority that veterans in town who need housing and there are those that do need housing in the housing authority i'd love to see them get priority but that's possibly another question but there's a range of issues beside federal benefits to the v a at bedford in jamaica plain he massachusetts state benefits through the state of massachusetts through chapter one fifteen are just you know benefits that we need to be able to provide to people there's also financial need that veterans in this community may not be eligible for because of their income level they may not be eligible for state benefits are even federal benefits but maybe week we may be able to start something like a five a one three c where we can get generate some income for some type of funding for other types of needs that they may have whether it be health care maybe vehicles maybe home we peer there's just a lot of different types of needs out there that's the biggest leave the biggest need right for me i think the biggest need is is health care home base care v a benefits  compensation chapter one fifteen benefits i know there's more than seven people in this town that need income support for housing and for basic needs that to me is really what i need to be able to get to let people know that these benefits are certainly in the well so you really have to get out they have to get out there with they are you know we have the memorial day parade hardly any veterans march in that parade which trying to get more people to participate but you know that's why we have the veterans breakfast they do come out for that to veterans left and i don't have the number to be honest but it's very well you know in the korean veterans that they were shocked to hear that there's a korean peace battle they actually heard about this thing called the korean peace medal and we have done what resident dana mcdonald became aware of that we presented in it that him at the last veterans breakfast it was wonderful to see i think is a navy commander lieutenant commander a veteran and you know it's just that medal meant a lot to him into his wife who was there that breakfast but it's important for us to recognize the service that these soldiers sil's marines in amman have given to this country as as i know you do know that absolutely you guys have all been very supportive to me but i think more needs to be done and that's what i would do at the next with the additional six thousand trying to be a little bit more effective that and help as well in the v f w and to try to do events like that if i might i think you know one of the things that i've seen in the last couple years that i've been working with the veterans  you know to me it's it's it is part of who i am and i really do appreciate the opportunity to work and towns such as don't want to give me this opportunity to work in this field because you know this job was a vacancy at fifteen i was not many people would apply for that well i think it's you know folks you just see what the heck's going on you know we really need to complete what we need to complete you first i want to say last time in october it was about a month it went about the groups that use the fields and leave it in disrepair and the illegal dumping that we get from either from surrounding communities or just people that want to get rid of stuff in the parks and they and they put it next to it and we showed you dozens of pictures with that problem so that was in march of last year october last year we got the first report with the with the rats we shut down the park and it was a little i would say about a month the park was closed and we used a company that was environmentally friendly because of the sense to video of the nature of where it  was in that time we've we've come up with some language for all the youth groups basically saying that if you're you know if you keep doing this or this happens you will be penalize and f progress to further february we had on season warm weather seventy degree days everybody was outside getting sun playing having a great time shortly after the rats came we had t close the park down so this is where we're at right now the carrying kerio policy kind of ties into the illegal dumping and overflow and barrels trash so my i said one i was to have my presentation last time if you build it they will come if you have trash barrels the trash will come that is it's just the nature of what humans do doesn't matter if it's overflow and they disassociate it with trash barrel going to put it out there so as public works this is what we do now i had this in the last presentation we we empty the barrels monday wednesday friday russell does the common areas on line or street in various places we empty the old full barrels surat you know we get the call we go and we pick up all the litter and legal trash rots town want to get the call weekends no not weekends and you know during this presentation we can talk about you know that i'm going to get to it there's no silver bullet that's going to take care of this problem a carry in carry all policy would look like the town of western mass has implemented this beverly's implemented something similar in their schools or in the school campuses i should say would remove the parks from all the fields this is carrying carry out like that sign right there that's the sin example we're not going to stop it but we can at least limit it or try to reduce it because right now what we're dealing with we're dealing with illegal dumping and we're dealing with overfull barrels playground is going to go for innovation the summer so i'm going to spinning some activity i just you know this is this is what we've had to deal with that's a waterfront to the left and it's loaded with dog reluctant at first about the carrying carry out because of what's going to prevent them from doing this if we well so here's the here's the plan and i have to really can graduate jay and mary beth of his staff because they really work to meet with this in the middle of this year fight saying let's try it let's do a pilot program certainly doesn't cost anything to hit the two big parks and in addition to that once again we're going back to public education with partners appear that stories park in the top right you know someone had a party with all the crap that i showed you this picture from a different angle last time we dealt with that all the balloons all those who were home who were home those of you would home who did that this is this is outrageous totally yeah so it comes once again believe it or not to education you wouldn't think you'd have to educate people to do this but you do so mary beth and i had a great conversation one of the things we're actually thinking of is getting the kids involved get the kids when brooke to make color little signs in second grade hang them around the park and you know kids a look at mommy and say mommy we're supposed to take that home so we're trying to get education in a slightly different approach i think her idea for this is really brilliant to be because she's tying this into earth day two which is coming up which is another great idea so i know it sounds silly but it's education and we're hoping that with jay's department's idea of removing the pails combined with a guys here's an idea don't leave your garbage around for the entire the bag and put it on top of that thing well several people on the facebook page which is where this was posted said why did they take over the trash can so they were under the impression that this was a trash can that was taped over so they decided to pile or stupid i'm i'm sending a message to the community that this is totally disrespectful if you do this please understand we have to respect one another and this is a difference but for do you think the people that did this care i don't know if they would care in the first place the women perhaps they don't in the lobby  my building in new york we had a camera you know we had kids come in we had kids go out you know given the problems that we we have a joey spark and lester's of a law against it i see no reason write post a camera there and see who's doing this stuff because what'll happen is in this is what happened happens in co ops and it's what happens in other public places when you come upon something like this you pull the tape and you review the previous twenty four hours in bingo the people are there so the other thing is it's a deterrent because of people know there's there's you know that it's being filmed then  people theory or not that's probably not fair so if i can take thirty seconds personal privilege because this is going to probably be the last chance i sit in front of you under the board of health i want to thank the three of you over thirty years i've worked with an awful lot of people behind this desk it's been one of the pleasures of this job present company included you've always welcomed the board a healthier you've always worked with us haven't always agreed together but that's ok because at the end of the day we work for the common good and i will tell you that an awful lot of what my department accomplish could not have been accomplished without the three people sitting across the table and the two people that he runs so thank you very much for adding to a pretty good run thank you for your multi decadal service you're very generous you've done your hour and thank you for your years of service will of brian's been a volunteer me very long time with the talk of the town for the last couple of years and i ran into him a talk of the town the other night and he said oh i'm interested in this and i said well you should tell the town instead of the you're interested because you're doing it summary so that the way to think about clear is we have built a key transparency and benchmarking platform really designed to help local governments town city school districts help you operate communicate more effectively and efficiently and really kind of share your financial story your keeper formants metrics with the town as well as give you access to data to help you make better fact based decisions and someone show you here real quick is just a quick demo of what we do happy answer any basically from anybody else on the planet is that we've gone out and aggregated data on literally every town city village borough whatever it's called across all fifty states in the country and so even though we're not currently working with belmont right we've created what we call a preview profile for everybody so you can go look up that any town in the u s in you're going to get at least the sort of one page snapshot of your community so demographic overview  who's in the town financial overview income and expenses and educational snapshot that if you have it right just think of that as sort of a one page summary of your town the way that our model works then is we have a premium version so let me switch in here to said berry is one of our existing customers and you see their front page looks pretty similar same sort of information  here but as i drill down into this data i get to see all the details behind it so i click on expenditures and it shows me how does their budget breakdown into all of these different categories i can look at this in a variety of different graphic cetera all of our charts are interactive so i can turn on or off certain components to get you know a different view of the world i can see this broken down into all the different categories educational benefits public safety et i continue to drill down deeper into this data in fact we can go is really down to the checkbook level detail that's up to you to decide kind of how deep you want to go once you come on board and i can see this information how it trends over time  because we've collected the data on everybody right i'm also able to see this peer analysis in this example we're looking at sudbury information and see that they say spend about six percent more than similar towns if i click on  going to show me what does that comparison look like and this is really critical from a typical citizen's perspective when they look at you know a fifty billion dollar educational budget or whatever the category maybe that's just a big number to them without that context without that how does this compare to the rest of the world they don't necessarily understand that as a customer you can actually create your own peer groups so sudbury is using the click of default peer group as the as their default but they've created their own peer group is in here as well you can create as many different peer groups as you want for each of the peer groups you'll see that direct comparison you'll see a bell curve to kind of see how many standard deviations from the mean you are and then you've got the raw data down here the bottom from a transparency perspective it's not just about financial information if i go back to kind of the said very home page here i can drill down into the demographic data i can drill down into that that data all of the details behind the so the core of publicly available information and the user since he already has a ton of ministry together yeah so the core data so the day that we have an anybody there we have an belmont so far is all publicly available information we get from state department of revenue department of education census bureau etc when you come on board as a customer typically customers are going to want to provide us fresher information than what's available from the state as well as deeper information the only work on your part is literally print out a report from your accounting system you run that report was not a publicly available information that we would provide and yet exactly it is and you decide how deep you want to go to provide information on personnel or statistics in that way basic level aggregate statistics but again you decide how deep you want to know what you would want to put out there and you don't have access to our systems now now now you give us a report from your system basically that it takes somebody ten minutes on your own to run the report and then we do all the on boarding we do all of the mapping into our into our platform thank you so the last thing that i want to show you here everything i've shown you so far is think about it that is the transparency piece so all of that is publicly available it's about sharing your story with the community helping people understand what's going on this piece now is is kind of not for the models right this is for the administrative team for you saw some of the commentary on said barry has access to this is that we were uses not yet not no no i mean if we were to yes you we have access to this correct the commentary feature allows you to add commentary to any panel within the profile you may have seen some of the commentary there from those who are at and said very but the really cool part i want to show you here was the benchmarking app so the benchmarking app allows you to literally compare any line item in your budget against a relevant set of peer communities and emphasize relevant because it really depends on what you're looking at so i'm going to just kind of select a handful here sort of randomly and when i click next depending on which line items you selected the  relevant communities may be very different from one line into the next and for example if you're looking at snow removal costs you want to compare against towns that have a similar number of road miles and in your area if you're comparing public safety costs you may want to look at average household income that sort of thing and so what we've done is we've built in about fifteen or twenty different filters into the platform we've already collected all of this data and so you see on the screen screens not quite large enough air but  know this down here just get it to a reasonable number i click next and what immediately comes up is the line items that i selected right in this case i'm logged in as sudbury so showing what we sp in each of these categories compared to in this case the twenty seven other towns or whatever i don't really know how to scroll right with this computer but it has all of you get the idea right and so i can look at this on a natural basis on a per capita spend basis which we think is probably the most interesting way of looking at this data i can look at an a percent of total budget i can export this information to excel i could save this now as a peer group i want to be able to come back and you know look at this  towns on a regular basis and then i can also see it all visually right so i can look at this in a scatter diagram or do the same sort of filter see a really quick so this is very cool stuff i mean i guess the question is do we have access to some of this because i know in the work maybe we used to get can i don't work came from comparing us to other towns it wasn't it didn't look at the school but i mean we the data was gathered somehow yeah i mean i think if if we wanted to we could probably do our due diligence and gather the data just in one thousand budget item to consider yes i think i think with this it's it's done in a very clear way very understandable way the committing to at this point it's all hundred dollars set up the seventy five and at the end you have the choice that we want to continue or not what is the what else is available you know if we can forget about  focusing on thousands of dollars which i'm not really concerned with what else can you get other than what you describe for the seventy five hundred a year  you have if you like a deluxe version well so i say i gave you the a really quick tour of the deluxe version the premier version right we do have a basic version that is frankly is free the basic profile only includes kind of that front page and does not include any that lack of amish doesn't give you the benchmarking down and you can't dig down you know the benchmark you know the statistics in a lot of the stuff in the you know the so there's no pricing beyond the seventy five seventy five data to be taken anyway right i mean it's only the data that that you give us which is already publicly available information and there really isn't a security issue to be worried about is the work committee would love the sport you know it's really geared towards educating the the person that doesn't interact with the town very often and gives them a really clear way to understand it and then if you're more seasoned person like a warrant to be even when you can really dig down into the number absolutely you know i think there's a lot of