morning mark along with tom minister patrice garvin assistant time minister phyllis marshall and we are good to go so we are going to be our agenda this morning is exclusively devoted to going over the segment a town meeting articles that begin tonight the town meeting begins tonight at seven pm at the high school and we will also be discussing the special town meeting which is also part of segment a fish so we're going to be going through the articles in order of how they're going to appear at town meeting in segment a which is articles one through seven then ten in the special town meeting then eight then then eleven twelve thirteen we'll see how far we get certainly want to get through the ones we're going to be discussing tonight which should be one through seven so we're going to be recommending favorable or unfavorable in these articles one to article one is just the order of the articles article two is just the in you will authorization of the selectmen to represent the town's legal interests we don't need to recommend one or two  proposing to establish that that is frost historic district that's located at two ninety one brighton saint that's pretty stori family it was part of the market garden industry here in belmont it was one of the last houses one of the last farm houses to be developed in town in the one nine hundred forty s the area around it was developed with the house still remains and the belmont historic district along with the homeowner would like to protect the home from future in congress development so the creation of a historic district provide us with a tool to help protect this house over time so this homeowner and then future homeowners would be required by law to seek approval to changes to the exterior of the home that are visible from a public way but the interior is not included that's the only thing that you know the only additional thing is if you do decide to vote in favor i will need a signature on the actual m hundred looks identical yeah it hasn't changed that much over the years which is which is really great and it's one of the few surviving federal homes that we have involvement and as you can see from the images it's really survived on changed over time so it's a really special home  which is the general resident zoning district some such clauses i'm some trucks going to talk to the president talk about that and then article five which i guess we can discuss them together is the general residence only district changes one of the sunset clause one removes the current sunset clause because we did the three year general residence zoning district experiment if you will to see how it worked out and see if we would tweak it so it sunsets this year this would be removing that subset and letting it continue in article five of you making the tweaks so it's a part of the general residence mr changes it was put it was basically article four is the portion of the general residence law that pertains to new construction of single into family dwellings in the general residence it requires that any new to and fame to one into family residence go through a special permit process which involves design and site plan review it was put in place in two thousand and fourteen it sunsets in june of this year the planning board is had meetings discussed the implication and what has happened in terms of the general residence in the public hearings we we heard from the public and the general consensus is that the one in two family special permit portion of the general residence law has done what it was supposed to do it's controlled over development and more specifically it is allowed the public voice in the hearing and the siting of projects so that they are appropriate to the neighborhood in the town as a result of that and with the sunset cla glooming we propose to delete that section which is the sunset clause and make it a permanent part of the zoning but with changes that are in article which changes that are in article four that's article i'm saying which with the for taking steps to try to put in place mechanisms to accelerate that that process one of the complaints i've heard from homeowners is that it is the times involved process it can take many meetings and many reviews i think part of article five helps to address that but could you comment on whether or not that's been something yes is taken up one of the issues that that that we've heard from the public is not only about you know the special permit for new and single family construction but also has been about other issues that have come up before the board and the special permit we will talk about part of that in the next article but in terms of new construction i think there was a learning process that went through and one of the things that you have to understand is before any proposal comes to the playing board it's gone through it's gone through community development and they've had their input and community development has generally told  construction what would be what would work and what wouldn't work in the cases as we've gone along in time i think there's been some education from developers on the other side and we're finding that new construction now at least since i've been chair of the board has been going through in a much more expeditious fashion and part of that is simply a learning process and the developers that we've seen have responded to what community development has said and has responded to when the board has spoken with them and for the most part the new single into family construction has been going through with one meeting or at the most two so i think it is i think the is that we because this has to do with special permits it doesn't have to do with new construction this is primarily what we call the porch and dormer article we have a lot of very small things that come to us because the playing board the way the zoning was written is the special permit granting authority for the general residence district so that means anything that needs a special permit comes to whether it's large or small given that approximately eighty percent of the houses in the general residence district are non conforming that creates a number of special permit cases what we have found is that there are a lot of smaller cases that come to us dormers you know porches those kind of things which end up having a design so i planned review process which is as i've said before the heavy end of the planning board and that gets to what you were talking yeah yeah and so we we think that and a lot of the cases are so i was simply zoning nonconformity and can be handled better for the smaller cases or as well by the zoning  appeal i've spoken with the chair of the zoning board of peel he's fine with taking on additional cases we look through all the cases that had come to us in terms of this and we decided that sort of a cutoff of three hundred square feet will take care of most of the smaller dormers and porches and we would move those still be a special permit process but we would move those to the zoning board of appeals the larger cases which are over three hundred square feet have more of an impact on the community potentially and the neighbors and we think the playing board has a good oversight on that and those would remain with the planning board so if it's under three hundred square feet i think it's three hundred square feet and under it goes to the zoning board of appeal they hold the special permit process they would be the special permit grant authority over three hundred square feet it reads it remains with the playing board and they go through our process hopefully this will expedite the process for homeowners and at the same time because the planning board would have control over the larger additions and changes that the planning board would maintain its control and the effect on neighborhoods and  come up and speak sponsors are just identified herself to micah it's probably twenty five or thirty percent spencer go overstaffed planner the average deck that was approved was one hundred ninety square feet and the average dormer that was approved was three hundred one thousand square feet and the average proposed or more was five hundred there were only six stormers cases that came before the board so the majority of dormers were already smaller than what would be captured  i spoke with nick and nick said that they have the capacity with able to cases i mean i know you gave sort of subsisted on average how many cases would go to the be deferred from  if you recall the citizens petition had be the board of health as the enforcement authority and gave it up or came to us and said they really didn't have the capacity to take that on and so our article has it as the recycling coordinator more appropriate anyway because the nature of the similar subject matter that the recycling coordinator would be the and forcing authority plus ours had some additional changes by the by a review committee and by council which actually made it a little a little more clear with some definitions that weren't in the citizen petitions ours is a little more ready ready to go and i think that the citizens spoken to the citizens who are behind this is the petition they were fine with our version and that's why they're voluntarily community and spoke with other towns found out what they were doing and then came back and reported to us and then we've done it before you came on tom we we put it on the warrant based upon comments and recommendations that came out of that so this is our article i mean i understand you were involved in putting it on the warrant but we put it on the warrant and i mean i'm i think we had to do this and i think it's a good thing because you said you spoke to this like you can't seem to put one of the meeting which you said you spoke more concerns about it some people had no concerns about it some people were wondering why we had taken so long because all the towns around us have done this and they saw it when i was talking about a business opportunity with this because if you get to where the plastic bags you either have the paper bags or you could give out reusable bags with logos on them and branding the center could have a whole program or a business is going by a little slots and you can promote the whole center or like let's say the bank just wanted to do one of their own  hand them out people use those i have a trunk up full of them and i use them all the time and carry them around they have ads on them for other businesses wanted to take effect takes effect in two different phases there is the takes effect sooner for stores over thirty thousand feet which is basically stock market and then it takes longer faison for other stores and the idea was that we want the stores to be able to use up at least that the store of bags they are already bought and get through them so they don't have to throw them away and start market i think my understanding from the group that atop the stock market they didn't seem to have a problem implementing this because they do it in other communities already forces that the board of i'm sorry the recycling coordinator would know enforcement is their capacity they're within th plastic bags cannot you have to actually take them back to star market or c v s if you will and people honestly just don't you know so they end up in the trash and the idea is not necessarily to get people to use paper bags to get them to use no bags or reusable bags i mean this is a step in that direction we're not finding anybody you know as far as like making you pay for a bag it's nothing like that like cambridge does we can't do that apparently but it's it's more just getting rid of the very thin plastic bags the four mil or a larger plastic bags are still  store should want to get give out thicker plastic bags they can do that but those tend to be more in the reusable size so as it were also committing bags for me to other wet products as well right dry cleaning if you exemptions that make right  them recommend terrible action second i was in favor i i so one through seven those are the ones that are going for definitely tonight after that the next bunch are going to be ten the special town meeting eight  which are ten is the community preservation act which i'd like to get into now eight nine is the a marijuana stablish want temporary mer taurima extension nine is the marijuana sales tax the special town meeting is the opt out so those are all so the second would be c p a and marijuana if if ten is going to go so one through seven and then we're jumping to ten which is the c p s a one through seven is on for tonight weather and then the c p a will see how far we get tonight the c p a scheduled so they're on the they're on here in article ten of the order of veterans memorial pace impart music festival stage town field playground restoration construction of grove street park intergenerational walking path fund set aside to housing trust in mclean bar to restore the historic portions of the veterans memorial at ground clay put on so the stone wall at the top of the hill and the stone wall down by the pond and replace the flagpole and the  that's on the stone there now in kind yeah it should be noted that there while the project is much larger than that and we've seen the plans for that and there's been some discussion pro and con as to the rest of it they c p a pieces not that the seed pieces just dollars for design drawings to develop a bandstand to go over the existing concrete pad that they they have about twenty seven concerts sorry the pay czar mark music festival they've been around for twenty seven years they have about fifteen concerts a year and so and they do it on top of this concrete pad that was added some number of years ago and this would be to put not totally enclosed but a bandstand with a roof there on top incident weather for the shows and yeah i originally they came with a larger project actually constructed but then the c p c said you really need to go get an architect and design it and saying come back next year with actual proposal based upon those they're estimating around fifty thousand for the actual it's a relatively modest you know open and structural though it does have have electricity so there is some it has to be compliant so there is some work to be done but other than that it's fairly modest five this numbers change dramatically so so the town field came before us in the fall just to replace the playground equipment and the fence on three sides at town field in kind replacement of the equipment so it seemed like it would be straightforward enough however again it it's going to be better if it's a it's in a two phase process of the design so now they're coming forward for twenty five thousand dollars for the design an architectural drawings to replace the equipment and then hopefully next year they'll come forward for the actual equipment this was originally on the warrant for one hundred eighty thousand to do the actual work and that's been reduced to twenty five thousand for just the design so this is just over seven hundred eighty thousand dollars so this project it came out of the town actually funded a master plan for grove street not separate from the c p a about four or five years ago and this is one of the elements that came out of that master plan so then grove street came before us last year and town meeting approved thirty five thousand dollars i think it was two for the design drawings for this in the intergenerational walking path it also a big park i think it's under a year but it's a it's a fairly wide path six so it's six feet now yes there's a wide path that goes around a good chunk and part not the entire park but a good chunk of it and i add some handicap accessibility to areas because currently there really isn't any and i support this because i think because of the dollar amount you probably get a lot of questions about this it's a big number it's a big park and it's a wide path and there's some grading work that has to be done to accommodated to make it a compliant you've got the batting cages you've got the entrances it's it sounds simple but apparently when you get into it it's not as simple you may recall we've this is come before the c p a before for the design last year last year and that this is phase two as we're talking about how these others would be phase one phase two grove street is actually you c p a money to get to the design of this is to do the construction so this is the final phase i would assume for this after a lot a lot a lot of work a lot of people in that area and park users and park neighbors in addition so it's sort of the baseball people the soccer people the tent the d p w the neighbors it's been a lot of the neighbors of albany gauge visibly in the process and yeah it from but basically it was money that would be put aside that could be drawn by the housing trust to go out and purchase some affordable housing opportunities whether it be a property or deed restriction or whatever it may be and it would be done via a contract between the selectmen the housing trust as to how the money would work in the system would work and the work committee and we had a in the application there was a template contract it was sort of just a blank and section said you could do this you could do that and the more committees recommendation was that before we got to town meeting with the best we knew what the contract actually was rather than just a template which i thought was actually a pretty good idea yes so so we had the meeting if you recall we went over the contract we sent it back to town council and such of looked at it patrice's looked at it and the housing trust is looked at it to make comments and now we have a red line version of it i what i want to do is go to town meeting and not necessarily say we've signed a contract it does say at least we have either a an agreement principle or b we're working on something rather than to go and say we've never the idea here is to have funds available on a flexible basis time wise in order to take advantage of opportunities that previously if we came to town came to the c p c we'd wait have to wait for tell me to get approval of a specific project we had one project that essentially failed for delays you know it was not town meetings for us it was the states that the whole process ended up that the until we have a use for and that was one of the changes we had asked for last time and the ford was was very adamant about the money because that one of the template versions of it said you give the housing trust the money and then they return it i think for growth he said the money should stay with the town and if they fifty thousand dollars but forgive me just to clarify so in this situation where you've identified a project that has as appealing is it simply the housing trust that has to ok that ok so it doesn't actually have to go back up if he did not go to the clear we're voting on the c p a are going to restate that if this comes up tonight then we have i think i like the contract that is five years waiting town council approval but that we have and i think we have been a great thing we could stay because you're here from the house of trust would it be safe to say we have an agreement in principle yes ok i think the other thing too is the c p c needs to meet to discuss the agreement because i have to sign but we're not going to sign an obviously we wouldn't sign an agreement till if there's a town meeting didn't approve the money it worked we're not going to sign anything so the order has to be that but i think we can go and say we do have an idea we do have a contract that process has been customized because rather than just the general template this isn't customized for belmont and what we all decide we want all three groups here and that we feel like it's in a good place and it's really just for the the lawyers and the trust in us to sort of finalize it but that it's well yet but it's quite you know if you're going to say that or want me to say that whoever's going to say tonight that it's ford say that because you're going to be up there right gentlemen thank you thank you for truth here next and last but certainly not least is the mclean barn stabilisation which has been reduced from two hundred thousand to one hundred seventy five thousand from the original warrant this out of these articles this is the only one the work committee of the entire mclean redevelopment project where the town got one tree hill we also got this four point six acre parcel on the other side of mill street that contains the mclean barn so it's adjacent to rock me and it was originally all part of mclean farm so that was in two thousand and five so maybe alan can explain better the so there was an agreement between mclean and the town when we got the barn that we tap the town would take care of the barn until we figured out a good use for it and late land management committee manages the barn for the town right so the barn is part of  don't know the eighteen different agreements including the zoning as you remember so this is been working for twenty years and now it's time we've been paying a lot of attention to getting rid of invasive and making the land accessible to people and now we would like this barn to continue to exist so that the town can decide how the if we want to use it it is a historic resource that's on the national historic register as well as the massachusetts register of historic places and it is it was in the original nomination documents for that so others consider this virus barn pretty valuable we do as well and what we're trying to do is really just kind of stabilize that historically we're not adding anything to it we're taking off gutters were repairing roof shingles and sure the water doesn't get in we're taking off the plywood that's there which is sort of ill fitting and not appropriate for an historic building and we're going to hopefully with the money comes in we will properly fit that and take away the broken window syndrome in the past two years we've noticed that there were one what there's no particular purpose that we've identified for this property and it is severely restricted as to purposes and is this something we want to put money into is will we ever use it i'm not saying i agree with this i'm just saying these are the only those are the arguments yes so in the conservation restriction by the way there are only two allowable uses and because this is on conservation land those two uses were negotiated pretty hard one is use for survive mentoring for the cemetery which was going to be moving out to that section of town for the first time and we haven't really used it for storage of mowers and things like that but in the transience sort of way the second really more important uses for ecological or and veyron mental education because of course there's a thousand acres of open space in this it's right in the middle of it  from pleasant street it goes all the way out through waltham so there might be an immense opportunity no one's really fully explored that yet but it's just not something that the committee land management committee the historic district commission and  that is that there is a restriction in the contract that we have which actually is also with the the trustees of the reservation not just mcclain which says that we are going to maintain it in the condition that it with the deplorable condition that it was we're that while he said of the league night that while we are required to do that there's really no penalty in the agreement if you don't i would say that that doesn't mean that mclean or the trustees couldn't go to court and get an injunction and force and i don't know if they would guess i think also it's the relationship to it's tough for us as a town to make deals with developers at all if we have a history of not following through with our commitments than no one's going to one of the go shit with us so i think it's you know if we promise to do it i didn't promise to do it but people sitting these chairs before us promise to do it i think i feel an obligation to follow through also i see this is part one of a three part piece one is stabilize the barn so it doesn't collapse too we should discuss what we're going to do with it and if it's outside of that list maybe talk to mclean about whether something is appropriate that they would accept and three is then find money whether it's c p a or mclean or otherwise to do that thing with it so but if you don't stabilize it you can't even get the two in the bill and that is i mean at some point sounds like this is something we need to  so we hired a consultant they are historic preservation specials that's what they do if you look at the list of items that we're doing it doesn't include any specific you know program items for example we're not expanding the sizes of the doors we're not trying to shore up the inside to make sure it holds a certain amount of weight we're not doing any of that this is really just to make it waste year and weather tight so that it stays around so we can have that community conversation as this is this is just i'm off by the building and when you say barn is a bit of a misnomer it's a pretty decent sized brick structure it's not it's an old dairy barn but when you look at it i mean it looks like an actual physical solid brick building with slate roof and it had copper gutters and all that it wasn't you know it's not it's fancier than a but you would think of when you think of bar it's an unusual structure because it is masonry and from that time of period and the other thing as you said adam you know mcclane has also lived up to their side of the historic agreements by when they did their renovations and through the woodlands they used both the stables and the upper house pretty beautifully and have done other mo as we like they have stayed to their side of the agreement we would like to stay to ours and therefore well that's the other thing is the one thing the town council have said is that while there may be no specific remedy in the agreement if we our side of the agreement right that it what it would do is release mclean from their side of the agreement and maybe we don't want that so there are three if we blow it off they're going to say then there's no agreement at all will do whatever we want so that's a whole different thing along those lines if we were to not vote this this year investigate what we want to do in terms of future use then think about the combined stabilisation plus going to phase two of your plan next year because two questions one are we in breach of the agreement in that case for our intent is to address it next going to want to put up there ok and so you know this could be the last project for x number of years until maybe a private developer comes along and says hey i'd love to do it environmentalists occasions that are out there what would it take we don't know so we're something we're has a ten from taking the next step but we're trying to take a phased approach here and so we understand that you know stabilizing it is the first to preserve this asset make sure that we are in good relations with mclean and our community and that you know people who are children that we used were the underwood pool and the mclean barn as they as examples of what the money could be used to do so i feel like we kind of told people we would use the money for this and we never did so i remarked no i just wanted to under this come up in a couple budget c eight which is the marijuana stand which meant extend temporary moratorium article nine marijuana sales tax the and then the rest of the articles which would be which are te tagged on for the seventh would be really it's just eleven twelve and thirteen which levin and thirteen are going to be withdrawn and twelve which is the citizens petition to increase the number selection from three to five would be going forward most likely on twelve article levin's going to be withdrawn in favor of article twelve article twelve the one that's going forward article thirteen is the citizens petition to amend the general bylaws procedural rules to require a town meeting vote to be  recorded as who voted for what rather than because we have electronic voting information and i think if you look in the packet and summarize it basically is that they felt that that was not that was an communic review committee felt that was an improper restraint on the time moderator on wednesday night the c p a in the marijuana articles and if we don't finish them on the wednesday the second then the marijuana goes will continue into monday may seventh at which time article twelve on the increase the number selection from three to five would go town meeting i know that tom you i don't know if you've been involved the discussion of the mark and i've been living with this for a while yet we have a special town meeting article on the opt out and then there are a series of amendments that have been filed with that by precinct one  what i want to bring up is that the reason that it's a special town meeting is because we missed the filing deadline for regular citizens petition and the reason we missed the filing deadline was that was march citizens got together and decided that if this was going to go on the warrant that the way that it was going to go on the warrant was through a special town meeting now in terms of the article there may be a little bit of confusion because the article itself is to opt out of adult use or recreational marijuana but within the article is the statement that this article must be approved by the voters of the town so what we are proposing is we're proposing the article with the intent that if the articles passed it will go to a town wide vote and that the town wide vote will determine whether we opt out or not  go to a town my boat and so to be clear it will come before a town meeting so i mean votes no on it it's done it's i mean vote yes on it then it goes to a town white vote and the town votes it up or down terms of getting making sure that the article passed by town meeting is exactly the same word for word as the article that's going to go before the voters so if o  so articles that are passed by town meeting we do have a provision in our of the acts of nine hundred twenty six that that was created that created the i think we representative town meeting ak yeah it's been amended in much of times but one of the provisions in there is a remnant of when the town switched from an open town meeting to a representative tell me that says that the voters of the town still have the right to serve oversee a town meeting to see if they are in agreement and if they're either in agreement or not in agreement they have the right to call a referendum vote so a voter town meeting happens and as the moderator passes it if it if it does pass then i automatically certify a language that was voted exactly at and during that period time that seven days if someone or a group of people collect at least five hundred signatures of registered voters of belmont to present to the town and i have to certify each one of those and give it to you than presumably this will be a one night town meeting a special town meeting on the second if it gets continued then if it's after the close of bat town meeting but outside of that if it if it if it if it's federal action it i'm sorry and no says another seven days someone else could could take that aren't registered voters need to be presented to the town for it within the seven days of fable actions a week from wednesday right seven business days seven whatever it is yes seven business days yes days in which to set a meeting to call the election and then you have to call the election and so sign the warrant etc the minimum would be thirty five days from when you call it was in so you know when you do the ballot questions you  footnotes about the five hundred registered voters but then he talks about a discrepancy between chapter ninety four g in the represented time yet so i'm not getting a clear answer yet so i have a question with that so i think what that what i interpret that to mean is that the selectmen ultimately called the election letters you know that you decide to call the election or you're compelled to call it an action the select and yes side when that election will occur is that is considering a vote on this if we were going to move forward with the go well yeah but in terms of school and marijuana at the same time you know that statement is overdue that it was going to be like what nineteen we approach we're taking is that the november two thousand and sixteen vote called for two things called for state legalization criminalization of italy and i want it and it called for the opportunity for every town and city in the city of massachusetts to choose whether or not they wanted retail establishments or any marijuana just establishment in their town and so regardless of the four yes town or no town all towns have the option it's just that our process is the two different votes where we are ready did step one and voted on that and made it legal statewide and now we're talking about step two which is making it legal in belmont and so what i would encourage complicated we have a point of view well i mean well we certainly agree that to abstain from it i think that our our input would be helpful to tommy and i i'm curious to hear what tom meeting says to be honest because i'm certainly right where you know on this based upon not going to sit here my nose of it's like ninety nine percent of tommy wants to go one way i'm not going to be the stick in the mud the goes the other but you know i think it's him and i think that's going to happen and be can be extremely close probably a town meeting and i'd like to see how how that debate goes now everything of all  hear i guess from you and for behalf of the proponents is why why should we opt out why should we opt out so there are three things so the first reason we should opt out is because question number four very specifically states that legalization and decriminalization of marijuana is step one and within that same language there is the opt out  clause i will tell you even though the legalization of marijuana is in the first paragraph of the ballot question if you go down the page to the third paragraph it talks about this local option two for every town and city to choose and what will be presenting is that in the when you get your voters guy always has argument in favor an argument again and the argument in favor part of the argument in favor says basically please vote yes for this because your local town or city has the option of a town wide vote later on me member because this question hasn't been put to the voters before i don't know what my constituents think and so i would like  so one is a member i want to know what my constituents think and the third is that in talking to many constituents including the signatures we found out that there's a wide range of people for a wide range of reasons that think that this should go to a vote and a group of those people are people that voted yes on the ballot question number four but would vote no on having it in belmont not necessarily  not in my backyard question but reasons why we won we won it in belmont the so one of the reasons so the reasons not to have an environment and at that point you get into pros and cons of marijuana establishments in general special time eating oracle must have some kind of reason as to why they don't want to i mean it's going to be in the towns around us so you know it's sort of void you know it's like when we were dry town we didn't keep your alcohol out of belmont so how it was clearly not going to have no marijuana in belmont whether we have in this town which we're not my whole point has been if you're going to get all the extra analogies negative or otherwise you might as well these tax and regulate it was going to be here anyway right and so that's that's and i'm just being realistic right and that's what i heard from you guys at the previous force like meetings and i would just say there's a wide range of opinions about it in terms of access in terms of it and in terms of you know younger kids are going to see older kids with it same parents are concerned about this and that's why it should go to the voters for a vote as opposed to having town meeting put a dead end to this i think it's just fine if we let the opt out process play out and  i also know that you have lots of the selections meetings yeah so we very few for a town meeting and perhaps the one day after you know if this were to pass then the monday after  the wednesday meeting we could talk to you about it passed it passed by this percentage would you like to call the election or would you like as an attorney if the if the special time meeting plays out like that i appreciate that and i think that's probably the to me i was i think we have you know i'm not going to someone who has a town meeting like i said i think one thing i get concerned about is i keep hearing these arguments which is everyone's blaming the other for being anti democratic so i feel a little like well we already voted on it we shouldn't voted on again we voted up we didn't vote on exactly this and it's like i kind of putting those arguments aside as i kind of i find they wash each other out a little bit i'm kind of giving in my mind to the meat of the matter which is you know do we want to ban marijuana stablish once in belmont or not because that's really what you're talking about here  here now if you walk by open windows in the summertime i can tell you it's here now so it's going to be here even more so you know once the dispensary start opening and surrounding communities because certainly will be want to cambridge and you know i guess i'm not saying i like it i'm just saying that's the way it is and so we just need to be i think smart about how we approach it and i'm certainly willing to listen to tom really i'm not i'm not hardened steadfast in a position on it but that's where i'm leaving now before you lose a lot of time you have to source your woman the more things i want to meeting to decide whether to go to the ballot and one thing i will add is that when we went to the buy a lot of review committee we had a whole list opt out of cultivators processing retail had a whole list and what the buy  committee said is you can't have the whole list because that list is growing so rather than opt out of type a b c and d we're going to simplify this and just say opt out of everything that this that in massachusetts general law section and if we do something where we opt out of only one type or we opt out of all but one or however we do it then that puts is in position where we might have to go through this process twice where we might have to go to town meeting to get a vote and we might have to go back to the builders to get a vote anytime we want to change this regulation on marijuana and that's why we want to opt out completely now or give the voters that option to opt out completely now rather than something piecemeal because it's piecemeal then we manned up with another special town meeting which says now we want processing our now we want everything but processing and that requires a town meeting followed by a town white vote so we want to avoid multiple town light votes that's why we think that the opt out process should just let's just let it play out and see what the voters think and if the voters saying no to the opt out then we're on the same path in terms of we're going to go the planning board they're going to make their recommendations for where to put it and then that inspects to meet w view committee you gave a list of all of the items the type the four types that were included in the law and the regulations at that time and so your desire was to automatically opt out of everything but you articulated the four and the amendments go into the more detail types so you're going to have to have that debate based on the amendments that are put for the auto vote all that's right voted yes to decriminalize but not in my backyard that's how i characterize it take a two minute recess i think and then we'll have a may come up and we'll talk about because we have a hard stop in theory only three of these there are identical with another set that has a sunset clause because this is a brand new industry for the state we have no idea what might happen we don't know we definitely do not know and so i take kind of the opposite tack where instead of a very reactionary no ban everything right now we need to wait and see so we can start you know even if we go for one of these amendments and we put a sunset clause in and three years december thirtieth two thousand and twenty one we can revisit it and say you know maybe there's new establishments that are defined by the state that we want to opt out of or maybe there's you know something that we want to opt back and i just would like to make it less restriction area for us in general because this is such a brand new industry for the state first two thousand twenty one number three is to opt out of marijuana cultivators only so that's just the facility is the cult and they are called a cultivator is essentially a commercial wholesaler for what it is so they can sell to to other establishments they can sell to retailers they can sell to the growing processors they are growing at but they are not selling it direct to consumer and number four is exactly the same  a testing facility is an end to independent lab that tests anything coming from the cultivators or the manufacturers so they can't sell to retail they can have any other you know i believe the three percent host agreement would cover that and that's also with or without the twenty twenty one yes exactly yes some of these amendments if adopted would be would conflict with one another were they not what happens in that case if they were all adopted wife and some kids i've actually filed in the past and amendments which were mutually exclusive with the intention of one passed i would dismiss the other exactly because you never know you have to give these deadlines by which you have to file these things and you don't know in advance what's go now ninety four chap measure washed up in ninety four g section one doesn't include social use i think right so the key the state is they delayed action on social consumption and home delivery but home delivery is only from a cultivator are manufactured to a consumer so cutting out the resale middleman a retailer is going to be able to do home delivery my understanding is no matter what so that means if we have to be the case for seriously yes if we are going to do that right now to home delivery anybody can do home delivery retailers that we shouldn't buy what they could home deliver tracked right now a medical establishment can home deliver to anywhere in the state and that means if somebody opens up in cambridge they can home deliver to bell that we cannot stop so i know that you know that if we have a retail you could do an opt out for all but the retail with the sun twenty twenty one and then just see what happens and it would completely right and wonder whether it would encompass the determination of future uses if you referenced the statute me right now i think but because those are fairly straightforward but you know this would again be another question i think for a town council but my understanding of the way the host community agreement works is of let's say we adopt retail only and retail is actually i mean it's interesting this whole discussion that we're having fascinating national you know fascinating but it tells why we need more tory about but in my opinion if you're part of the issue from know control commission this is really yes records up in my opinion we could handle almost all of this through zoning because we will regulate the kind of establishment that belmont will have what they'll be able to do and where they will be and we can place them in a time place and manner and we can restrict other ones and then we will have a public process on this whole thing well have a public process on this whole thing and then we'll go to town meeting and then we have to have a two thirds vote of town meeting because the general bylaw to adopt this so this it would be accomplished in that way but i thought talking out a little this previously that we couldn't use zoning as a mechanism to kind of backdoor opt out well it's not enough that when you know when we do if you effectively created zoning that was so tight or so restrictive you could effectively prevent any no but that's not what to since we're meeting at five o'clock tonight at the high school to have town council come check this and i don't know if you guys could all come i am unable to ari really meaning it's fun so and we can vote on the amendments and the special time leaders and night if we have time granted this isn't coming up tonight at ten at town meeting so we are meeting also at five o'clock on wednesday before a town meeting at the high school so it gives us two more bites at the apple to vote on these on the opt out in the amendments but you can vote on  it's the five i am too we have stuff going on tonight but i think we should talk about three to five rather do three to five on camera for play but we're not going to be able to do that here and therefore i think we have to think about what is the number needed to do the job when to do under our current bylaws and under our current procedures and in the interviews  three i think it's overwhelming people who are doing the job can do the job with a group of three that's not to say that idea five is not a great idea if there were other conditions applying and i think that's what we found in these other towns i guess having been one of the nine proponents of this the change out of the thirteen members of the committee i'm speaking  not from a particular position of you know chair or anything like that but there are a lot of advantages to having more selectman and we talked about a lot  of issues that were brought up by the current and former selectman and also we talk to people across another thirteen towns that are very similar development in budget and property tax dependence on residential property administrator is and town managers the town the one town that's made the change recently but it's already in places hanover and i had the chance to talk to two of the  selectmen it had ever changes been very beneficial there is opened up the membership of the board in terms of diversity in different dimensions and and has sort of opened the board to the community more one of the things we heard from a number of towns is that with five selectman they can be liaisons to committees and actually not go to all the meetings of course but really connect with the committees and and give the committees more input into deliberations and more have citizens will have more access also that and the sort of stability of governance not having the board possibly swing with one election know in its politics which we have experienced at times so the thing i would say and i'm i think ralph would certainly agree and you're talking to the two political scientists is that our  manager form of government and town meeting did not accept that but i think we would all like to find a way to revisit that in the as a continuing effort not necessarily the same committee i suppose  but anyway what's hard is to know what to do now i think i was very much on the cusp on all of this i would have gone with five if i could be assured that they were going to have a town manager form of government because then you could really change nature of what selectman do at that point the selectmen could go out meet with committees get more community input do all those sorts of things but if you're talking about five just so five can run the town at the expense of the town the ministr or shot manager then i think you're going in the wrong direction exactly the direction that all these other towns around us have never gone they've all gone for the town manager so yes the proponents of the increase on the committee were definitely in favor of the five member board acting as a policy board this five hands on managers dividing up the departments or anything like that the town administrators the key person affair which just went through this process of going from three to five and then back to three again and of course they have the essence in there by law of what a town manager government is the board you are the policy making the word you promulgated policy there's also second clause that says and the board shall not interfere with the day to day activities of operating the town that's the job of the town  manager as just central right there in the middle of it and with that they look at it and they said well we used to need five because we were managing a town why do we need five and we're no longer doing that we're setting  and i mean the you know we abstain from the actual article last year which was to set up this committee on the go a lot of it was two weeks we wouldn't color anything that in did either and who would be on it or what they would take on or how they would do it granted obviously you asked all former and sitting selecting for their opinion or for their experiences and we provided it but we didn't impose ourselves on that i don't feel the same obligation to this article i think i actually have an obligation to weigh in on this one because this is a fundamental change to be honest with all the stuff in town meeting o this year i think this is the most important thing on the on the entire warrant because this is a fundamental sea change thing and how this town operates we have to be in my mind extremely careful because if you mess this up you can mess all a lot of things up i go back to the same question that i had with the elected planning board last year which is what it is i'm looking to see what is the problem you're trying to fix and does this address the problem at the time i understand people had issues with with planning board on a specific thing and i hate to see someone might just one well my point for you go to is that we have amended earlier this year we did adopt a board of selectmen operational rules to address some issues which had come up in the past which was so let me not being able to put items on the agenda we did create a rule where anyone selectman can put an item on the agenda so that people don't get frozen out we also created the rule about succession to chairmanship and vice chairman ship to avoid politicization of that sort of things we've i think taken some fundamental steps to address some issues which the committee brought up which was sort of instrumental in the thinking of some of these rules so i thank you for that work i'm not sure that i think that adding two more people to the table makes things better i think it might actually make things we have trouble getting through our agenda in the timeframe it is it is with of selectmen more aligned with those like i said of the town i think it's a good thing to be honest with you so that you had for those comments and it's really appreciate the work of you know the committee that studied this matter and i respect you to your point of view and rough course as well when i was interviewed for it i said the one thing that that has concerned me is the diversity of this board you know that it's a point in terms of increasing the representation diversity of viewpoints you know how many more you know three white guys that we need on the board of selectmen right so you know we have yet again he was the last woman to serve and so it's not even people of color i mean so i think that's an issue that you know hopefully in the future will be addressed by folks deciding to run i were really wasn't moved by any other the other point in terms of you know why you should increase the size of the board  i think it works fine if it's a policy board if you're looking to run the town day to day oversee the schools which is not our role then you probably need five judy i think we do lays with the committees yeah we prioritize in terms of which are important which are not important and really we need all the time so i think if you have a board that's active and looking to make a difference and sitting in the seats i love to see diversity and i think that that's critical i mean i think we create some diversity in our town administrative office which is great  i mean that was the one reason i would say you know maybe five would allow for that i don't know about that i think it's also important to have contested elections as difficult it is to run in the contested election ever run to it brings the best out in candidates and you get to talk about the issues it surfaces in your mind we use the end on things and you have a debate with the community and i think having more contested elections is important for the democratic process and belmont and i'm concerned that going to five we would have that the other thing i'd like to say and i'll say th a town meeting back in twenty liberal if you were on the board with me we had a divisional looking services financial management review our own i know you recall that i see and hear here is their primary recommendation because i feel as though this is only half maybe a third of the issues that we need to address because we've talked about how we govern ourselves we had a debate in the plenary board we have the ongoing debate at this table about how the white board should be structured the governance there and now we have this issue and of course the town administrator in the division local services said our premier recommendation in this entire report which is available i think it's online is that the town form a blue ribbon study committee in charge it would explore in the merits of adopting a child in town  committee or bloops you know you could have a you know a more formal one or you could have a try to committee that's created through a town meeting article five to seven members appointed by the time moderator the selectmen or combination of both so if we want to understand and think about how we govern ourselves what i think is an important topic why we just go to three to five should we look at it more broadly table this issue and they can about does a five member board make sense are we govern or selves in the most effective way look like what is the town mishra manager position look like should we have an elected any board you have elected treasurer i mean i think these are all issues that have come up in the past i think we need to look just look at this in a more in a broader way rather than just kind of knee jerk i all of the lists all things on one side that is the one that is probably most compelling and i hope that we can do more to create create a personally i do agree that as i have really got into this over the last supposed couple of months my biggest concern is that i don't think we looked at the issue holistically a little bit to your point right this was sort of one particular question of three versus five without considering the broader question of town manager tell you mr policy board what's the role and the  kneejerk reaction to think that adding a couple more selectman will sort of address all of these other issues without creating other unintended consequences seems like one that i would hope we would dive into more completely before me making a decision on this so while i do see both sides of it i do struggle with this issue and would certainly consider three or four three to five in the future as part of a broader change to kind of how we govern the town i think at this point i and i'm not in favor of get in trouble for some sort of unintended serial communicating to be honest there goes the five i'm not talking to the five i'm being coming completely serious i think it's inappropriate the only reason i would talk to somebody would be if i want to say i will make this motion a few second and you make your motion and i'll second which i think i totally something that should happen here and but the tell you if you go to five in two people can talk that's exactly what the conversation is going to be i'm not going to happen but there are people who will have that i think that's an appropriate trust our school but another so our school committee and others i mean i don't know i really are questioning how we govern ourselves today then let's look at it more formally and i appreciate the fact that it was a narrow scope for the committee that you were all served on and you did good work i think there's a broader range of brush that there's a broader perspective here in this is