hello everyone thanks for tuning in to belmont belmont's newest talk show i'm your host multimedia journalist joanna juillet for the belmont citizen herald and wicked local belmont i hope you enjoyed the opening of our show as much as i enjoyed making it to be honest with you i really do feel like a bee sometimes with my job buzzing around belmont looking for news today's latest buzz that we're going to talk about is town meeting which is coming up a special town meeting which starts november th and most likely will continue to november th here to talk with us about that is our town moderator mike widmer mike has lived in belmont for forty three years he his three children in belmont he's served as town meeting member since one thousand nine hundred and eighty one he served on the warrick committee for fifteen years prior to becoming a town moderator and he's been our town moderator for ten be so that's why i wanted to have you on the show but before we get into the nitty gritty of this tell me i thought i'd ask you why did you want to become moderator and what do you like about being tell moderator well i've been active  in belmont government and politics since shortly after my wife and i moved here and i've been on the warrant committee for as you mentioned for fifteen years it was time to step down but i wanted to stay involved and i've always thought in the back of my mind that i'd like to be down moderator i have great respect for town meeting it can sometimes be a bit on really but it's our legislative body so i'd given it some thought and when i thought it was ready to step down from the word committee i ran for moderator and did not have any opposition who opposition and every year you had no up position right every year yes some towns you have a three year term but belmont it's one year one year a year you have the running right and but i've enjoyed it a lot and as i've said i have great respect for town meeting as the town's legislative body and of course the tradition goes way back to the beginning of  ten year perspective i mean would you say over the past decade things have changed do you feel like year to year things things change and where we are now i mean what do you think of where we are now compared to where we were ten years ago while there always a surprises from year to year but i think as a general matter we have broader participation among town meeting members used to be more limited to a smaller group i think it's broader now and people and i've tried to encourage this people seem to be sticking more directly and focused to the item we're discussing and to keep their cool comments within five minutes or two or three minutes right that's important it is important because you can say pretty much what you want i think in most cases unless it's a major presentation in five minutes so i think  council we go through a planning process because it's very important that we're organized and the presentations are focused so forth so we've had one major meeting in which all of the about ten or twelve of us are the are there about them you know are they written appropriately what's the right sequence of the articles yes who's going to be in touch with the proponents and the citizens petition for example and how long a presentation for you think will be the most contentious most heavily debated article for this special town meeting i think there are two but i think then the most likely is the marijuana based  discussions we had a town meeting in the spring ok a very emotional issue yes built back in the spring the discussion was whether or not belmont would opt out completely from even allowing retail marijuana that article was amended and changed to allow up to two retail stores right and then that passed and then we had a vote and we had the vote the vote of the townsfolk and they clearly approved there were two options one road right that's the question that's the question that town meeting has to either approve or disapprove and so it's just it's really limited to the zoning issue yes we've already spoken with the town people have spoken in favor of l there will be no limits of the in any part of the hill anywhere and there wouldn't be a special permit process so why do you think this is going to be contentious and heavily debated what do you think it is about it in truth surprises me a little i was surprised in the spring at how emotional it was because we're talking about the you know whether we belmont have establishment or not but of course we're going to have been cambridge and watertown in arlington so it's going to be all around us and right anyway but clearly there were very strong feelings and so i presume those strong feelings then we'll continue to look to this special town meeting though i don't think it's going to be as controversial because there aren't very many places in belmont that i think people would support having marijuana establishment right and so there are not a lot of options so it's not as if there's going to be strong support for putting it in some residential area and yes i think that there are however a lot of town meeting members who wanted it also zoned for the area where the loading dock is yes right and street area so i think that that could also be why they'll be a lot of maybe opposition there might even be between now that you and i are talking be like yes stay on top of it exactly and one of my jobs is to try to keep the discussion within the scope of the article now somebody says a i think it should be two so we should vote down this one come back in the spring i would allow something like that but i wouldn't allow a full discussion of the business area over by the by the high school and the other and the loading dock while i was at belmont farmer market recently yes and i actually asked some random belmont residence what they thought about the south pleasant street zoning for retail marijuana and where going to roll shortly to to show you what these people had to say roll it jeff while i have you can i also ask you about zoning for marijuana and what you think about south pleasant street as the zone for two retail stores  you know i think that the zoning board did their best to hide it away where no one will ever see it and you know maybe that's ok if you want to want to buy recreational marijuana going as pleasant street isn't such a big deal you can't have it too far away and belmont i mean bob wants not that big you know weeds legal you know it's people are going to get it wherever whether we have the stores here or not it pleasant street i don't have any problem with that what about if it was in the area of the loading dock near the high school well i don't think that would be a problem and you know down there either once again you know you're talking about right now we have stores where you can buy liquor we have stores where you can buy cigarettes all of those are restricted in a job out who can buy we somehow survived while marijuana dispensary would follow the same rules it's really different than any of the other things that we have things that are for adults and we managed to do deal with i think i'm happy that it will be a little further away from the schools i think i'm not sure the kids would have had much access to it anyway but i think for their way just makes it that much less likely i think that belmont needs to be more friendly to local businesses and i think that when we say no to every different type of local business that might be slightly different from what we've had in the past we give up a lot of opportunity for commercial tax base and we end up with a very high burden of residential property taxes because then these types of stores open just over the line where we don't have any control and we don't get any benefit but the same product is still going to be there so i would say my personal view as a town meeting member that's my general feeling the superintendent did say that he thought that the loading dock area was too close to the high school and he was not he did not approve of that location so where do you stand on that so again this would be me personally the school committee has not taken this up for discussion or taken a vote on this i'm not sure because of the time mean of how the planning board already decided that the south pleasant street was the only location so i don't think in that case there's really a reason for the school committee to take a vote on it so again i would just defer back to my other comments that i think in general has fallen in the past too far on the side of say no st without giving it opportunities to lots of different kinds of businesses i do think with the marijuana businesses in particular there's very very strict rules about how those businesses need to operate and if we look at a business like damnation alley distillery in that same loading dock approximate location i think that that is a total value add to belmont and having that store that sells alcohol right near the high school has not been any kind of an issue ok well mike as you can say people have differing views on this and it will be interesting to see what happens at a town meeting but like you said you have to keep everybody on track we're just talking about this particular article and it's just a question of whether or not someone will attempt to amend it before and if they do it's going to well do they amend it in a way that's within the scope of the original article which i'll have to determine so yes yeah i mean one of the things i've tried to do in all areas over these ten years is to have these discussions be focused and not totally open ended because issues are controversial enough without  issues that are only barely relevant now it's just a question of will it get defeated will it pass if it gets defeated they may have to be another special town meeting otherwise marijuana will be allowed to marijuana stores will be allowed to open anywhere that there's a business zone and with no special permit process and i i would think that town meeting wouldn't do that to belmont i think they'd be concerned about that on the other hand there is a citizen petition there is another six month moratorium yes so if down meeting voted down this article for one retail establishments and they might want to vote for the moratorium ok that would that would allow to be studied for another six months because currently the moratorium still december st are ready and if they extend it to june th yes then there's six more months where no one would be allowed to open a retail or now the other nail biter which you know i love to hear what you have to say about is this debt exclusion nov th is the day that the town will decide whether or not to approve a debt exclusion for a new grade seven dollars to twelve dollars high school two hundred and ninety five million dollars and then if it does get approved november th it will go to a special town meeting a special town meeting that has to approve it correct and you seem to think that th the voters approve it then town meeting needs to approve it by two thirds vote historically town meeting has gone along with the vote of the people so for example i think the most recent one was the swimming pool and that was approved by the voters and then town meeting followed up and approved this however of course is a much larger expenditure that's for sure in the end i think town meeting would likely  quite likely go the way of the voters if the voters approve it but they're going to want to understand the finances ok which is appropriate so i think there will be there be a major report from the now my school building committee and i expect some discussion following up in the yeah and i would think the town meeting would likely follow the will of the voters oh well it's tough to see about that too and also the south pleasant street overlay district to make south pleasant street also have a local business one district over it like right now it's local business too which is not allowing things like assisted living facilities and well that's one of the main purposes of having this is intriguing just some options for writing yours to stay in belmont but move out of their homes  significant change i mean any time there's significant changes town meeting tends to debate them and enquire and understand what they're voting on which is what they should do i find it like a now two articles related to the same street and ok and we also have an article for to approve community preservation funding four hundred thousand dollars for the design of the alexander underpass with us from what i understand is a long time coming forty years the town has been talking about this underpass and it's a it's basically a pedestrian tunnel that will be built under the m b t a railroad track yes currently many students cross over to get to school to high school where they have a way to get to school right and it's dangerous it is and the belmont's been talking about this as you say for forty years you know we have a pattern in belmont we just we study things for a long time or debate them not everything understanding is could stand alone in other words having the underpass without a community which a lot of people say will really benefit the high school whether or not a new high school gets built or not it's going to run on that and hopefully reduce senator william brownsburg or has played a big role in making this happen as well as state rep david roger yes because from what i understand we are just responsible for paying for the design but the state has committed to pay for the actual construction and that's very important and so sent our brownsburg representative rogers deserve credit for pushing this issue and getting these kinds of funds i know it's not easy so that's going to it's very important that they've accomplished that do you think they'll be a lot of discussion on that article are going to be surprised and and i presume the neighbors will want to know more about it which is appropriate i mean if it's built in your neighbor that's not going to want to understand the back and so i expect the town meeting member from precinct date in particular will ask questions i don't know if they will be opposition to this in the end or it's amazing all the projects that have been done with the community preservation funds that you actually benefited the town nice to see that the other article is this tax deferral which is basically if a senior citizen qualifies they can defer paying their property taxes right yes and then currently they pay eight percent interest for that property tax and then when your house is sold it's either their responsibility or their heirs responsibility to pay back that interest exactly so you have the taxes in the interim so this article would actually reduce that interest from eight percent to four five percent because clearly the interest rates and the eight percent presumably was put in place when interest rates were much eight percent now we know interest rates are very you know two percent three percent there in that range so this is a little bit higher but clearly trying to help  a lot more today than when they moved in our property taxes will keep going up property the property taxes keep going up it was terrible but not as fast as the values so this is a program in which i think it makes a lot of especially if the high school debt exclusion passes oh yeah well clearly put and burden on some well and lots of people but certainly some seniors and this is a program that could help them stay in belmont so so i think  it's common sense and i think so that we offer this kind of program so i think people will respond positively to that i think i think we covered the major articles and i want to just ask you what do you think will be most challenging with this town meeting for you as town moderator in your role well what's often the most challenging is when people get emotional around an issue or not and sometimes almost always as a some surprise a town meeting somebody i hadn't expected so i'm always saying to myself expect the unexpected expect me on it and usually that is good advice to myself but as we've discussed the emotion surrounding the marijuana question judging by what happened in annual down meeting last spring is where i think is going to be the most emotion where you actually were a town meeting member when the town went from dry to allowing i also what do you remember about that it was very emotional it was and yeah and it's always interesting what i mean we have sometimes it's complicated issues and they don't get too much debate and people may know the stand and then you get something that is real life to people and they care about it and the notion of should belmont stay a dry town or should we very carefully introduce alcohol sales and in restaurants and in the end that prevailed but it was an emotional discussion and people are going one side we should just adapt to the real world the modern world and the other these things in your opinion do you feel that there's there's a lot of change that's happening rapidly in belmont all of a sudden yesil that you go and you have a three year perspective as a resident of the town so i think i only have a nine year process yeah i do family the development pressures is one thing clearly not only in belmont but it sure is here because where schools and location where we're in a very desirable place so all the issues around that the enrollment surge it's putting enormous pressure on a school and that's where the i school middle school i mean the seven dollars to twelve dollars project comes in because we're dealing with the enrollment squeeze are in our schools and in the elementary so there are and then there's change i mean lots of new people moving in and different and people buying and the traffic and the traffic guess in recent years in these recent years belmont has felt in my time almost half a century that this is more pressure and more issues than any single time that i've lived here can i do hope that you know with the taxes going up the decks you know if the debt explosion passes that it doesn't drive people away that the town can continue to do what they're doing to keep people in the town we are running out of time so i'm going to thank you for coming on the show mike i really look forward to seeing you november there you seen me thank you you're welcome i want to thank everyone for tuning in to belmont the latest buzz in belmont is definitely marijuana and we'll see what we have to talk about next time if you have a buzz that you'd like to bring up email me belmont with your local dot com i want to thank belmont media