good morning belmont this is ellen o'brien kirsch mn and the town clerk of belmont in the senior election official i'm doing this little piece today with belmont media to let you know how accessible your local elections are and when they are coming up and if you are interested in running for office how you can do that if you've ever considered and if you have not i'd love to give you an idea put that into your head and can save you consider becoming a town meeting member or running for elected office  will be held on tuesday april rd belmont has eight voting precincts and they can be found by going to the town clerk's website they are designed to fight in belmont into sort of a pi he said there are eight precincts it's important to show up to the correct precinct otherwise you'll be turned away you'll have to go to a different place so we always like that people go to their st spot in the town courts website is achievable through the town clerk pages at w w w dot belmont  a dot gov select apartments and then just used the town clerk and there's a lot of election information there much of which are we talking about today and if you just want to firm up the data and some facts it's a great place to go it talks a little bit about our form of government as well as elections so for belmont this year there will be town wide offices as well as town meeting member offices our form of government that we have in belmont is using a board of selectmen which in belmont at this time is three members as well as a bunch of independently elected boards commissions and committees there are also town meeting members which is that representative form of government we have thirty six dollars members from each one of the eight voting precincts so each one having terms of three years means that we elect twelve members per year in an unusual situation perhaps one of the county members has moved out of town or is deceased we actually might have  partial terms of ailill two for someone who might be just interested in testing the waters and putting their foot in just a little bit for one or two years we do have a few of those and i'll be talking about those later but typically the term of office for a town meeting member is three years for almost all of our elected boards and with one exception it is three years as well that one exception is for belmont housing authority which is for five years and lastly we do have single elected officials who come up every once in a while and this year is the only elected official whose term is up is for the moderator and that is a one year term in belmont right now we have those partial terms i was talking about we have town meeting members for twelve members in each of the eight voting precincts we also have twenty two year terms in precinct five which is adjacent to cushing square and we have eleven year term which is available just recently came available by the resignation of a long time town meeting member for precinct two as a tell me member people are often interested in what it actually takes and what kind of commitment that is before they leap in they want to know so typically a town meeting member expected to attend the eight evenings of town meeting that we have schedule two out the year there are six in the spring starting this year in april th and continuing for for two weeks on monday and wednesday then we take a break and we resume again the st week of june the reason that we do that is that we have two types of activities that have been a town meeting to meeting passes all of our local zoning bylaws all of our general bylaws as well as our budgetary items and issues proclamations for great achievements or things of note we separate those so that the people who are the wizards of finance have a little bit of extra time to figure out what exactly our budget items should be and the income as well as the expenses of the town and our capital investments so those people are working really hard and they won't have all their work done until late may and therefore the budget items will be taken up in june the early parts are as i said general bylaws zoning bylaws they tell us what we can do with our property in town what we can do with our dogs and cats whether we have to license our dogs and cats what are neighbors are allowed to do whether how many yard sales they have a year so these are things that really do affect our neighborhoods and our kind of quality of life that make belmont belmont so how much experience do you need to have you need to be a lawyer or have some kind of high level education in order to be a tell me member absolutely not you need to know that you'll be able to represent your neighbors and listen to their interests should they reach out to you or contact them if you really feel like you need to have their opinion on a particular topic perhaps a zoning change or changing uses on a particular property or an area of town you may want to make sure that you've talked to taxpayers renters people in your neighborhood to make sure that you're representing their interests as well you're educated by the process of town meeting in a couple of different ways there are several theories about how you can approach town meeting as a st time town meeting member and as a longtime town meeting member some people choose to go to every meeting they read every document that is published and every document that is distributed and they are completely informed and sometimes they've made up their minds on the question before they actually show up to town meeting there are other people who say i'm just going to read it in general and then i'll expect to be completely educated when i get to town meeting by those people who are very informed and giving presentations as well as by my neighbors who have very informed questions have done that extra level of study that i know that i will not be able to do however i really feel like i have the interests of my neighborhood at heart and then they're sort of a combination person a little bit of a hybrid the person who reads the documents that we send tries to pay attention to their neighbors talks to people talks to fellow town new members and keeps their mind open to make their decision once they get to town meeting after they are educated so if you fit into any of those categories field that you can actually represent belmont as a town meeting member we do need two hundred and eighty eight dollars minimum that's the thirty six dollars times the eight precincts that's quite a few people there are a lot of people out there who are happy to mentor or tutor the league of women voters always runs a little bit of a program to to teach you how to become a good town new member there are some videos that are out there as well and we also have a town meeting member handbook in the town clerk's office that had been developed with the moderator in the town cork's office and has been updated to to stay current important things about nominations to be nominated for a town wide office a person comes to the town court's office and signs nomination papers saying that if they are nominated they will accept the nomination in order to be nominated you must have the signatures that are certified by the town courts office of at least fifty registered voters of the town of belmont that's very important registered voters in massachusetts are only people who are eighteen years old age and a citizen of the united states people who are just residents of the town but are not enjoying u s citizenship do not have the right to vote in massachusetts and therefore not in local elections either so as a town meeting member you represent those people but those people are not eligible to be nominated to become town meeting members or a county member there actually are two ways to do that if you are currently a town meeting member you have a privilege that is afforded you by mass general laws that says that if you respond to a letter that has been sent to you by the town clerk and say that you would like to be considered a candidate for re election and you submit that to me the town clerk's office by january rd at four pm then you can automatically be considered a candidate for reelection without having to go around and collect signatures of other people in town however if you miss that days then you must collect signatures on nomination papers and you were treated the same as everyone else you lose that privilege for everyone else the deadline to submit town nomination papers for this election is on february th at five pm to be elected the nd method is if you are a new town meeting member a person who is seeking election for the st time as a town meeting member you must collect nomination papers from the town clerk's office again signing and saying you will accept the nomination collect the signatures of at least twenty five registered voter of the town of belmont those people must also in this particular case reside and be registered to vote in your precinct that cannot be emphasized enough so if you are a resident and voter in precinct one your twe nty five signatures must be from your neighbors who also reside in precinct one and do be very careful on those borderlines the streets that split precincts such as long avenue part of long avenue is in precinct one and part of long avenue is in precinct six so it's a good idea to just take take the maps with you that we would be happy to give you at the town clerk's office how do you find out about what's allowed what's not allowed can i have raised a lot of money can i put signs all over everybody's lawns can i start distributing information the answer is yes to all of those things belmont does not have any kind of law that restricts these temporary electoral signs they are expected to come down once the election is over so you are welcome to ask your friends neighbors or people who are in high traffic areas if they will host one of your election signs you are responsible again for removing them after if you are trying to send out  literature or you want people to wear buttons all of those kinds of spending items for town wide office are governed by the campaign finance laws of the state if you are going to raise any kind of money and spend money you must create a campaign committee campaign committees can be a little bit daunting for people just means that your treasurer is going to be filing certain forms with the town clerk's office on a pre determined schedule and that reveals to everyone who wants to look at it how you have spent the money you have collected and who has sponsored you by their financial contributions if you are a member or an employee of a town or the state you actually are required to have a campaign committee even if you're not going to be accepting any kind of money because there could be some kind of ethical question so to eliminate all of that the state has a campaign finance and they as well as our offices very happy to answer any questions that you might have about that so let's hope that it's a really exciting campaign season we'd love to see people out there holding signs and chanting and raising money or trying to convince people to vote for their friends their neighbors candidates maybe that they have never you know sponsored before but really feel like they are very competent and should have a stake in how belmont is govern and if that's the case then we will hope that we have a great season and on april rd we will have a new slate of officers or a mix of old officers and new officers who are seeking your election so remember april  tuesday that's election day february th is the last day to be nominated and submit your nomination papers at five o'clock to the town clerk's office and january rd if you are returning to meeting member who'd like to be considered for re election the town courts offices open every day monday through friday from eight am to four pm we answer phone calls by all day we come welcome visitors come in anytime no appointments are necessary and there's a tremendous amount of information that you can sort of noodle about if you want to just do it secretly on the town clerk's website again w w w dot belmont hyphen dot gov search for town departments and click on the town clerk particularly on running for elected office there are some hints in there that can and can really help you out thanks for joining me today and i hope to see you again