group and there are many want articles some of which i'm sure will generate a lot of questions so matt i just ask you to go to the next slide right away i'd like to stay to the format that i announced last time around which is each person is welcome to ask questions within the span of two minutes you can have two questions within those two minutes you don't have to use your whole time and after your to him questions are done please go to the back of the line of other people arguments and given the likely time constraints i will not be shy about speaking out if you're not getting to your question properly go to the next slide and given the fact we're going to stop at nine o'clock sharp if we are not moving along quickly i'm going to have to declare an end to questions and pick pick pick sorry particular article then move on to the next and then  have time at the end we can always return to a previous article so with that there's no particular magic to this i've decided to march through the warren articles in in the order that they appear on the warrant that may not be in the order of most interest but just keep things organized i think we should do the warrant is is rather dense i for paired very summary slides which i think captures the essence of the article and if you want more detail of course you should go to the the arctic the if the original that's been distributed by the so be go to the next slide first ward article is salaries for elected ok we can let's move on we'll come back to that of there's a leader article twelve is enterprise funds and the prize funds are basically funds that are funded by water and sewer rates to keep the water system in the sewer system operating these are fairly routine articles the expenditure is i think you're in line with prior years but if there are any questions about exactly what you get for your money here by all means  to the next oh sorry and please introduce yourself and and your precinct and whether you're a town meeting   and then you have mitigate of whatever problems they discover that ends up being a seven year period so essentially the order on consent from e p a has taken first two years away from the town of goma really recognizing that we've been doing this for so long that it's tough for me to say right now i can tell you generally speaking we're probably going to finish investigation sometime in this calendar year follow up in early two thousand and eighteen with some other investigati thank you fred let's move on to the next article this is article thirteen has many parts all of which add up to one hundred ten million dollars let's take them in the order they appear the first is general government four point six million dollars general government is a collection of some of small apartments including town clerk human resources assessor's office and such  on retirement seven point three million dollars this is a mixture of the contribution for the current retirement obligation that's to say the amount we need to pay for the retirement benefits earned this year by current employees but actually the largest piece of it is what's called the average ization of the unfunded liability which is to say that over the past well a long time  contribute a sufficient amount to the retirement assets to be able to pay the pension obligations that will come due so we are now want to program  to catch up so to speak to read to be able to retire this obligation by two thousand and twenty nine that's the amortization and the amortization piece is actually the majority of the seven point three million dollars and this number will ramp up over the next ten years but that's what needs to be done in order to take care of this obligation which is a legal obligation for the  town next item almost three million dollars for other reserves which is health insurance and i would say miscellaneous financial categories  slide second largest item public safety fourteen million little over fourteen million dollars for public safety which is police and fire chief is here police chief and the fire chiefs are here are there any questions for ok the next item is by far the largest single line item in the budget which is the schools this year or for the coming fiscal year the budget is almost fifty three million dollars and superintendent failon is here in case you have questions about the school budget this is going to be a very quiet evening  well by all means of a question occurs to you later on i'm happy to revisit the vicious next item is nine hundred thousand dollars for minuteman school as i understand it the enrollment in minuteman is will be increased by two students next year so our assessment has gone up largely because it's a program sharing arrangement so be some more students we get a larger allocation but of course our whole situation regarding minutemen changed very dramatically last fall because belmont elected to withdraw from the minuteman district and the full ramifications of that will be felt won't be felt until two thousand and twenty the situation for  eighteen next line get back in or i mean cancel its current notice that it would like to withdraw and its three year notice and so we're scheduled to get out by july first two thousand and twenty if before shipping july first twenty twenty belmont wanted to pull all that back it would take a a a two thirds vote of the current minuteman school district and so it would take that it would take  i mean from the other town towns towns it would be fifty but but but yeah yeah ok thank you  light next item is public services which is d p w community development and facilities thirteen point four million dollars just to remind you this budget includes things like paving the roads building sidewalks taking care of town buildings were clearly in need of repair wanted to make sure that i was still working off a list that represented the order that i should be going in so i would tell you that the roads that are making up the program in terms of identifying reconstruction the roads in the five year program maybe five to seven year program they've been looked at within the last five years i would also say this i obviously recognize that some roads that you're you ate more quickly than others i recognize th ere's still a fair number of roads that are in tough shape i always struggle with with the you know taking the step of having them reevaluated because it does cost them and i always struggle with the idea you know what if i if i have twenty five or thirty thousand dollars to pay a consultant to drive a week these roads i've got a list that's fairly accurate i know these roads need to be fixed shouldn't i just take that thirty thousand and fix a road so i've been faced with that sort of dilemma often but i think it's becoming apparent that you know there's been enough time now where we haven't done a full snapshot of the town and i think that's something of a consider in the next roy yes but just to comment before glen gets offstage first of all glenn can you say something about the volume of repairs that you're able to do every year because i think that's important for the public to understand sure so there are a couple of constraints that we recognize in the paper management program one of them is obviously funding between the money we get from the state and money that we get through the budget in process capital budget which is money that came from  w and so you know we looked at that number and we determined that somewhere around two million dollars worth of construction every year is a number that we could reasonably stay on top of it so we try to keep that in mind as  well you know what the other factors that we're finding now recently is just the number of contractors that are out there available to do the work a lot of communities things are pretty well things are going pretty well in the construction industry and so a lot of communities have contracts there are several communities will do their contracts will read three year period so once they secure the services of a contractor they have them tied up for three years it's been difficult to get a lot of contractors beating on our work so i would tell you at this point that even if we wanted to do more roads in belmont and there's eight miles of private roads and the private roads are in different condition than the public roads because when you will you explain that to the public that is because statutorily the and then just recently we received a letter to the board of selectmen about chilton road and as it turned out that was on the schedule that this summer to be fully repaired but what they do is they coordinate with the gas company in the electric company ahead of time and so that road had been dealt with a year ago and it was in pretty bad shape because of all the construction that went on but then now i was up there the other day and that's got its first pavement down right done in advance hopefully getting those issues resolved before we can start the road then enough to worry about them after the roads be repaired and then a final point is once the roads are repaired no one can do anything to it for five years is that correct  o the current policy is there's a five year moratorium on opening up that roadway once it's been reconstructed that there are extenuating circumstances that come up that at least prompt someone to the request to cut that road within five years  critic ordinator public works about this very road last week and he assured me that the conditions of the permit require them to mill in orderly grove street from the curb line to the centerline of roadway so when the project is complete and when the road r complete they'll be a patch on that road that encompasses the entire half with of grove street where all of that patching music as far as compaction is settlement and things like that there is a monitoring that was done by public works probably also you know of restoration a year or two after the fact maybe portions of that restoration failed and public works has gone back to the national grid and said listen you know you you promised us to good restoration on this road it's failing or it's not up to our standards go back and fix it and they have done that thank you lifetime is human services which includes library health department and  some space council on aging yes thank you my apologies three point two million dollars library representatives are here health department representatives are here see a way ok let's move on next item debt in interest of four point five million dollars this is simply interest due on towns outstanding debt some of which has been retired each year there is a fairly standard motion to transfer monies from certain funds to the operating budget so you can see they're rather technical in total it's three point eight million  dollars two hundred thirty five thousand dollars from the abatement and exemption account which i believe is run by the assessor six hundred fifty thousand dollars from belmont light which is called the pilot or payment in lieu of taxes there's a two point three million dollar appropriation from under the young reserve fund balance which we generally refer to as free cash and ninety thousand dollars from parking meter rece the most important one is probably of two point three million from free cash i can tell you that we did make an adjustment to the budget where there was an original concept to use less free cash and draw down some from the stabilization fund that resulted from the two thousand and fifteen override the current approach is going to be to not drawdown the stabilization fund at all in fiscal eighteen but the drawdown free cash to a greater extent and fingers crossed we will make it through two thousand and twenty with these various strategies yes let's go back to the oh yes ok this is not transfers hundred seventy thousand dollars from water revenue one hundred thirty six thousand dollars from sewer revenue when you pay your water and your sewer bill that goes into the enterprise fund designed to stand it but then a certain amount is withdrawn to cover the services such as the d p w director who also acts to help administer the water system and this is a reflection of the operating expenses incurred by town departments that are compensated by the water and sewer enterprise accounts hundred twenty five thousand dollars from the capital endowment fund seventy four thousand dollars from the capital projects fund and i have to say i'm not sure exactly where the balances in those funds come from so if anybody wants to ask maybe we could find out and eighteen thousand dollars from bond premium amortization that's just a technical issue that arises in managing the town's  item have been no questions we can move on this is a technical article article thirteen final transfer to take the entire revenue of light and make it available to belmont light program to help fund road rebuilding in towns belmont will receive about five hundred thirty five thousand dollars which is a fraction of the total road belief building budget but it's an important fraction gold with the rest of the road building budget article fifteen article fifteen is the capital budget that overseen by the capital budget committee and one point three six million dollars is the amount for next year that's actually pretty much in line with the historical budget for this committee last year  there was an unusually high budget because there was a one time infusion of money is from an insurance settlement so that the spending last year was more like two and a half million dollars but i would say it's not really a decline in capital spending so much as a return to a more normal level there is a very wide range of projects you can see that will be spent individually none of them enormous but collectively it's an impressive range of things that are needed to keep the town going so going down the list as presented to me and public safety there's police networks which is a that's the wiring hardware in the police department thirty five thousand dollars and that lock system i'm not sure exactly what that is twelve thousand dollars fire staff vehicles two vehicles at fifty seven thousand dollars each and i should say generally how this budget is developed belmont has a a long list of capital requirements that actually greatly exceed the budget of the capital budget committee so what you're seeing here is the best judgment of the highest value projects that can be undertak budget available but there are still several million dollars worth of significant capital projects that go on funding and back in the queue and hopefully next year another fire squad one replacement for talk thousand dollars you'll see a good number of vehicles on this list i can tell you that the vehicle purchases are verge of vicious the cars typically are and trucks are typically old very high and that's endemic and in a sound policy until it's cardiac monitor seven thousand dollars ambulance sixty five thousand dollars a spill response trailer  a a trailer to handle an oil spill i know we had one oil spill i'm not sure if i had another one but related to burbank school i believe  well that question did come up in the work committee last week and i'm glad the chief is here to address that question getting into the storm drains and getting down to clean burbank oil spill was a great example we got into the storm drain got down there and we did not have the supplies or equipment to help to between oil lines that leak fuel tanks that split open and what's common is when people have the if oil tanks removed and they don't actually remove the fill pipe on the outside it's an oil company shows up to make a delivery and starts pumping oil in the basement so yes we show up and it helps to have that all that material ready to go in a trailer or maybe we should promote this service to that ok next slide public facilities in town wide security which is cameras and i'm not sure what other hardware two hundred thousand dollars it's a lot of money but i guess it's a reflection of the times we live in v a c tech then of thirty thousand dollars the facilities department decided to hire a h p h h the a c technician thinking that would be more economical than having various service contracts and just vanished part of that new program for h p a c maintenance unit ventilators u and building envelopes building envelopes refers to the integrity of the roof and the outside walls to make sure there's no water infiltration particularly and that's really essential for making buildings last those of those line up line items help answer that question third world record facilities we have done quite some time ago a very thorough survey of all the schools in terms of the city's best system and that we have as best as in many places in the schools but i would advise are we not to panic over that state items before a new building becomes comes online light fixtures ceiling a parking lot fixing the gut is which are leaking in dealing with some more damaged as best as floor tiles and building a so called quiet study room at least one on the upper level where mainly for teens and young readers to be able to congregate without disturbing everybody in the building but the cut the capital budget committee has identified schools problem books are going to be used primarily for facilitating m cas testing as i understand it the director of technology steve was all over a proposal that we presented to the word committee in the f b i eat in to our finance committee we look to first of all put them at the cherry middle school because they have the largest population that gets tested each year so the initial distribution will go to the children they are also looking to have their p t o support that and i know that the burbank schools so the p t o support looks as well so we came up with a proposal that we have a three year plan and whichever funding source we're able to garner support for and we will work that plan through and we do have that plan online on our website ok moving on community developing the thirty eight thousand dollars is to decide walking related improvements for pedestrian safety near burbank school information technology again more network related issues the first item is in aging got a deal on a on a new metal band which is a a van suitable for handy also for handicapped people and i understand the van was actually worth fifty six thousand dollars but we got a grant and the months share is only eleven thousand dollars so too good to turn down len is that something you know about director of community development so there was a pretty competitive process with all of the schools below most of the schools in belmont  what i can't speak to the nuts and bolts of the process i can tell you that when it was all said and done it was the wellington that got the award in belmont i don't know whether or not multiple schools in belmont could have qualified might my guess is  looks like everybody's favorite road money one point eight million dollars reflecting our usual budget plus contribution from the override  just to repeat what was said before the belmont has enough resources to pay for maybe two miles of road here in that vicinity but we have around eighty miles worth of road so you need patien if all the roads were in perfect shape redoing about two miles a year would be about the right level it's just for once again having to overcome a handicap  asphalt can you buy for that much money management time i don't believe that the resources are there to do more than what we're doing right now  just i've heard it every year i don't know but i think that's a fair statement issue it's a budget and other issues well actually give me a sense first running short on time i'd like to move on and we can come back to that if there's time at the end but there's some important our articles we need to coming up it is actually larger than the pension obligation the town adopted a policy several years ago to contribute an amount of money determined by a formula and th number is generally around three hundred fifty thousand dollars a year which is very much a stopgap kind of funding measure that issue will be revisited in with greater financial w after the the current plan is after the pension amortization issue was dealt with and then the opal be confronted that will be a mixture of both of undoubtedly increasing the contribution level and i think it's very likely that there will be some fundamental changes in the nature of that obligation that will be a result of state action in addition the magnitude of that live but with is a little bit uncertain the town has an open study committee which is trying to get a better handle on what that liability actually is it's clear that it is a large number of but exactly how large is subject still for some stuff but the three hundred fifty four thousand dollars is the contribution for this year  revolving funds revolving funds is pretty standard article these are funds obtained from user fees for various designated activities the fees go into  revolving funds devoted to supporting that activity and you can see they cover a wide range can you prevent senior programs are gallery rock metal and so forth but these are so to speak self funding activities and the revolving fund i just the vehicle for the ministry in those funds where i don't believe there is a revolving fun for the pool that is that's funded from the rec department budget but i don't know adam is there a separate revolving fund in place there is no revolving fun for the school conceivably that could change in the future but that's not the situation that well there's certainly the intent to maintain the pool properly into the future and whether that takes the form of a revolving funder some other strategy i think will be worked on  next line article eighteen is a spend reserve fund as you probably have heard special education expenses are a very large component of the school  budget also one that's hard to predict it's also one that's hard to manage because a lot of special ed requirements are mandated by state and federal law and the town has very little  to manage those obligations we have to take students as they come and provide programming that is basically dictated to the town we have had years where and it's largely a mix of the student population we've had years for a special ed expenses were less than expected but other years when special ed budget actually overwhelmed replacement for a special ed reserve fund the town meeting created a number of years ago that fund is actually been empty for several years the difference in this article eighteen fund is that is monies that would be where the withdrawals from that fund would be a vote of the school committee and the board of selectmen it would not entail a vote town meeting which i have to say has some and just to be clear the current plan as i understand all the current recommendation of the school department would be to create this fund but actually not to see that with any money until the fall so this is really a very good questions for the school superintendent sure the the the fund is the result of the municipal and active more nies municipal financing government as a recommendation by the state for about fifty  town funding article said schools would municipalities can use so we're taking advantage of that so we're asking to open the account in at school community tomorrow i will do a draft three of our budget where we put a line in our budget to actually have a  other instrument to put money in that those funds can come from at the end of a year or in the middle of the year if we feel that we have money for the general fund that we think we can move into that account to save for the following year we can do that from a school budget if the town  thought at any point in time that there were funds available in free cash or somewhere at one time funding often sure there were to put money there to have as an offset in preparation for any kind of concerns that that line we were in deficit that could be done as well i would say this is a this is be a hard and important problem of the warren committee is looking at as well as a school committee in terms of the amount of money to set aside and where it comes from is something that he will be thinking about between now and the next t me so there are four retirement board articles and i would like to actually present all four of them quickly and then see where you have questions for the first one is to increase the stipend for the five members of the retirement board delmon has a retirement board with five members for from now are currently collecting the stipend which the town decided to make available this proposal is to increase that stipend from three thousand dollars a year to forty five hundred dollars a year to do a change in state law which allows the stipend to be increased next sli e there is a cost of living adjustment built into the pension scheme and it's a little bit complicated but the cost of living adjustment is payback on the first currently the first twelve thousand dollars of earnings and the proposal here is to raise that base to fourteen thousand dollars and apply the cola to that higher base next line and just to make sense of the impact of this the actuaries who oversee the pension assets have estimated that this change related to the cost of living adjustment actually will increase the unfunded liability by one point seven million dollars and if that went through the town would have to make an additional payment in f y nineteen of two hundred thousand nine hundred thousand dollars so when you saw the line before for seven point three million dollars for pension contribution the number for f one thousand would be the f y one nine hundred number plus an additional two hundred nineteen thousand dollars if the coal adjustment was adopted by town meeting possible by a change in state law the proposals that increase it from two hundred two hundred fifty dollars to five hundred dollars next slide and the impact of that turns out to be an additional thirteen thousand eight hundred dollars an nineteen and that will be ongoing as well and then next we have a another death benefit adjustment for certain surviving spouses to increase the benefit from six thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars again due to a change in state law and the actuaries of costa died out to be slide an additional twenty one thousand dollars so adjustment thirteen thousand dollars from the first survivor adjustment and another twenty one thousand dollars for the second death benefit just so those of the four retirement board articles an outline of their any questions about that to in the form of a question is why oh well the retirement board is free to propose warrant articles i mean this and it's here for town meeting to that well the warrant committee asked that question of the retirement board and the retirement boards answer was that they feel that there are greater technical requirements and expertise on their part and they also raised the issue of potential liability professional liability exposure for serving on the town board terms of stipends for retirement board members and they ranges from totally unpaid offices to three thousand to three thousand dollars to a few towns that increase to the forty five hundred dollars ceiling so it's the full range for this is something that is also regulated pretty heavily by the state where the members at least two members have to be members of the belmont retirement system there's a designated member from the town government and then the there are a total of five members the four members who come from the town and then elect a fifth member who i think is generally outside the time as an independent component in the town budget that pays for these things  ok yeah we voted unanimously in favor of the increase in the stipend and on the two smaller increases the vote was two to one in favor and we deferred the vote on you have to recognize that the increase in the base then applies to several hundred retirees and then it's projected many years into the future and that's that's where the one point seven billion dollars comes from  if your pension was twenty four thousand dollars let's say the under the current system there'd be a cost of living adjustment which is some percentage but that percentage would be applied only to your first two your first twelve thousand dollars living so your second twelve thousand dollars net example would not get the cola and the proposal here is to raise that base from twelve to fourteen that they have an outside financial advisor who manages the portfolio  well the investment advisor i'm sure makes a portfolio selections but do you want to comment on the how the advisors manage this is going to director for their interest so we have a consultant who gets reviewed the investments that i believe that information is included in the schedule that was in the town clerk's package but i will review that and try to explain  understood yeah but that is definitely a request for my quick ok ok let me since we're very short of time let me go very quickly for the next couple of warrant articles the light substation has been completed it's working and it's come in way under budget given the way the financing work article twenty three simply to retire debt that is no longer needed next slide same for a much smaller project rip involving public safety equipment is just the end of a capital project and this is winding down the financing for article twenty six citizens petition so i explained before that the current proposal in the budget is to leave the balance in the j p general stabilization fund untouched for f y eighteen that's about three million dollars right now and instead draw down more on free cash the substance of the citizen's petition is to go a little bit further and draw down free cash even more and place and place and this in a million dollars or transfer an additional million dollars from free cash into the general stabilization fund which will put its balances at fo policy would be the goal is to keep it is to keep it at about four percent of the town's budget which currently would be somewhere above four million dollars under this proposal the free  cash theoretically would drop to about three million dollars which is at the bottom end of the guideline range but in a way the money is not lost it's simply moved from the free cash account to the general stabilization account that's that's the whoa thank you i think and let me just a short everybody that that the warrant committee the board of selectmen and everybody else and government is very well aware of the likely issues for f y twenty and everybody is committed to stretching the override as much as possible and being as frugal and a sensible with the budget as we can so there's there's no nobody is a spend that there is also great interest among the board of selectmen on the warren committee for revisiting this question in the fall and potentially making an additional contribution to the general stabilization fund wants the free cash situation is clarified because it gets recertify each year in july i want to move have some more information and can act in november as well but that will be a trick for discussion during town meeting itself so with that i would like to apologize for going to a couple of minutes over but thank you very much for coming look forward to seeing you on the town meeting