hello and welcome to the inaugural showing of belmont in thirty a new news and opinion show on belmont media center name is franklin tucker i'm the editor of the belmont tony and next to me is my colleague enery mahoney hello and welcome to belmont thirty inaugural show of news and opinion the belmont media center my name is franklin tucker i'm the editor of the belmont tell me i'm next to me is my colleague and rima hony how are you and i'm good happy we're doing this square the developer of cushing village smith legacy announced this week that it found a partner we don't know what kind of partner we don't know if it's an equity partner or were they taken over the development but the develop this new partner is urban spaces from cambridge very has done many projects like cushing village so that's a very hopeful sign one thing that i want to talk to you a and which will be eight hundred fifty thousand dollars along with fees and per many we should see about one point five million dollars in funds coming to the for to the town and one time funding now tell me million maybe too going to have a million dollars if if if another project windfall road comes through two point five million dollars in one time funny where do you think that should be going but i think the key is what you just said one time funding so it's not money that we're going to want to put into operating funds in any way so this could be a real opportunity for the town to put some money aside for capital what do you put it what do you mean what i m two sides to capital one is the year to year equipment and you know trucks and all the different requests that we get repairs boilers flooring from the various departments we desperately need money there we don't have enough time on dollar requests how many how much money do you have a budget a year a million sometimes under a million dollars that's exclusive of the rose which is another million to and it's not enough when you have four and five million dollars in requests we'd love to see three million dollars a year that way we feel that we could fund all of those requests in a reasonable way but the other piece of this is those outstanding capital projects that we keep talking about the police station the d p w facility the high school and the library being the major for i would love to see all or part of this money put aside into a fund to start one of war of those projects a stabilization fund maybe perhaps something like that is there is or any capital funding  projects top on your top priority for me it would be i think the d p w because i think they're in dire need and have been for a long time but they have a site they have a plan and they're pretty much ready to go as soon as we have some money right behind them is the debt exclusion to make it happen because a d p w facility you're talking twenty five twenty eight million dollars and how or what is the one that is the condition of d b w horrendous absolutely horrible you don't want to be there and yet  look at what those guys did this winter with one hundred eight you know they were wonderful absolutely wonderful yes so we have a guest here this week today and they're very familiar guess for anybody who well i've had a career a long career in government public policy one of those order another of working in state government at one point but the last bridesmaid twenty five years until i recently retired i've been president of the massachusetts taxpayers foundation which deals with state and local financial issues here in belmont i first ran for town meeting and why do you do you won and served for many years and town meeting until it became moderator in two thousand and eight i served for fifteen years on the town's warrant committee the financial committee and was chair for three years so i've been active for some thirty five years and down government here in belmont and politics and how long have you lived in the home since one nine hundred seventy five our daughter was just born and we were in west cambridge and we moved up a couple of miles bought a house and near cushing square and we stayed there ever since that's great well let me ask you what does a moderator do well he tries to keep control of town meeting that's certainly not the easiest of tasks that's the most visible role of course is to play and help plan with the selection and the school committee and the town clerk and so forth plan for town meeting so to try to run it as orderly as possible and i think that's what most people see you want when they go to to efficient as it can be that's the goal not always easy the other invisible role if you're well is that i have the responsibility the town has down moderator to make the appointments to the warren committee the finance committee the capital budget committee so like men have some appointments and some of these but committees of permanent building committee and then building committees like the pool so it's there's a lot of responsibility because in those appointments you're trying to get expertise and over but also a range of points of view and the poor for example somebody from the historic district commission and somebody one of the neighbors and so you're trying to you know any of these appointments meet have balance and made a combination of needs and a moderator is also the only elected official  are two primary changes and this is in the goal of continuing to try to have this become is the town meeting as smooth as possible i mean on the one hand having enough discussion because some of these issues are complex so that's the whole point but on the other hand have it not all go off into tangents and so forth so the two changes one is i will limit anybody's  presentations i'm not official presentation but comments from the floor to five minutes that had been ten minutes now very few people went the full ten minutes but some went over five and my experiences you can two hundred eighty five people listening to one person perhaps going on too long the second is to limit the number of questions that a town meeting member can ask at least in the first time he or she is coming to the microphone to to  one question and one follow up they can come back and ask other questions the point there is that we've had too many instances where town meeting members are not usually a lot of them but enough will start to kind of pepper one question after another and it becomes sometimes more like a court room then so will discourse and that's not fair to town meeting and nor is it fair to people who are being at the microphone i mean those who are having to answer the questions so we're limited to two questions what that really says to town meeting members is you've got to do more preparation than in many cases you have done many town meeting members do really a homework but others don't and then they ask the questions on town meeting floor so there's lots of opportunity to answer questions in advance and this will put a premium on that rather than having them all asked that in front of two hundred  town meeting his kid or very wary now that we've been using them what's your assessment i think it's working well we try to not have every vote electronic but if it's a two thirds vote requirement then will you i'll ask that we use electronic voting like any change i think people would first the number of people who get it oh how do you work at it and mr moderator and this and that but i think generally speaking people feel good about it and i think it lessons to do things it does the whole point one is it does lessen the time in terms of voting at the same time it is an accurate count and sometimes in a voice vote you can tell and it's a lot easier to have an electronic vote than a standing vote and so the accuracy of so i think particularly important so trying to keep the flavor of town meeting and not uses electronic voting for everything but what real changes have you seen in terms of town meeting or has it changed is that you know it's a it's a new england is a new wing a tradition it hasn't really been any changes in terms of civility or  kind of questions people are asking well in some respects you put your finger on it there are very few changes in new england town traditions for a century or more in this is a longstanding tradition town meeting that  i have great respect for i think in most recently general you i think there is a more active participation not i mean of all the people in town meeting is probably only ten fifteen twenty something who regularly house questions or comment and then others do as they have a point of view but i think as a general matter i see a little more active town meeting than i once did although but that ebbs and flows i mean when there are controversial issues and reno's well the mcclane development that you know everybody weighs head and so forth so so my comment is really more a general sense but no i wouldn't say need to a magic changes in town meeting what we have tried to do i with the town clerk with allen and others is try to smooth it and as best we can and and let people know what the next question's going to be the sequencing and so forth so that you have a sense of what's happening and i think we've made some progress there are a couple of town meetings in which we didn't but then you try to learn from that and not have not have the chaos that certainly one of the occasionally happens what about following up on that what about the trust factor as someone who kind of stands up there and gives a report and field questions i sometimes feel that not everyone respects the recommendations or the work that goes into the recommendations that town officials me i think that's true people come with some sometimes w particularly this may reflect a larger view of government in general somewhat jaundiced view of public officials my experience and memory is that that the strength of the presentation is critical in terms of building a trust with town meeting and so you always and and a number of other people make i think very strong praise and patients organized clear focus the better the presentation the better town meeting members feel i think because i think they feel the presentation reflects the thought and the work that has gone and worked on the other hand if something is either not presented well or questions can't be answered well then you see the town meeting members get restless and often justifiably so one of the great roles of town meeting is sort of moshing out is this ready whatever it is for prime time as the work been done and sometimes it hasn't been and then down meeting rejects the proposal or did so that was a i mean there's frustration in that because when you're presenting something and it gets rejected or you have to withdraw it that's no fun but that's part of the process of what we got there we as a town and that's in with the better ultimate product and that's the purpose of down meeting which is our legislative body after all many new residents especially from out of state they'll come to belmont and they'll say first of all we'll call it a city instead of a town only lasted and then they ask about county meeting and when you explain that it's the town's legislature they they they find that mystifying and they ask why does and belmont go towards the more traditional city point where you have a mayor and a city council defend town meeting sure well of course we have them in the larger cities and towns in the state most of them have a mayor and city council those tend to i mean they have their debates too it's not as if that somehow means you're going to have a smooth democratic process and it's not efficiency you know it's sad sometimes it's lot worse in there and i think you know one can debate how many people are a town meeting and whether it's too large or not but whatever the exact number is i think the process is a healthy one because you are being elected by your neighbors and you then have to defend the vote and with the town meeting taking i think a slightly more active role than it has historically as a general matter i think it puts some greater discipline on the executive branch broadly define the selectmen and so forth and i think that's a good thing and it's never neat i mean democracy isn't neat we all know that and people say well they're just as well fine it's not i mean that's just the way it is the question is is the resolution of these issues a healthy thing and is a done well on balance and as i've said i think that town meeting performs an important functions  a checked and a sense of is just really ready to move forward and you know i think town meeting players in a very important role and so i'm a great defender of town meeting even though advice would you give if you had to give one piece of advice to town meeting members before they walk through the door what would it be i would suggest that they do their homework it's a little overwhelming you get these some of these issues are quite complex  and you've got committees that have worked months weeks months and hearings on it and i think it's important for them to do their homework because of you're better educated you can follow the conversation better of course back and forth and as well then you can decide if you want to weigh in and whether in and have and go to the microphone usually when you're a new town meeting member you don't go to the microphone in the first few meetings but you're getting your feet on the ground but i think preparation is everything which is of course true and in life generally for now what do you expect from this town meeting i think the first part of town meeting the sidemen a which is in may i think will next week yes the fourth in the sixth i think we'll do it in two nights and i don't see i mean there are a couple of issues settled i think the whole issue debate about solar power will take probably most of the time though ironically it's a nonbinding resolution so it's probably the least important in one sense because there isn't any actual decision being made so what does what i mean take that out well the because there's citizens of put it forward in the middle that's part of a democratic process that is and can do this directly it's similar to a ballot question in that respect statewide where you collect a certain number of signatures and it goes on the november ballot so in this case and comes to town meeting the community preservation act they're making their presentation in the in this may segment that always has some questions but when i look at the made portion of this i see less controversy th in some town meetings i think june is going to be more difficult if you will when we talk about the finances and then with the override there's a lot of it all right what's the tax level what we can do with the money how many years are we going to try to spread out the money from the override there are a large what it can do with the money so this is this is the there are a lot of major questions so i think and presumably there for some amendments that's the other piece citizens can make amendments and have the right to do that town meeting members and so i expect there will be a number of amendments and a lot of discussion at the  meeting there's always some discussion around the budget but i think we'll see more than we've seen in a long time in june and now hopefully there are people other than tommy members watching this yes and why should a tommy member even care about timing and it seems likely that you will tell especially people who just come into town town meeting is happening in their life and don't even go to even bother why should they bother why should they care about what's happening at tommy while the outcome of town meeting depends as i mean that's going to impact what happens in the town of belmont so if you care about belmont then it's worth watching you don't necessarily have to watch the whole already undertaking yes there is entertainment as well but on rehearsed but i think i mean it's like anything is it if you're really interested in what's happening in the town you can learn from town meeting and see what the debate is and discussion and then you may want to get involved i mean clearly that's what happens for lots of people who move down i mean we had been in town myself and my wife of for just a few years and she ran for school committee some six years after and that was the beginning we both ran for down meeting so you get exposed to try to understand what the issues are and and hopefully some fraction of all these people run for town meeting one of the issues we have is and and then she's still a town meeting member so does she think you're doing a good job she tells me i have but maybe she has to do well i'm not yeah yeah let me ask you a question experience can you talk a little bit about state aid and yet trends that you've seen and what you would predict for the future for state aid for towns like belmont i think we're going through a made we just state and then the impact on cities and towns a major change the economic recovery is not as strong as previous recoveries so tax revenue growth at the state level is not as as as robust as it has been so as a result we're seeing limits on the state's ability to increase state a to cities and towns even though it's an economic recovery and so this is putting more pressure on minister power g s because they're not going to be able to  s or meaningful increases from year to year we are seeing a reasonable increase for the fiscal sixteen budget but that's about as good as it's going to get we're not going to see any large or increases for the indefinite future so is that do we have any hope of going back to the to the good old days of the of maybe five ten years ago while in the kinds of economic  cover is that we had i because we always have ups and downs recessions and how strong is the recovery that we had in the in the ninety's for example the eighty's in the ninety's no i don't think we're going to see that anytime  anytime soon i mean we were able to at the state level to raise taxes i mean cut taxes fund new programs establish and build up the rainy day funds we had we could we could basically do everything now much tougher with the rate of growth of revenues and so we're going to have to make some tough choices i think in perpetuity and then depend more as we did  override but obviously we can only do that because of the high taxes in belmont not every year so it's a balance it's going to remain that well mr widmer thank you very much for being here thank you and le