of the following items rigid plastics textiles books d v d s and c d s tronics bicycles and there's also paper shredding with the secure mobile document shredding for more information please call six one seven nine nine three t six eight nine or on line to belmont am a dot com a hyphen and a dot gov dot residents only id required secondly is and i read this earlier but for those of you who are not there which is almost everybody belmont drives electric has another electric vehicle ride and drive vent from a drives electric in partnership with the bethel temple center climate team invite you to participate the next evie information and test drive event on sunday october twenty ninth from noon until three p at the treasury middle school ninety five washington street this is the final such event of the year at noon as an information session with the sierra club presentation from gina copland newfield director of sierra club's electric vehicle initiative amp and also by goals and benefits of the adoption of electric vehicles in belmont and twelve thirty of the test drives of the e v a s several dealers and local owners will be views available check out and test drive email belmont drives electric at g l dot com to pre register or judge original film screening sunday november fifth four pm adama town hall right here in the auditorium there is free admission and this is in march two thousand and seventeen by my high school students interviewed forty plus belmont veterans who served in wars from world war two to afghanistan and this film tells their stories it's also to help us restore an enhanced the veteran's memorial a clay pit pond to honor a veteran from your family or memorialize one of our fallen heroes  a capital item for f y seventeen d p w asked for fifty thousand dollars for capital funds to fund a town wide audit of our sidewalk conditions  we had prepared the services of environmental partners jim fitzgerald with his team benihana and adriana toll they're working since one spring early spring and we've been going back and forth with drafts and what they have before you tonight is a a comprehensive plan very similar to the payment management compliant crosswalks so we've been also looking for those round a lot of a lot of cases you'll find that the for older ramps before this became a requirement to find some ramps that are you know in fair condition but they're missing a all panel so although they do need to be replaced it's good to have all that information indeed because it would be more critical perhaps to address a ramp that is missing or in poor condition and accessible altogether so having all that information certainly does help and prioritizing the need for those freedoms that are in good condition invisibly compliant to eighty eight we then verify that they are a big they they look like they so i had mentioned before looking into the sci and the r c i to grade the sidewalks in the ramps based on their condition in eighty eight compliance having that number score between zero and one hundred and other thing that we use to help us prioritize the need is to look at a priority ranking also known as p r what this does is it helps highlight the need for improvement and where should the fix sidewalks and needs fall within the c i p what we do is we look to determine what a p r is of our of a sidewalk or a wiltshire ramp we look at the walk score and factor that into into the equation the walk score actually stems from a maybe p c metropolitan area playing and what that that information is it's all available to us on maps that  that prioritize roadway based on where the population is located where the destinations are and how to get in but a lot of a lot of input and data has gone into this modeling done by m e p that we're using g that are greater that are further away and are very unlikely to walk more than two miles to that so really a half mile is so just to get into some some of our findings this map here actually to the town a different roadway jurisdiction so in town you have just under seventy eight miles of ro along those seventy eight miles of road you have approximately ninety seven miles of sidewalk spaces you have sidewalks both sides sometimes one side in looking at the that those ninety seven miles of sidewalk we find that the overall score is actually pretty good for the town  have two percent of the sidewalk is actually in good condition which is pretty great as a result of the old average a c i score is eighty three out of one hundred so again that's a that's a pretty decent s little bit deeper and looking at that fifty six percent or fifty four miles out of ninety seven miles of sidewalk the great majority of those sidewalks do have grass strips which is good  so it's forty seven miles out of the fifty four have grass trips although the grass strips aren't all that many there are but between feet on average this is the same chart i just showed you a moment ago again seventy two percent is in good condition but what we found was that there were actually a decent amount of roads there so i had to surmount a sidewalk i'm sorry sidewalks that had were and very very good condition relatively new sci's of scores and greater than ninety five so we dove into that information a little closer and we found that actually there's fifty two percent two percent of the sidewalks with scores greater than ninety five so  you've got a decent amount of of sidewalks that are and are in real break and so if you were to look at the town wide average the town light average for all ninety seven miles of sidewalk is one hundred again pretty decent with our software what we're able to do is to provide mapping that identifies that can be color coded to show all sorts of different information this this map here just happens to show the the overall  sidewalk circles or ramps depict how important that priority is so all this information will be of and the software that will be provided to the town in the end has the ability to create several different types of reports depending on what the town's preference whether it's an order of the best of the worst sidewalks or an alphabetical order of the prior ization ranking that's all a deal that wall will all be available to  and that rolls into getting into the c i p in selecting projects a go on the c i p the software as i had mentioned before gives you the flexibility to be able to add street by street side as such it's a sidewalk by sidewalk ramp by ramp what the c i p will consist of for any given year allowing you to the flexibility to add on with or curbing or whatever change pavement all the while having automatic calculations that reflect those changes and providing you with the breakdown a yearly breakdown of what roads would would sidewalks would be included per year what the cost would be and the total at the end so now it comes to project selection now that we have completed our field and tories complete our summaries and our reporting now with this we have the ability to prepare the capital improvement plan for multiple years once a town identifies their priorities your priorities such as the things that will be considered and coming up with the capital improvements the p c data that we're talking about earlier with the walk scores and the mapping provide can chime in any time you want if i'm speaking at term it's almost like we have two different challenges ahead of us when glenn goes and does his paper measure and program it is it is usually the expectation years was up you would not have the money to do the mill an overlay necessary to to maintain the road that you constructed in two thousand and seven so essentially what would have happened is this cycle of prepare and decay in decline to the point where road needs to be reconstructed in its entirety would would have continued and the board at the time said you know what we don't want to be investing money in reconstructing roadways and then having them to cheerier it to the point where they need to be reconstructed again sometime in the future we want to we want a maintenance program that's going to allow us in twenty years to mill and overlay that street and avoid the cost of a full reconstruction curbing was part of the conversation at the time because we were still focusing on the major roads for mike you're right you made a comment earlier based on the work of the pavement management committee that the board of selectmen appointed to study the issue in advance of the override vote not every road was was justified for curbing obviously the main roads were there were certain instances where they w committee identified what we call neighborhood streets as requiring curving in adam to your point these were roads that were that the term in the report that is used is walking demand generators churches commercial districts p fle grounds things things of that nature and so you know it was left to sort of you know for decisions down the road to determine you know where are those walking demand generators to what extent should we be putting curbing in sidewalks the report says  immediately a budding a walking demand generate if you look at barlett avenue when you look at the proximity of fossil playground there's only that small entrance that truly is a budding barlett avenue so if you if you take the letter of the law the strict interpretation of the designated walking routes to school and what kind of focus should be put on those streets now the thing i want to i want to put out there is i started doing some research i saw kate's petition and in the interest of after having the board have the entire context of the conversation i just i started to put some research together there are a ton of roads that if we reconstructed since two thousand and seven and so i just why i just want to i want to be aware that far let avenue in and of itself may have an argument but there are probably other roads that have been reconstructed they're going to have similar arguments as well and i don't know how we find going back in time to to rectify all thank you glenn we're running a little bit behind i believe we have bartlett road on our next meeting you know that the public is probably surprised by the condition of the sidewalks because the general experience is that they're in terrible condition yet that's not you or your conclusion  project since they had to redo their sidewalks a year ago because the contractor the sidewalks and within a year they deteriorated so one of the reasons those are perfect is that we complained about the quality of the work and then they were actually redone again so just to let you know the other thing is we have a shade tree commission and they come by and where there is a road that has two to three feet of the median they plant a that you know over a period of years that maple tree is going to be a problem and so somehow that has to be coordinated i'm not saying it should all be fruit trees but it doesn't make any sense  me to put it to put a tree that we know it's going to grow to a problem that it will disrupt sidewalks and then the last thing i wanted to say and then we have to move on unless either my colleagues have something to taylor i wanted to talk about bertha road because they see people in the audience who were interested in and we're going to talk about that at the next four square for a meeting but taylor road is in my neighborhood and i noticed you said that they had seventy eight miles of road but only ninety seven miles of sidewalks which means that most of the roads don't have sidewalks and both so how is that decision made how do you know you know if i look at taylor road and i'm not talking out of a you know a personal interest for that as an example on one side you have a sidewalk you have a median and i don't think there's furby it goes right for the three b on the other side there's no sidewalks no if i were if i were in charge of the town i might stay in this is why this is useful i might say well you know in terms of walking people can just cross the street and go to the sidewalk you know on the other side and then get to where they want to go because it costs so much by law from both sides but now you've kind of just prove that idea with your data because in fact we don't have sidewalks on both sides of the street how do you guys view that is that something that we need or we don't need or how does that work in your world  i thank you for a very professional reason i think the town can be pleased with the outcome because things aren't quite as dire as the scene will look you right merrily i guess you're going to get the data from them and you guys and yes this will be used as a tool for us to how we determine and like get as much bang for a dollar i guess you would say and diversify our funds to address certain issues one thing that obvious is that you would pick the ones that are in the worst condition of they meet the other great period and the money there is that the idea of what right now we are we asked our environmental partners to give us a five year plan based on a two hundred and whatever change that comes with your work have a great we'll look forward to seeing that ok thank everyone that's great adam thank you for recommending that that work for the page because i think it makes it better for the public i'm not going to point out to either one of you that this is the kind of work that we can fast spring that there was never a permanent process for that signage so the plan it will took that on did a great job drafting a by law for the by law recognizes that if a sandwich board sign was to be placed on the sidewalk which is within the public right  that that particular action is actually governed by the general bylaws and that approval has to come from as the as the bylaw says the board of selectmen or its designee and i'm here this evening to ask that you  an effort to streamline that process anyone interested in getting a permit for a sandwich board sign would have the ability to come to community development and have all of the issues addressed by our office instead of having them detour to the board of selectmen for an individual wonderful presentation said that they passed a by law pretty well and i think i think what he meant was that the board of selectmen passed a policy that said that they were the board would not support signage placed on the bridge but what's tricky about the matter is is the bridge is technically owned by the n b t a so a lot of people will circumvent the town go directly to the bta to get permission to place to sign a really good measure yes well that i that i don't know i mean that i know they're not your coming to the town because the town has no authority now the other thing i want to ask about before you go is you know those some of the what do you call these signs say which one sandwich boards you know the ones that are put on the median and conquer and conquer them and that's what is their rule about you know putting them on and taking them off yes it's a lot of times they're left there in the stuff was blown in the little signs once again and that that is not why i was here the seat i undertook and i'm just but as my understanding is that at some point in the past the board designated the town administrative the i believe those are the two areas that are called out in the application but yes i ok i can talk i'll talk to phyllis yeah that all of there's an application that you can refer to that i believe has all of the guidelines just because a couple of times you you see that you know the date is passed and the thing is handicapped parking space to gauge in front of fifty seven raleigh road i just have some brief background these requests coming periodical historically they have been addressed by myself and the traffic division of the bubble police department but in the spirit of the stew recognition whereby any of the corner of raleigh road and column road ok it's very residential it that they're there is not an issue per se of a lot of vehicles parking this particular property the front door of the house is on raleigh road the garage which is a small garage is located around the corner on carlton and it's not an easy path of travel to get from that driveway to the house because there's a fence involved because the applicant has a physical issues that they're trying to really means out of the signage comes that we rely on the application the that the approval process ultimately culminates with a letter from the police department informing the applicant that they've been approved and also instructing them on how  handle when the space is no wonder we oftentimes i'm told by police found that oftentimes it's a neighbor that will notify the police department that in fact the sign is the one i'm sorry so there's there's no there's no parking place on so i'll take just probably two or three minutes and then we can talk about so this summer we actually retained our design professionals after getting approval from the m s p a so when by the end of august we had a design in place as well as our opium so the schedule from you shows the plan going forward to finish our feasibility study which under our hemisphere abrogation must be done by may of two thousand and nineteen there are multiple submissions to the m s p those are shown in yellow for warrants depending on what color you look at here in the schedule and the first one comes up in december thirteenth year ahead of that we're working on a program it then goes into the educational program that the superintendent and his staff been working on and then finally a couple sections of the design solutions very conceptual that  appropriate for the site and they'll be multiple solutions in this package and that's what it's supposed to have and since we have multiple configurations for studying that multiplies to a large number we'll we won't have to choose a configuration great configuration or a design solution for this package but it will require that the town has a vote of approval by the building committee school committee as well as the board slightly and this package will be a three or four inch binder it will have a lot of information and somewhere in that it for me will be a solution that we need to identify as the next phase called the preferred schematic solution  develop the project in more detail and finally submit to that to the m s p that package which they call a schematic design but really they're saying final design as far as they're concerned is program scope but just fix pricing schedule the next july and who are their board approval at the end of august with that we see a pathway for funding for the general election two thousand and eight there are little a couple of challenges with that but we think that that can happen now if there's a hiccup along the way we still have an opportunity for a spring approval the next year still to it as a couple of yellow page phone books i'll say it's about three or four of us from there are there for you yes you do and again it has multiple sections some of those are being assembled right now and can be complete what we would propose to do is come to one or two more times along the way to show you the steps and get you informed you could ask questions but ultimately we would have a draft of that large binder in front of you i'd say right after thanksgiving i would i would encourage you to do what we did for the minutes tonight we're proving seventeen minutes tonight and i ask phyllis to send it to us by month so if you have sections that are finished you know i'd like to see those when they're finished of the and you know assuming that that's the way it proceeds it does and that's the method by which we will inform the school committee and the building committee section by section but if you put us on that list that we will do that  so in early two thousand and eighteen this is the superintendent school committee will work to decide which which configuration i remember the configurations that this program reviews life for two and one of those and there's been some development recently so i'd i'd like to ask alan cushman the town clerk to join us and  the statement that that i'd like to make is that and i think my colleagues will agree with this that we expect that all of our committees boards in commissions  comply with the regulations as well as the of the in process as well as the spirit of the open meeting with and perhaps you can give us a little background on office about a couple of things one of them is through the division of open government which is was created a number of years ago now to manage the open meeting law the regulations and guide groups public bodies about how their behavior  is is really responsive to this idea of the sunshine laws and trying to allow the residents of the town or of a community to understand participate and therefore watch what's going on in their government and so that's really the whole kind of principle of the open meaning law it has been around for a long time but it just recently the new guide came out and and those folks who kind of watched the new guide that was just held by the attorney general i'm sure adam you probably see this know to communities as well the attorney general is a learning kind of being and so they watch pretty carefully about how the public bodies and communities react in the and act on behalf of their public and as they sort of morph around and try to figure out i do appreciate the endorsement of the of the principals as well as the practice field mune law and so the new guide was just distributed i sent it out on friday along with an advisory it went out to every board member of every board committee and commission and every department head and it went out to the members of the press the cover belmont so george hall had been communicating with us about your mean line he wrote also an advisory particular to wants those facts they actually have a couple places to find it i think you're right folks probably have it online but we have it through our next request public records or you can just pop the write up it's a public document you can also go into the town clerk section of the website under two and so people it's not it's not a lot of fun to comply with the open meeting law because you have to post your meeting you have to take your minutes right in the new you have to open your minute and so some people go we can figure a way not to do that you know they do but this this comment now we're not responsible for every board every commission and every committee but we can say and adam i think i speak for you and i i don't i speak for you that the board of selectmen we expect that all of our committees boards in commissions will fully comply with the open with the process the procedures in the spirit of the open meeting law in the spirit is important because you can you can if you're clever you can figure a way out that oh that doesn't apply and then you have to ask yourself does the public deserve to know what's being done and i think once you ask yourself if you're on a subcommittee on a working group the answer is almost invariably yes and it probably makes sense to err in the over compliance than it does to cleverly not comply completely   including a list of all of the committees for which we have a committee meetings for which we have not received minutes and we ask them to please do it by start paying attention and submit them by a certain date it is up to the chair and the committee to do it unfortunately when there's a turnover it's pretty difficult sometimes there's a new chair or there's new composition of the committee to keep some consistency in that so one of the big changes the attorney general has actually put down before  used to say minutes were expected when you know in a reasonable period of time i think it was the language they use now they define a reasonable period of time as we did two meetings so if your group meets once a year you have two years to submit if your group  quarter you have two quarters to submit you know if you meet weekly you have two weeks to submit and they expected to be sort of a rolling forward in the end to be honest the record most of that are not as privileges you are to have lisa now a lot of committees have to take their o minutes and therefore they you know have will hand scratch that somebody has to translate over into a document that can be submitted so it's a best practice take the minutes online while you're in the meeting clean them up send them to the lot of things and government requires you know so if you're going to serve on a committee or a subcommittee or a working group you just have to realize that this is part of the you know you don't can't you can't say that it's too much work so therefore i'm not going to do it because that's not the way or the other thing it's my understanding from talking with george about it in the past because when i first became select when i had a lot of questions about i always wanted to talk to sammy and play golf with mark but i never could do that and george george told me that you know the the open meeting law is not to criminalize people who are serving on boards elected officials it that's right yes yes so you know that that's what happens and then you have to respond on how you're going to correct it so for me it's one of those self defeating behaviors because if you don't do what you're supposed to do and then someone complains respond to mark the first way was that we're part of the monitoring when mr coming in the second way which is becoming more popular is when members of the public are out there and they're interested in a committee or board a commission and they don't see those minutes that are posted they call my office and say hey could it possibly be that they have them but they just opposite on the website typically they are all post on the website so then the person files public records request and says i'd like all the minutes back to two thousand and nine or eight or twelve or sixteen or whatever the kind of a brand n questions for what we are to do oh and i was just i was just going to say that at our last meeting there was a question about our policy  to that one point one point is that we have these so like when ours around town but we're we're splitting it up to them we're doing it you know off the agenda completely because of the work we have to do for you know to have people call ahead but what happened last monday was that we got a call at one o'clock and phyllis and i hadn't talked about that but they were doing a bunch of different things and just couldn't address the you know the caller's question so what we've done is we've we've gone back to what was suggested that day and that is that and then the third thing is that if somebody i've always encouraged people to send letters to the board of selectmen mailbox because rather than talking to just me if you send a letter to them or an email to the board and also you know since we each were present twenty four thousand people seventeen thousand voters in eight thousand voters who normally participate in the local election then you know we just were opening the door to a tremendous use of time that's limited by the open me because i can only talk to you here i can't talk  for and it will be useful then ok you know i understand that but i think the our constituency has to understand there's nothing on this agenda that we don't prepare and some of th i wanted a copy of my statement that i read on the special town meeting articles four and two as an attachment and then just as a tiny correction that that was a two to one vote so it can't be