around on sunday i believe it is which is a red line and a clean version of that material it's not been modified a whole lot but there are some changes the one thing that i didn't actually include just to be clear in the red line is i changed the chart so i didn't include both charts because i thought they would just be confusing so you'll see the revised yard and the fundamental difference between the old chart in the new chart is the old free cash sort of building back up i built that back up to the new certified number which is seven point six million so that the left hand side of the chart on page three in the red line version shows how it goes down and then the right hand side shows it goes up it looks have apologized and get a chance to look at it now and the only thing that i would just like to look carefully at the language is the m s p made it clear that they've approved the first phase of the project but they in fact they also have a couple of votes in order to approve i think going forward so i revenue overages and expense turned back you know the exact amount we know the exact amount that was certified that other bar is the difference that was revived that's what i actually do know what i think and then i went to david and i said because he had already told me that what there was was there was about four hundred thousand dollars of chapter ninety receivables and i said there's about one hundred thousand or different you may have seen that actually in the note that i sent and i said what is that he said it's actually grant receivables and i didn't confirm that it's precisely five ten but i think that that is correct so we that i didn't want the impression to be that was one hundred forty five million dollar cost to belmont i also i still didn't really get into the i didn't get into the details of it in this letter because there's at least a certain amount of unknown about what it is and so i decided to sort of just because that's that's true too  here you come down on your not only because her some people know that certain costs pertaining to a building are not eligible for reimbursement and this is a different question this is will we expect that they will reimburse about a third of the cost money as i was explaining to the group i sort of didn't laugh and just sort of said where do we start where do we end up what is the cure for numbers are there three numbers i knew which is where we ended up last year when it's been certified this year and how much money we had in revenue overages in and out and spend shortfalls the difference is five hundred ten thousand dollars that number is is that if that is what the receivable mount is is that correct meeting and in the next several minutes what would you do is i'll spend some time going through this year that i sent around everybody else everybody had a chance to see and i thought it might be helpful to the least put my thoughts on paper i mean it's really hard to think about  to just think about it don't get lost in whether there's an eight thousand difference in the capital cost or something else look at one hundred forty five million and as i see it and i've heard from people that one of the motivating reasons being walked into the all agreements with the debt voted down we're in a situation where we will never get anyone else to join the district and that's one issue the most  important issue under the old agreement is our ability to get the non members to contribute anything is much weaker under to be negotiated facility's agreement versus unless you get two thirds vote you've got to pay your fair share to come in that's a huge issue in the new agreement but not going to be able to hear the thing that bothers me the most if it gets voted down is those seven towns who send one two three four or five students and pay a minuscule amount of the operating budget are going to have an equal vote with belmont and then when they propose to spend one hundred five million dollars to renovate this place and they'll be voting far and paying a very small amount and will have it passed on to worsen assessment so that i think not having a new immigrant you look at the new agreement even if that if it gets voted down with the remaining time outs who are all sending a lot of students to it they're not going to spend one hundred five million dollars willing and they're going to consider other alternatives such as selling the place and it will be rock bottom be time to come back and reconstitute under the new agreement the two major points you get is much stronger ability to get a nonmember down to pay their fair share and you've got lex ability that we just don't have under the old agreement much and i'd be lost without the wonderful contributions from jack involved in the impact rouge and they've it's been a long process it is a close call lesion for them to understand that you may still be on the fence on this issue i'm in full support of this revised know what what i think will play out is as follows if we vote in favor of this revised agreement i think the rest of the towns will we've had two towns now vote in favor i haven't heard about sco jack probably voted yes but we know  an act and have voted for it favor of it that what we're seeing in correspondence with minuteman high school and really took a while current here is in fact if at the end of march first once all sixteen member towns fact not a guarantee but we've gotten corresponds that in fact they'll do that at that point time the desk staff has already reviewed this and said they have no issues with it we will leave i believe that what will happen is we'll get approval from jesse seven do leave i don't think that will be the case i think perhaps one or two others may stay and under the revised agreement minutemen is required were not required under the under the new constitution for them to go to t and eleven towns twelve or sixteen to pass that under the new agreement we can still vote no and may and we might decide to do that you heard from arlington they're not certain they're in favor of the building if in fact it's  voted no when we still have that sort of ability to sort of shoot it down that there could be a that at that point a district wide vote amongst the nine or ten pounds we may decide as a community we still don't support the building project to cover this current construct and that's i think that's a reasonable conclusion and we as a community if we decide to vote against you know in our majority in our sort vote that we would take then we have an out so i think that's the likely scenario in germany under the old agreement i think but i'm not so certain we can still vote no against the debt i think these other towns that are looking to leave  looking to leave primarily because their capital assessment goes up under the revised agreement when wants out anyway the subway oneself for other reasons but i think a lot of them are just leaving because their costs go up i think they've always been fair with a building pro a school committee voted unanimously for school committee members so i'm not certain it's a better chance at the debt will fail under the old agreement versus the new agreement i'm starting to think that that might feel we have a better chance in the new team and we have an opportunity more flexibility join the district and involve themselves in some governance and i really do believe the broader issue is the and done reflect that is in order to improve the governor of this dysfunctional district the and to get on the right path we need a new agreement and we need to know who wants to be at the table with us and who doesn't and i also feel very strongly that we shouldn't leave the district i think we need to stay and solve the problem rather than turn our backs on it and i think if we were to leave the  stricken we could be faced with that in the revised agreement and you know it's going to we're going to be hard pressed to find education for twenty five to thirty plus children in our community or maybe more that want you know we were quite in the water provided to find seats for you know thirty kids for locational education now with our new high school on the horizon over the next five to ten years perhaps laurie i don't know maybe we can start to think about how we can provide that kind of education here in belmont i'm not certain that's a possibility today i think we'd be compelled to try to look to cambridge and orient or you know i guess  survives that's the other point if we leave the district enough not you know that that's not what our voters tonight this district will just i think implode i mean it's been said many times we can't leave it so i don't think we could i think we need to stay so those are my thoughts that's why i'm in favor is this a perfect agreement it's not a perfect agreement it's a negotiated agreement with fifteen other communities all sitting at the table as jack knew and sat there with us to get to this point i think it has ever been provisions for what it isn't exactly what we would want but again in any negotiated settlement which engine with fifteen other people you're not going to get exactly what you want we got to a point in an in agreement in which sixteen i support the things that mark just said and i just want to reiterate i think jim said this last week too it's very important i think for this town to have confidence that we can have a good relationship with this school and under the current agreement and with the kind of ministration that is just not happening it wasn't true when i was on the school committee years ago we had problems with you know the actual academic questions with regard to the services provided to the development students and the relationship was not a good one and i think that i agree that we should stay in the district that this is our best choice if you will for locational education for belmont students at this point and i think the new agreement gives us a much better chance of having a better firmer relationship with the school committee and the administration of this district and i really think we should have that so i really support this and i do think also that the main point that i took away from what you had given us mike was that it would be better if we could form a new district now with new members but that is not on the table i mean we've been told that by many people it just isn't going to happen and it's much more likely that we can reconstitute the district under the new movement than under the old agreement it would be far more beneficial for belmont financially if we could reconstitute the district with other towns that actually send more students and i think that's the only way it's going to happen so i also support it for that know resources that's something that i think the students currently don't have to be very interested in going to the pond and at one point does a some years ago i think i heard the superintendent say that he's going to try to you know attract ninth grade girls to come to a stem program and i think that's something that the potential of the good place to compete with but certainly there are certain facilities at the end of ok school that it better not going to be able to be built into a new high school i'm so we would have to find if other opportunities when bridge want to make that clear i think some places there will be opportunities but certainly not to replace school committee aside from our friends in arlington apparently in the end of school administration that that needs to change i kind of inherently frustrated when you've they work for us but yet they always seem to act like they're doing us a favor when we are when we're doing something and it's sort of this condescending attitude that we're against occasional education if we dare question the administration which is obviously absurd because nobody believes i think the best change the best ability to change the dysfunction is to approve the agreement pared down from those little towns that have equal vote get us down to the weighted voting of us in arlington the heavy hitters change the administration get this thing moving forward placarded contentious history and then we can maybe then maybe we would be less dysfunctional maybe someone last week some conversation around the stable especially with dan dan really helped me and and i'm and i'm clearly in favor of this and i think it's you know i think it's a and i think it's a good agreement and it's and it's for those two reasons that mark and others have talked about and what adam just laid out about what the path for it is i think is very much a very positive path that we under the new agreement it's the arlington belmont lexington throne of needham and maybe  lancaster and those five those five members of the board can really sort of figure out and work together to create a new strategic vision and i wasn't at the thursday session but i did watch it afterwards on  and there was a question about the vision i think was from gene it was from gina mooney and it was probably about the last question that everyone wanted to talk about because we're all sort of you know talking about talking about the talk about the details of it but i think that's an important thing to also keep in mind is that the future of vocal in the twenty first century is going to look very different from what it looked like this past year and this is not the building plan to recreate the minuteman that we built in one nine hundred seventy this is this is to  create a a a forward looking one and having that smaller group with the weighted voting can i think do a much better job of coming up with a real crafted well crafted strategy for  minuteman and and in that context i actually view the work that they've done to get the m s b aid to this point as a blessing to because because it means that we can we can have that the vision created and then start to see what the possible to do with this building multi day conversation that we've had about this and will vote on this tonight and i suspect the board of selectmen who are on the stand as well as i said before the it's a difficult issue and let's spend a few minutes just talking about how i feel about it because i do feel as though i i see it differently than a number of you and i take that very seriously that you know if i see things differently than watch what i know and respect i think that by that very very carefully what i want to i want to share or i think about it and then everyone will at some point after further discussion people will vote their conscience and what will and will recommend whatever we recommend as a group to tell me so i think you know one thing that i would say is that this agreement is clearly better than the current agreement i think it's that it's indisputably true that the turn agreement is better the new agreement is better than the current agreement i think part of the challenge is that if there are several factors that exist that make voting on the new agreement particularly complicated so if we didn't for example have a brand new school before us right now for this in the very near future that would alter at least the way i would think about this new agreement if we didn't have a six hundred twenty eight person school relative to the roughly half of that that is needed by the member towns so we never school that's proposed is roughly twice the size of what the member towns are going to supply i would think about this new agreement differently that i will talk about the second and if we had certainty about the escape clause that was argued for vehemently by mark and has an uncertainty right now as to whether or not the s c will approve it before or after the new that is actually voted on by a district wide notice if it goes to that if i have certain about that again i would think differently about this new agreement the fact that those three things are not the case complicates the issue from my perspective right if you go to page two of this year that's been handed around there  built just like every other regional locational district four member towns where with the intention that the vast majority of the students would be member town students at the seventy seven seventy and ninety seven percent of the students are from member towns and it's currently fifty seven percent all right and it is if the if the towns that are saying that they want to leave leave the fifty three students leave it will be at fifty two percent so forty eight percent of the students will come from member towns and what's happening right now is that all the member towns are subsidizing any substantial way not including capital operating bases alone the nonmember towns and to me this is fundamentally unfair right it's a twenty nine three i have to let's just assume that there's at least a five thousand to nine thousand dollars difference between what a member towns pay and what number down today right and that is because the operating budget is the operating cost is established by the state obligation to pay half of cost which is i think game important fix actually in the new agreements as i went over to the voting rights are clearly disproportionately skewed to the smaller towns you've got arlington with thirty five percent of students with six percent of the vote it's no question in my mind  new agreement is lastly better for arlington it's not shocking at all that they voted for this agreement i do think that the presence of fragmenting fragmented voting rights not hurts us as well because not only does your voice not really count but if if a whole bunch of towns the don't really care are in the pocket of the administration then you know vote against arlington audience belmont we have practically don't really have any control so i think the new agreement clearly is better at addressing that clearly clearly right third thing is virtually impossible to withdraw today and that is significantly changed under the new agreement and in fact seven towns who have declared their interest potentially will withdraw with for future students the tricky part again is that we've got a six hundred twenty eight person school in front of us right with one hundred forty five million dollars of cost and support and it's almost certain that we're not going to get a new school without a new agreement all right which creates leverage for us to have this conversation the last agreement was created roughly a little less than fifty years ago we proved this warm probably another fifty years before we have another one so i mean this is a one in fifty year opportunity to get the agreement right right and so the question for me is yes it's better is it good enough and i think that's a question that we that we'll talk about  twenty six the average flast five years thirty one and the average of the last ten years thirty one yeah average for the last fifteen years is twenty nine right so there are students that we are not only obligated but we are you know by law but morally compelled to provide you know appropriate technology cation and we will do so under any circumstance and so there's i mean there's no dispute about that anderson right now page five is a new and better he asked better question is it good enough so from a benefit may very well do that it does create an escape clause that again mark advocated for and other members of the more selective mother towns and if you desire the new school which some people do in this room then he treats there's a greater likelihood you're going to get a new school to me personally that you're going to get new towns joining this agreement under this new agreement and that's up to me a fundamental problem because they're on the outside not on the inside there whether they pay their full freight is a function of whether the state charges that not whether or not they're actually locked into doing so right the new number towns may leave because of this a thousand dollar cost right and if they leave you know jack was correct that our costs do not double because  or not that were it it's roughly fifty percent of the of the costs are for the member towns right now the assumptions in the plan that the ministry did is actually a much smaller percentage and so therefore our cost don't actually go but they do go up and that's just on the capital side our costs also go up on the operating side in a meaningful way if those towns go away so if you have an underutilized brenda's school that's not a good thing for anyone right and raising the cost of potentially create some concern about that right and what we have in front of us is potentially a six hundred twenty eight person school it's not clear that this gate laws will necessarily exist if it doesn't get approved in time there's been a positive indication that it will be that's a good thing but there is some uncertainty about that and it seems to me that if we vote for this agreement there's a higher risk of this actually getting passed in a district wide vote than if we vote against it we vote against this new agreement i believe it is virtually it is very hard very hard for zero district wide vote to pass because arlington will oppose it the seven towns will oppose it we will if the new agreement doesn't exist now to me to quote the really hard question if you vote for a better or do you actually try to get a very good in your one in fifty or shocked that's a really hard building is not designed just for the member times unless you believe that all of them are going to grow by eight percent which strikes me as being very unlikely given the chart we saw with the line going down it's still not enough and it's going to go right so to me a very good agreement reconstitute the district properly where the vast majority the students come from the member towns and it guarantees a fair allocation of expanse across the towns because a debate into their participation in the agreement as opposed to approved by someone on the outside right now again you guys can all decide whether or not you think that's a bridge too far whether you think that's there's no chance of us trying to do that right but that's the thing that i really wonder about is this the time to try to get something better now the new agreement also fix the voting rights i think we have a good at remembering to do that a new agreement would allow for withdraw are the risks that i described acceptable law think about that right is a very good agreement highly unlikely if we signed this one i believe the answer is yes i think this is it alright if you think that we're going to get a different agreement and in six months or one year that actually includes mark down i don't think personally that that is going to happen the time is now to get to get the best agreement we can get but it's either this one or another one right i think that it is the clear pressure is now  this one right and then lastly is it likely they want to fill this new school if it is six twenty eight and mostly with numbers i'm not at all confident of that now the outcome of this could be you vote for the agreement and you rejected that and so therefore you get a never times don't support a thousand or increase in cost and you don't come or they pay less we're going to continue to subsidize for the next fifty years in undertones so look this is a tough one right but i want to least get those thoughts on the table so you break that's why i'm saying you shouldn't have very many of them that's exactly why i'm saying well that's true for virtually every other as i understand of occasional school in the state so this is a nice it's not an equally uniquely populated by right and the most expensive school in the state you're right on both occasions both points as i listen to you we're not in a good situation either greece he case and your suggestion is the best way out of the bad situation is to vote against agreement because it will greatly increase the likelihood that the debt which is the elf in the room will be defeated and i said yes that leaves us in the absolute worst position because there's not a new three hundred eighty four student bill and there's going to be a twelve hundred student building that they're going to try to fix with band aids that we're going to have to pay for without m s b april and without any help from the facilities because the facilities agreement or the other provision that you've negotiated marked will not be in an agreement it's the worst case scenario and then your seem to be saying let's put ourself in that situation because then the pressure will be there and then somehow or other the same sixteen pounds goes all same sixteen will be there will be the same disparity between the one of two students versus one hundred thirty students from arlington with the same butting of heads really it's the same butting heads of the different financial interests what makes you think we're going to get a better agreement a third time it's not going to be a perfect agreement got a better agreement this time yeah well back you saying we wait another fifty years and maybe we'll do it better but ok i know that i don't vote for either of these by i want your i think this outline is terrific i think it's a great framework i think the key question that posed at the end is if we vote against this agreement is a new green and possible i think it is possible but i think the right question to ask is is a new agreement probable and i think the answer of a new agreement being probable is not very high i think the more likely outcome if we voted against this agreement to echo a little bit with bob says is people are just going to be exasperated people are going to be frustrated we're going to have sixteen communities in their some of those communities are going to be communities who send a handful of students and so the people they're going to attract to the school committee are going to be people who have some sort of connection with or interest to minuteman they're not going to necessarily represent the broader the same interests as the larger standing communities they may not even represent their towns we've seen that on school committee where the school committee members are advocates and i think i fear that the more likely path the more likely outcome if we vote against this will be people throw up their hands and exasperate and and minuteman starts to come at people with annual appropriations to start spending capital to repair a building that as i said back in november when we're talking about the six twenty eight if you think a six twenty eight school is too large a twelve hundred students school is way too large and so i you know i think i agree with everything you say i think there's an optimistic glass half full hope and where we where we end up if we rejected seven mike i think this is an excellent analysis  ok and i think it's on point in many ways and i think it raises the questions that need to be answered and and you know i've said before i've been struggling with this for weeks and i don't usually struggle with many issues and you know i i hear what you're saying and i am leaning with your concerns the what makes this so difficult is yes it is a better agreement but it's the circumstances under which it is being given to us if this was separate like mike said from the debt and the looming over size school it might be a very easier decision but you know what i can't get around is the fact that the reason why this agreements before us and the reason why it's crafted like it's crafted is because it's designed to get the communities to approve an oversized score and and  and the debt if you separate the two really separate them it might be a it might feel better in the gut what i would like to say i'd like to see us vote on the debt first go community wide vote on the debt and we can always approve this agreement it can be approved after but at least now you separate the two you take the white elephant out of the room and and  then it doesn't seem as troubling to me but if the debt is approved before the agreement it will be under the old agreement well so that you can always pass that agreement and you can always make it retroactive ok just but just like under the new agreement those schools that are withdrawing their liability goes back to december two thousand and fifteen not us not ours those seven that are withdrawing so if we pass a new agreement in the future you can certainly make it retroactive here regardless of how likely it is the debt is allocated each year and under the existing agreements allocated according to a formula which is just how many students did you have  then you know once that's off the table let's focus on this agreement it's a lot easier to swallow for me then then knowing that we're voting on an agreement that's not by belmont i think  jack and mark did a great job but by this administration and by some members of the school committee you know this is tailored with compromises for people to try to approve the new debt and  and that's what makes a troubling to me just a point on i think you could be confusing people if belmont is a member of this district when that debt is incurred with it stop and even if you have a new agreement lets us know later we're out later under the new agreement is not a possibility you know bob in my view i really don't want to get out of the district i don't i think i think you know i support for creation of education we need to be part of the district we need to provide that you know i'll turn it up to our students and i think the minutemen can probably provide it better you know there are than our current school system that can but we really need to right size either the district of the this idea of the sizing of the school was always part of the discussion but i remember i think i actually i think i ask you the question would you support a five hundred students  school you both said yes no so then then the question was well if it's six hundred twenty eight students what's the difference in price between a five hundred students school and the six hundred twenty eight students school  again as i remember the answer not much that's true right so in my mind we're kind of indifferent whether it's six hundred twenty eight or five hundred we don't want twelve hundred that's for sure you only go sheeted away eight hundred which is where the administration was so for me of six hundred twenty it doesn't cost much more than five hundred meters five hundred that's kind of the way i look at i also am separating the  district's reorganization from the school in my own mind you know you have to think about it but you know this one's here that one's next we have we have an opinion from george george  he points out the obvious i think the elephant in the room is that the district is dysfunctional the governance is dysfunctional you have seven towns that have a veto you know if you look at it the other way you know if you need a unanimous approval then you have seven mean that's another way of looking at it and i think that's just as realistic so they had on the website is recently two days ago a comparison between the one nine hundred eighty agreement the two thousand and fourteen agreement or thirteen agreement was it and then you can then the work that the one then go in if you track it all through it really does make for a much better school district the government is better the seven vetoes are gone and you something that you can actually manage and work with in the future so then the question is and as george pointed out he said in the michaels concern too there has been some concern that a district wide vote may be held on the proposed borrowing for a new facility before the amendments are in effect which might prevent a town in which the majority of the voters have voted against the debt authorization from exercising its right to withdraw from the district as previously noted this risk is real however recent communications dessie to the district administration suggest that he is prepared to frankly approve the changes which would obviously resolve that concern so the question for the two of you tonight that i have is the probability that he will approve this before district wide vote on the debt has increased but is it more than fifty percent is it more than eighty percent that you have any idea i  us the question the last point committee meeting which was what's the worst thing that can happen and bob just described what the worst thing can happen is the worst thing that can happen is that we don't get the new agreement and there is no d with this twelve hundred twelve hundred students school that has to be maintained and we have no choice we're going to have to pay for so we're you know even though there's a risk that see may not approved  difference between a six hundred twenty eight and a five hundred or four hundred seventy five school is not the cost of building it what it is the cost of ongoing operations and as you know it's big our involvement has been going down right now it appears we might have roughly half or three hundred district students you know on this remember students and you know the trend has been for their share of operating costs to go down which means our share hundred so five hundred seems to be the number that everybody was comfortable with this is from months ago or more comfortable in the six twenty eight told yeah yeah but you know if if if there's only four hundred students in the six hundred twenty school you would because i was concerned we've always talked about you know that if seven people walk away they walk away from their assets and they walk away from their liability so you know i find myself to be tiresome on this point i'm sure everybody  dispute but this school district has seventeen million in assets and seventeen million in liabilities and guess what's not on the balance sheet of that exactly and guess what the numerous eleven million dollars in guess what they have in the open trust fund zero because they don't have one so you know if you know that's that's a reality you know as we all know accountant i'm  yesterday that you know the land has to be worth more than it was in one nine hundred seventy well you know so i'm uncomfortable with the idea that you know the seven towns when they walk away it is either even or  the revised revised regional agreement that was sixteen so weapons sitting at a table and so in no way that at least i wasn't influenced by anything the minister was trying to compel us to do and so i think it reflects the negotiated settlement of what we discussed i think it's highly unlikely michel and i respect your presentation it's very well done it read it several times that we could get a better agreement i think we've gotten as good as we can get at this point in time i don't i don't see a path the clarity for me and i may be missing a point which we have a very good agreement which was a town in waltham steps up to the plate said i'll join you now i don't see how that's possible unless we just tell them they don't have to pay any capital fee for ten years i don't see why they would be compelled to join i mean they may not join anyway i think the only reason that they couldn't join is that as the seats get filled there's not you know an inability for them to send their children to the district and if we in fact can enforce a scalpel fee it's taxation without representation in the theatre a sense the words are issue for me and i have a high degree of confidence there is absolute risk on this but when i was in the goshen this and i've had private conversations with the and others i have a high degree of confidence as to what they like the open if we improve the revise reach agreement we reconstitute the district the building will down and talk in a more informed and sensible way about what our capital needs are that's least my hope and this is a path forward for that i do i really think that the building will fail under either of three meant and i think it's a high likelihood frankly on the revised agreement because i think on a district wide vote i do you know you throw it to the public and and the number selectman said it's going to be a divisive vote because it's not going to be a it's not a it's a no on you understand it but the votes going to be this do you support vocational education or do you not that's how it's going to be campaigned you know what will be i've said this before and i think members and it's going to be for four six hours on a saturday and i think there are a lot of folks at least turn up for that or say of course i'm for vocational education well if you are then you have to vote for a new building and that's that's not the case and i've said it's a divisive focus you're pitting this idea that if we're against this oversized building we're against for kate you know career and technical education we're not we're just against this idea of a building that's two sides in which we're subsystem subsidizing nonmember town has nothing to do with our continued support and strong support for i think that's how it's going to be campaigned and i worry that it could pass i really do and we have no a plus and i do believe i really do believe and i could be wrong on this that will get your pool prior to that primary way to actually address that is through access you actually write into the revised revised revised agreement that says you can't send more than let's say five schools to the district and foster five students in the district unless you're a member and it much harder so there's some i think you're right that's a very hard question i suspect that there is a solution to that but i don't see the majority under the current model and i don't see them joining under the revised agreement that we have before us  lot of change you know just within the district but probably in terms of the regulatory and political environment to make that happen of i asked oh i'm jacked last week about sort of what's the downside if we have this the school and  curious and if we had this conversation passed i apologize i don't recall it though geoff do you have any sense to any of you who worked on talking about this building how sensitive the the operating costs neither get directly to your answer one is i was part of a task force that tried to look at the nonresident to wish it from not members to say is that a net benefit or a net loss to us and what we tried to do was look at the eighty or so line items in the budget and try to split each of those into fixed versus variable components and what we had to concluding is that from the point of view of the member towns although those nonmember communities weren't contributing their fair share of costs they work contributing more than their marginal cost of having them in the school but that's the whole thing a lot of things constant and the one thing in this the second part of the answer and roland per se i don't think is the driver of the sensitivity what is the driver of the sensitivity is how many vocational programs do you offer and there has been the little appetite within the minuteman school committee to reduce programs because if you reduce programs you sweep in some share of the member towns students i tried when we were putting this education plan together associated with the six hundred twenty eight students school i tried to get rid of the horticulture program you have to build this fancy green house it's a program that has served six member towns dues it has thirty plus kids in it six of which are member towns we had everybody who could spell landscape adam meeting crying how silly that would be i think not to advocate too much you're more likely to make that argument successfully with weighted voting if you're more likely to have those people who share a disparate or share a proportionate portion of cost to think about those arguments and then you know that's as bob has said a big reason for the school but i think if we build a school for six twenty eight and i have a what jim was saying tonight is where i was in the fall you know you're not going to get a exactly proportional reduction in your capital cost for each percentage decline in moment so let's say for every percent of the kleine you get a seventy five percent seventy five percent of that the client if you get in a capital cost savings to go from six twenty eight to five hundred is roughly a twenty percent drop in enrollment so maybe you get a fifteen percent cost savings but you walk away from a nine percent m s p remember smith you figure how long does it take us to get back into line at the m s b get to the point where we're at if it's three years and operating expenses or capital costs are growing at three percent a year you're going to lose nine percent from the m s p a reimbursement you're going to lose nine percent on inflation and three years from now you're going to build this five hundred students school for more than it cost you to build the six twenty eight so that's where i come out on the building but the key thing is if the scenario willing to say we can't run sixteen vocational programs with three hundred people we're going to lose five of them and i think the school committee will be more inclined to do that with roy i don't have a whole lot of new points to make i just say i agree with the arguments in favor of the new agreement as the least bad alternative of terms of getting a better reman i don't see how we the best agreement would be one in which  either the significant nonmember towns were compelled to join the district and i don't see any mechanism for that happening or they were obligated to pay the capital fee i think we would actually be indifferent because the major concern simply of th be paid for an affair of way i don't see any prospect of i don't see the incentive for the non member towns to join really even under the new agreement very clearly the best shot at making this fair for everybody is to make sure that a reason the capital charges assessed and that is a possibility out of there in the under the new premier it's an impossibility under the old agreement as i understand it and i'm concerned that as mark says what we have here is a consensus view of the sixteen selectman not not the minuteman administration which is dysfunctional for reasons beyond which hundred to one thousand students school and if it went to five hundred i'm not sure the operating costs would drop by very much because it's the staffing that stuck and that they seemingly refuse to or are incapable of adjusting the waiter set up now but that's a separate issue that we but i think in terms of the immediate question of is the agreement beneficial i think the answer is yes for the reasons that were explained because it does seem likely to me as a relative newcomer to this whole to the details of this debate that the dead kids defeated that there will be a great pressure to repair the old school which is the worst outcome for everybody and all of the speculation or the conject the wishful thinking of having a reconstituted district with towns that are currently not members and making all sorts of other arrangements i don't think that will ever that's just that will never be discussed that because the the option that it seems likely for the minute administration to take is simply to repair the building that they've got because that is something they can achieve otherwise this will be debated forever and i think instead is likely to come to a resolution that would be far worse to some extent one is which i mentioned in the last meeting is that you know this is not kind of a landscape type school you know it and i thought it was a great life but the point is that eighty five percent of the students go to go to college so there's this school if you've got a system if you go to if you go to minuteman you get a great high school education in addition to the bookcase to just actually it's about sixty percent of the kids go on and used to be sixty most people wouldn't assume that two thirds of minimum kids actually go on a postgraduate you know so you know i looked into it also and the point is it's a great academic program as well as a vocational program that's one point i wanted to make in the second one is that the administration gets the budget numbers annually from the minutemen and i think you were appointed by michael ware to the school committee and so with school we're not the expert on the school are on our own schools it's more of the school committee and so michael up there but i just you know my question is about our own governance how do we want to manage this going forward you know once once this decision is taken arguments michael i really think this is a fabulous framework and i think every town meeting member would benefit from it it doesn't conclude it hints at where you come out but it raises the critical questions and i think it would be a terrific framework if our presentation was followed by this and you can just say here we talked about at the war committee here's how we thought about the question but i think this could be a great guide in a great framework for shaping the discussion in the debate on a town meeting floor and i would request urge hope that you follow up by our presentation on the m discussion and the nature and the opinion of the group as opposed to my own position is possible that i will be in the distinct minority as we go down the us in which case i don't want to i would try to do right by all of you and reflect the position best in the presentation that we put together to be straightforward as possible but this is a very complex nuanced issue or not not to suggest to tommy won't understand it but it's going to get complicated and they wanted to just make that statement that we're aware  i mean to educate tell me members in terms of you know how do we get to this point so i gree with jack that what mike has done here has been as helpful as well for the discussion before we move on to voting respect everyone's opinion here very much you know and jack and mark i really it's i mean i've been back and forth on this all night actually honest i'm probably leaning more in your camp with this because i feel like there's more risks associated with this new agreement  i think it can be better so i'm kind of leaning towards against it i just you know i do appreciate everybody else and i'm sorry this is a close call chris i said this before and you know frankly from our point of view when the working it will be ok but clearly there are risks so it's a close call and tell me to may say it's too close for us to reach to the so that's fine as well like we work at this i think is where we want to be but if you vote against it that's ok it's real close call that we will lose that because they're they're going to be able to you know market we're not going to have that much time because the timing of when that is due to get out and how does it help you very much that's how i think the administration will frame it right and i think that is so so it seems to me that we will likely be with this debt in this new school regardless of what we do tonight or regardless of whether we not remit i do not believe it will actually have to fly over because i think you have seven towns that will be opposed to if they want to be they don't want to do school a bit more which they would have to pay for under the old agreement you would have arlington that would not want to the new a new school without the new change from the two thousand and fourteen version to the two thousand and sixteen version was letting seven towns out if they had such an allergic reaction to the capital cost allocation formula that th caviar how much though do they control the voters but you know the town officials would be more inclined to vote and support the school under the old agreement than the new i can't handicap how many but there are some for whom it's the capital allocation formula that is motivating their request to leave that's absolutely the case i don't understand the logic but i'm not sure of this you have to look at the calculation is he might  higher because i only said four i get tagged for five but under this new agreement i go for some of the total cost and i said it still fifty percent still based on my well that and they're also whacking me for my household and their numbers go up when we can try to extract some kind of payment from in order to go she ations to equalise their dish you know seventy seven thousand dollars i think it is or invaded for voting towards this thing that i think i agree with everything you wrote in here and here in syria i think it's improbable that it would happen that we would get something better right now but what i wanted to ask was was it really the worst case would a hundred million dollar renovation voted by the school committee i think is a concern right it strikes me that if this actual if if this fails and you've got a whole lot of people that want to agreement including arlington right so within the next i put it in under any way shape or form within the next year we are going to have a new agreement right the question is it this one or is it a better one that's and i think it's a really hard call as to whether you know you're going to get a better one than this and so you know i  agreement we have sixteen equally weighted votes there are going to be i don't know what the number is six seven towns who send so few students that it's not a blip on their annual budget and their committee because they send so few students is going to be somebody who's a minuteman advocate and so it's going to be pretty i don't think there's ever been a budget that's been voted down they need eleven votes sure they need two thirds but there are so many communities who at town meetings you know it just does not rise to the the level of attention that it rises to in belmont in arlington and that's i think the real danger as bob has pointed out the real danger of this existing agreement is sixteen equally weighted communities some of which are small communities who are not impacted by towns or where the member towns continue for the next fifty years where we just simply subsidize you know other towns for the next fifty years because you can't get a better agreement in the next six months and i just like to think and maybe call me german that doesn't exist before us and that this is the end just reacting to that that that the other way to deal with this risk is to make a better school and and that's wh the vision that's where the future of oka is it's not going so i'd much rather have this kind of agreement and then the news the momentum that the selectmen have brought to change the governance process and really make minimum in going for a much better school than lives now and i mean really looking very closely at the super and looking very closely at the programs and everything else and that's possible with what is going forward now and if and if we turn the stuff down rancor there hasn't been any accusations i mean i think it there's been a huge amount of positive well intentioned discussion and i think about that in the context of our federal government and the way our congress operates and not getting anything done at all i just you know i project as i think you mentioned last week and just we had just come from the big board meeting where they officially the way the process works is they invited the film one statement of interest into a period of eligibility twenty six schools  doesn't start ticking until fifteen days after that vote last week we do have sixty days to appoint a villain to many of the moderator appoints this committee and does require town meeting approval to allow them to i'm so i don't know if you have a chance to read there was an e mail from the clerk marion scale who actually has a six thirty three makes it so there's a line was added so after everything that laurie just read there's  proposed additional language that says so the scope of work for the building committee would include including a new evaluation of site conditions caused by prior use of the property as a dump site so information is that where the new we plan to go we know it's down by the pool and actually well could be at both ends actually but anyway it's not the project is not defined yet but i suspect that any opening of the ground the amendment proposed by challenges so we can get because i don't see fault here you're actually you're actually doing two votes at once by doing so you know you're not voting on the amendment but i'm but i'm just saying but i'm discovering us either way we should that's me but i think i've been here for a vote on the amendment and then and then vote on it i suppose what you're suggesting essentially voted on it as amended and vote on it as on about it right and i would just rolling that into one motion disinclined to take a simple creation of a building committee and try to like have a process where people don't put up with individual moments i mean just critical to me let them do their job so that's kind of how i would initially think about it but it's a p r problem i don't want to vote i read it so that so is this the amendment comes at the very end of it shall be the most you have the motions will have all things under says that the town votes so this is the original that the town vote to establish a belmont high school building committee for the purpose of renovation and or that's the original member and then there's a comma and that says including a new evaluation of site conditions caused by prior use of the property as a dumpsite rights that's the amendment which is including a new evaluation of site conditions caused by the pr establishing building committees sometimes i just want to make sure that adding something doesn't add up somehow legally they pretty much prescribe when and where and how you do things so clearly this will be part of the discussion with gloria david help me with the money as you probably know the answer to this this appoint some meeting or probably yeah just because we'll need some feasibility study with some engineering on ok so any other discussion on the amendments to that motion yet excuse me cas bob remember when we made this an article it was before we even know m s j approved the project so it was to kind of get ahead of the curve so it does seem maybe at unnecessary amendment but harmless but it would be helpful in the presentation of the main motion if it was ever present here could explain whatever so i conditions are contemplated in the normal course and then it'll maybe make it obvious that the amendment is really irrelevant  you know to the extent that i heard allegations that there's increased cancer rates among teachers and people who are in and around that site i don't know if they're trope ok i didn't even know it was a dump site but it is probably prudent before we build a hundred million plus school to know that it's safe for our kids that that said i'm a product of that school and i'm still here with you his we're only halfway through the year before the last time this will present a good one it was about one hundred thousand dollars of deficit projected and so there are a lot of things that you know we'll see how it breaks the weather continues for example what if some context to each of the one and the other big piece and then i would just mention if you take a look at those on the front page of this and you just look down the balance deficit which is the second home in the right i mean you'll see i think is the fourth cell up from the bottom where there's a seven hundred thousand dollars deficit in the special education tuitions line and this is something i wanted to point out that this year because it looks like things are breaking our way that that will be able to be covered but it just sort of points again to the need in your essay that as we talked about this table you can have you know a couple of kids with very severe needs that come into the district and help in my life  committee and school department is determined as best we can muster something passerby that happens in the next five months to have come with a balance and there be no request for that so i think the trend is in the right direction and again you know something does your be going to happen but that's  just as a comment i mean it's a day after groundhog day so it's not so we seem to be caught in a cycle where i mean this is this is the third year that i've been on the education committee where we're facing facing seems like m m s going to to try and i put you on the spot as to whether that's that's possible path you're looking at but i but i guess i would sort of make sure that you take a look at all the zero and we can certainly go through line by line i think the hope earlier tony's done that that's absolutely the right but the intent and i think the big difference this year is we had the override so we did have an infusion of funds to help you know infuse the special education lines that that's a big difference because you're there's because because i just i mean just for the full committee that the dialogue within within the subcommittee has always been is this has this been number one in going dissipated or not at the end of last year the government or the special ravishing was in the significant increase that we applied to the special education budget did we over budget for it because i thought that was a discussion we had to be over budget for  the only other thing i would put a plug in that i also mentioned my report last night is that the ten elections are coming up at the moment there are two three year terms on the school committee and one one year term and when i spoke with ellen goodman yesterday morning there was only one  someone who had returned their papers so please consider it yourself or talk to your friends and neighbors it's a really it's a great job to have but there needs to be people stepping forward in the next two weeks i think the deadlines are sixt twenty fourth which is the reason why they didn't bring it so it's entirely my way that it doesn't happen so i believe i believe you have the know and can distribute them so if you can distribute that electronically and you could just send this letter to be as well we'll talk about the m i've always felt of course that it's a good project it's a viable project it took two years to permit head and put from the residents the community the businesses and the developer so i say and i continue to believe it's a good project but any project is tied to the owner of the property and the land and the person who is going to develop it and you know that's where all the delay has been and and you know the developer has promised that there were milestones that he could complete that he simply has been able unable to satisfy  from what i heard last night there may be some changes in in the financing parties ok the parties financing the transactions or changes in some of the partners  that that will certainly necessitate a new review by the board of selectmen of you know how viable has his financing and financial arrangement is so there is something going on there  which i personally and i don't think any of us really know have a full picture of what's going on but i can say this the selectmen even though the owner wanted to close on the parking lot six months ago the selectmen have taken the position that we will not tender the deed we will not give the developer the deed we will not sell on the parking lot unless the closing takes place at the same time contemporaneously with his lon mansingh so once that you know forty seven fifty million dollar loan gets recorded then we feel we're secure that the financing is in the projects going to develop and then we will record a land development agreement that obligates the developer to build out the project in accordance with the special permit and at the same time we give them the deed to record so we see we are still holding on to the deed of the parking lot number one number two the developer had a period of two years you'll recall bob because you were involved where he could extend the closing date by making auction payments to the town that two years is about to expire march twenty seventh i believe it's march twenty seventh by that time he would have paid six hundred thousand to the town and option payments and if he can't close it's unsightly property in cushing square i feel the frustrations of the local residents i feel the financial pressures of the local businesses that have been trying to hold out waiting for that project to break ground and  bring some vitality to the area you know but at some point very soon you know i think the board of selectmen are you know are going to be put in a position unless unless he comes and he proves that his financing is in order before that march date and that he's able to close and and the loan is going to is going to be recorded at the same time and funds dispersed unless that happens by march twenty seventh then the selectmen are going to have a very difficult policy decision to make you know do we let the purchase and sale expire do we more than likely he'll request an extension ok don't know what the appetite is right now but it's not very appetising you know and i don't know i mean maybe the fallback option becomes horn road you know the portion of for