starting construction actually of the one brooke task force probably can be seen something on the agenda at the end of the month for for awarding that contract recreation strategic plan we finalized that and  we are part of that is going to be in this budget and we'll talk about that when we get to it we have some software updates and recreation as well to help make their  project had several meetings and discussions and we've worked out a comprehensive i guess you would say draft working draft that's being presented to c was part of that there was all the information that we got for the last two years now it is been critical in for public works going for for the next always team on what progress we've made and what information we've gathered for solid waste collection we've had scores of meetings with the working group and we've had communities come in who have implemented different components of alternative collection systems we've issued a great brochure to the public this past spring on the solid waste collection recycling we've met with different consultants actually did a trash audit which the j and phyllis and the team will be talking to you about we did the pilot program so we've done a lot of work and so it's the next juncture is really to decide whether we do more outreach an investigation or we have the board make a policy decision on the type of solid waste collection we would like to move forward to as part of a bid process but i think we've done a lot of great work in terms of  communities collecting information working with the working group so i think we have a lot of good information to share and then what the next steps would be there are some policy decisions that the board will need to make going forward with regard to bulky items  with regard to collection days and the like so but i think a lot of great work has been done by jay and mike and mary beth callan and phyllis and and the working group so i think we've been working hard to do and we're also working with the war in water we're in the us we're going to do and we did the first phase of a sudden the smarmy program and we can get into that as well as we move we actually gigs lined perfectly because where scheduled to replace all our water meters and we were able to dovetail the technology so that the meters are read automatically instead by somebody right around with the wind so it will give users a they'll be able to they can get an app on their phone to separate murders where we'll be able to do the same thing too but they if they have a leak they can set a parameter in there if i use so much of what i want to know and it will red flag them do the implementation there are a number of homes that the meter housings will stay in place and with this retrofit them with the new module other residents depending on the meter age of the housing will be changing everything at the same time so because i know on the on the water meter you know they they scheduled it they walked in they are plugged one thing and plugged another thing in and yours is going to be like that largely or do you have to plummet eighty percent we figure any person will be playing twenty five minutes where in the world working on right now we're doing a comprehensive sidewalk management plan or right now the consultant that was hired is inventorying our sidewalks and prioritizing based on a number system so much of the pain management program something we we have currently that it's basically really tedious for them to try to implement any changes from the that or recommended from the plan and  staffing needs speech changed and so we have three part time directors that or a basically or a tired or they internal reorganization based upon the other carmen's of the director of the pool and the sport program and summer camps so then the second pitch so that's that's a different track the other track is to we are working on our p to solicit proposals to get somebody in as a interim recreation management person to help shepherd the conversations somebody who really is dedicated to try to implement the action plan for the recreation strategic plan that would be the focus of their time the reward that we have in the budget is basically to take our existing staff expand their duties so that we can absorb the program magic functions of the sport camps and the pool into permanent staff and basically we've added some administrative staff to allow those things to continue as well as having the permanent staff to help guide the strike creation strategic plant implementation with this contracted person because obviously but i think the thing that we've learned as part of the recommendation of the wreck plan is we need to have somebody come in to start the conversation to start the implementation of the action plans which are significant in terms of number but they will have to facility usage scheduling and how we pay for maintenance it which is maybe changing or could be changing based so it's really if it's really somebody help focus on those details but also take the opportunity from a from a staffing standpoint to become more efficient and basically institutionalize the part time director positions into permanent staff with the timing of this we have a draft of the  staff to take advantage of opportunities to get to the place budget and i think we talked about this and that's basically the way we should proceed to provide more effective and efficient services in those areas and last as this goes along with recreation as i work phyllis and i and june how working on an old local radio watertown to have an agreement with watertown helping us with funding for the sport program ok great  transfer of sixty one that's any further so what you're saying is that we're in the red by sixty one any additional storm which puts further in the red and nobody's going to say we're also with the snow season correct to sixty five thousand increase year over year that's enough because sixt removed seven forty nine going from so in ages fifty six in the detail so we basically have increased the overtime component and then the non salary component for all that that that's for four straight so mike can talk about jay can talk about you talking about the twenty thousand dollar increase or so that we that's a that's a reallocation within the public works project i can speak to the detail but basically that is to pay for our forestry private contracted to do tree trimming of public trees and that is important because when we have all these microbursts the storms during the summer or frankly in the in the fall that hopefully prevent it came down pine trees and stuff like that so what we've been doing by increasing the budget little by little each time attacking a lot of these back lots of plants and it certainly has helped but now unfortunately some of the older trees that you the rules it turns out the belmont had pretty high fees for all of its services so there wasn't a great opportunity with the exception of recreation which in oregon and then with june and then i think that's led to all of this but i'm curious because one of the rules was that you we couldn't make money on the services that we provided so when when you said that we made a million dollars that's not exist and we didn't make collected a million dollars i just didn't want to write i didn't want anybody in the public to think that we made a million dollars and gave it to somebody or something like that revenues offset the program how does it work just in general when when somebody is having a program at the pool you know what how does it work w a program it's not just the idea in general it's not for me it's more for the public and you know when when jane mentioned that you know a million dollars in revenues came in then then i know we can't make money on our services and so we didn't want to mislead anybody not that jay was trying to do that it's a nice number it's good that it's working but we just need a little extra explanation of how it works the revenues are collected and they go into the general  specific fees to me talking about you know just and so the general issue is we clearly have budgeted a million dollars in rec fees which is a significant increase from prior years because of the primarily through the participation of more family memberships at the pool we've also had at some increased cost to the rec program so generally the fees that we collect cover the cost of the programming for the rec division so it's pretty it's i think with an eight thousand dollars so and when we priority listing of who uses the poor one and obviously school uses a first time record department second and then private users so he met the school apart manages the scheduling the pool to the extent that we use the pool we manage the fees that are collected for the indoor pool programming so that it's a school facility covering the time and then with regard to water and sewage in your rates and i think david has said that that pension and health care hope have are not in the rates how does that go so basically the water and sewer fund is enterprise fund and the budgets that are proposed to help set the rate include all the costs so there are employees who are assigned to the water division and assigned to the so a division which our enterprise funds and we cover the cost of their salaries and their fringe benefits so that is covered in the rates an then this idea that the water rates will go up five percent a year is that in this document and if you look if you look at your budget back up on the last pages ninety nine hundred ninety three going forward there basically is a draft budget just from a macro level one of the things i'm concerned about is i think you know this idea that it can go up five percent a year obviously it's got to be you know measured against the need but if we do five percent a year for ten years  we're talking about a fifty percent increase so i'm going to under it if there's if that's really our intention you know you know in the terms of the context several years ago there was a strategic plan done on water and sewer right and one of the recommendations was to moderate the increase in the water sewage sewer to make sure that they we did not exceed a five percent increase that doesn't mean that they can't be lower and in fact last year you did approve a water and sewer rate that did have a rate increase lower than five percent seven it was like four points i was it was you know that was the year before i think it was three something and this water and so right will be less than that so i think clearly we are mindful when we develop the budgets because we know that whether it's a user fee or tax it comes out of people's pockets so we try to look at the budget think you will see a water and sewer rate increase that will be well below five percent and that but again as personally unless unless there's a real need for that kind of increase i i think five percent is way too h i'm ok with that and then we also have debt in the last year or so so may just be clear as glen develops a plan to deal with the al falls and has to borrow money that will be included in the right so as we do testing based upon the permit process as we do more work in terms of remediation of the l falls those costs will have to be folded into the budgets of the water and sewer and basically those will have an impact on the right so i think what we're doing for of replacement and the automation of reading is we're using our savings account to basically fund that over a two year period so it's not an impact on the rate payer we're basically using our retained earnings from water and sewer over two year period not to impact the rate but i do want to say that some of the things that we include in the water and so are outside our control such as m w our ray and debt service that are an issue and they will be impacted based upon what we need to do to comply with the newbie's regulations and that is to come i think you know again i'm a thirty thousand feet in and i think you know people we have to pay our bills and residents have to pay their bills and we're not we're not in a position financially you know not to charge for what what a service costs i mean we have to do that but what i'm concerned about is if there's some kind of idea that it's ok to raise something five percent a year and our target is not to go up up five that's right so i think we're seeing a little bit backwards the policy and the framework that was developed as part of the strategic plan was to have a cap of five percent and to have and have generally it be below five percent so there's no automatic five percent increase built into the thought process i might worry about a cap if the actual costs go up because the only way we can pay for that is out of real estate taxes which is not something you know i would like other thing that people are concerned about the department's capabilities of implementing the projects that we've all worked on and you've been intimately involved with the tennis courts you've been intimately involved with the people who are you've been intimately involved with with grove street are you concerned about the impact on the department you know going forward as a result of doing those projects or do you think the planning i mean i personally because i'm sitting on the committee and i've been through it with you all think that the planning on those projects or is pretty good and by pretty good i mean you know four point out of a four point but how works that we're busy we are always busy there's always something going on and we just you know that's kind of the way laughs and i think what people are concerned about is maintenance going forward but that's been considered a project right for us for what  well i think let me just say that the town of minutes strangers budget has not been increased significantly other than to cover salary increases and step increases we've kept the non salar components the same so i think in terms of the f y eighteen budget we're pretty straightforward i would only very quickly just point out that the board of selectmen town of ministries budget does reflect the accomplishments of seventeen and i think we've touched upon them at the other departments about the completion of the sale of the cushing square municipal parking lot for a million three which has not only put monies into the town coffers for potential future capital uses but has also allowed the project to move forward which will allow for the economic  cushing square we reaffirmed our aaa bond rating last year with a bond sale we are moving forward on our belmont high school building project and we met our module one requirements on schedule we finished the belmont center reconstruction project this past fall we do have some punch list items and some warranty issues that will deal with but we've got the project on the light station project has been completed and will generate because and eighteen and we've continued institutionalize our team model approach as you say i think that our budgets are coordinated with our department heads and we coordinate with the school apartment obviously our meat and potatoes in terms of town we had a significant amount of time that we worked on the minuteman issue with regard to the processes of withdrawing from the district and rejecting the debt and so that was a major accomplishment terms of educating the solar rooftop unit campaign which had over two hundred forty five installations the community path process is continually issued they are for pay and as you noted decision time will be forthcoming in the spring and summer percent and extending the edge schedule slightly we talked about the opap working group and their their issuance of guidance so we can move forward on an actuarial study we just approved the employer group waiver plan opportunities phyllis is working on the cable t v horizon and we did it for comcast last year the underwood pool had its first full season and as we said we had almost a thousand family memberships hopefully will expand upon that now we did work hard to collaboratively with the belmont light to implement our new utility billing collection accounting system which will allow the functionality to be used when we do the next phase of the water meter replacement and data transmission we we did work we did work collaborate with the school department the rec department to finish the full three the changes to our existing alcohol rules and regulations and outdoor seating we have a final draft this one small tweak we have to do and should be transit meaning that to you shortly we did work and have work with the logan airport noise advisor that phyllis is assisting with we do our main protgs in terms of issuing our common vixen our retail liquor licenses and we have increased our facility rentals in terms of the game plan for next year and clearly hiring a new town administrator permanently will be something that will be front and center we have provided you with a transition plan yesterday that will allow us to move forward  draft schedule that would hopefully lead you to have a permanent you know we slice me in august so i think we're trying to keep on schedule the issuance of the r f p was the first step of that and i think the  first grant of one hundred fifty thousand dollars we filed our report which now will allow us to apply for a competitive grants which we will use to do further boileau replacements and other repairs  belmont high school building process will continue in terms of hiring a designer to help us analyze the feasibility of the three options obviously the time ministry will be involved in the  that has a poor acronym in terms of coming up with a future plan for future buildings major buildings again as we move through the high school the conversations with regard to the private public partnership for new skating rink will continue  again the feasibility study component and the decision about path options with the committee path implementation will be on the board of selectmen splay the solid waste collection contracted will be talked about and decided during eighteen with ultimately a bid being issued in the fall so that if there is a changing collection process or a change in vendor there's adequate time to provide education to the citizenry and to acclimate the new vendor we will be buying new equipment as part of this contract whether we even if we don't change the method of pick up because the new contract will as always will call for to make sure reliability of equipment so there will be a lead time for the new vendor or the existing vendor to order a quick meant so we need to keep that in mind iraq street just being we talked about jessica's working on expiring contracts with the time ministry does office we talked about updating our personnel policies which is ongoing we talked about the implementation of our water meter program and our automated modernization of reading  let's see parky management plan basically we will be making our sure metering stations go live sometime at the end of march we believe working with the business community  to ninety july first so i mean for me if we're talking about it in i appreciate all the work that you have done with these people in the business community the the thing is you should you know if you want to think about it you could think about it in terms of extremes should should employee parking be free i mean are we really are i don't think and i don't think we can we can't say that because we have other constituents who was probably would not consider that so this is this is st lot and those need if we want to have a vital vitality of our business center they need to turn over and so what we've done last several months is to try to organize a parking so that the spaces available in them and one of th that the board will have to come to grips with if the macy's building becomes wildly successful with new tenants is what do we do with employee parking who will stretch or stress out the two hundred spots in terms of swallowing day i mean twenty cents an hour and buy but regardless even if you want to pay you know if you want to pay the money and you think it's fair right very sort of the very fresher on the parking lot it with a new employees we have been sitting out macy's will be a challenge for the board i would also add the board needs to think about what we do with the farmer's market because clearly they're going to come before you shortly looking to get another ok place what you're saying david because generally ca and i know david thinks that he's getting but i looked at the cambridge statement this morning there are two hundred six million for pension unfunded pension into twelve for opeth so david frying pan to the fire think you have backup for everything that's in the financial statements right and i mean that's something that you're really proud of because i mean that is you know that will make your eyes go sixteen what did you do in that regard then or are you finished with that work have finished with the data collection by two to the k m s so what i have to do is basically interact with the retiree voice like that with thank you for your ordinary service to this community it's been outstanding we've accomplished a lot together and i'm proud of that you'll be surely missed by this board and others and you've worked with and thank you