a eligible and then the second step is we'll get a final application we're we're not going to vet the from the standpoint the financial viability of it we're going to look at it  schedule i certainly don't we certainly don't look at these projects and say well it's a huge future operating expenses if there are we preservation committee is recommending to town meeting and they're all here to answer your questions i think they're all here so as you all know c p s is state law that the to allows towns to establish the local fund to mainly to acquire and preserve three things that's open space which includes outdoor recreation historic buildings and resources and community housing or affordable housing so the c p a in belmont has two sources of money the property tax surcharge and a yearly match from our yearly distribution from the state so the locally generated surcharge on our property taxes is one point five percent and that comes out to about one hundred fifty six dollars per single family household for the average per year the state match so now there are two there's the last four years there's been two sources of money that go into that so the first is the fee that's charged at on most real estate transactions at the registries of deeds that's a twenty dollars fee so depending on the real estate market this amount has fluctuated statewide between twenty five million and fifty million so the last four years it's been about twenty five million  for five years so knowledge with that in mind the state legislature has recommended and it has occurred that if there's a state budget surplus money from the state surplus goes to the a so four years ago an extra twenty five million went to the c p a so it it doubled their match would have been three years ago there was a surplus and eleven point four million additional went to that  and then last year or two years ago ten million last year there was no surplus so in the legislature right now there's a bill to the fee is twenty dollars it has not changed since two thousand so that there's and built up the fee to give up more of a long term solution so that more money would go to the state so those are the two sources and then so our process is that we recommend that the projects for town meeting who has the final say on funding in our committee has nine members six of us come from different wards or commissions in towns five are required by the state five of those members are required to come from different boards for example i'm from the conservation commission and mainly at that point we're looking to make sure they're eligible for funding and that's where we show you the chart where you're open space do you are you acquiring present creating or preserving open space so you have to fit into one of these boxes so that's what  mainly do in the fall but we also for example p q playground will be here tonight they came two years ago and they came with the their project initially asked for the funding for the entire project and we  maybe you should be a two step process so two years ago or last may it ended up two years ago fall they came for money and they changed after the primary to just to put up a design plan so then in december early december usually our final applications are due so there were looking to ensure that there's community need for the project that it involves all the necessary groups and boards in town and that it's beneficial to belmont the projects the committee is guided by our preservation community preservation plan which we update every year so the plan outlines both general criteria for projects to meet and specific criteria for each of those four categories and some of the general criterion clue doesn't preserve or use currently own town assets does it preserve the essential character of belmont as described in the comprehensive plan is  consistent with other current belknap planning documents does it benefit in under served population doesn't leverage other funds so those are examples of some of the general criteria and then there's also a specific for each of the four categories town and from the match that we get from the state is interest paid it on be about one point two to one point three million dollars so in addition there's also a rollover from previous years that unappropriated funding so in total we have about two million dollars in  that could be used in available funds at this town meeting so these five projects as you know total one point one million one hundred eighty three thousand and that town meeting has three things it can do it can approve it can approve but reduce the amount of funding or it can reject the projects you know that's about all i'm saying in sure i'm just going to run through the five projects that we are presenting tonight very quickly and then after i do that i think floyd will manage orchestrate any of the proponents who may want to come forward for if you have any questions for the first one is we're at st tennis courts this is the third set  tennis courts that we've done with c p a money we've done particular we've done when brooke this is a project that's sponsored by the d p w you'll notice that this year the cost has gone up a little bit we're estimating three hundred thirty six thousand dollars for this project it's been a little cheaper in the past the second project is assessment and project redevelopment of sherman gardens this is sponsored by the beaumont housing authority this will be as it says an assessment an evaluation so basically this is a study of sherman gardens which is housing for senior citizens which was built in the seventy's i believe one nine hundred seventy one and therefore the buildings are not handicapped accessible for seniors to get to wander facilities they have to go up and down stairs there's no elevators it's desperately in need of some we have built haitian and updating but in particular handicapped accessibility and so this would be the study and then following this would be presumably a request to somebody to fund the actual work that needs to be done there and i suspect that would be a phased project but donna can speak to that short belmont headquarters sons of italy historical artifacts preservation this is a small request twenty four thousand dollars by as always happens with these things we spent a lot of time discussing it this is a very interesting project i think because it is looking for funding to preserve the artifacts that the sons of italy have collected the dates headquarters for sons of italy is in belmont which is nice for us  so the question arose will if this is the state headquarters why is belmont c p a going to fund this and we kind of went around a little bit on that but decided that it was a worthy project the sons of italy agreed to do to do some of their own fundraising or to provide some of their own services in terms of storage and computers and those kinds of things which reduced their initial request also they have agreed to open up these artifacts once they've been catalogued in preserved so that schools or any other people in the town could look at them and that will be arranged at some point and we felt that because some of the money for c p a does come from the state it seemed reasonable to be able a very small amount the next is gross street park intergenerational walking path construction site planned you may recall a couple of years ago capital budget funded a thirty thousand dollars study for the girl street playground and this was supposed to be a comprehensive study to look at what's going to happen there because there are so many constituencies soccer little e tot lot walking parking there's a lot that goes into that site there and how can it be better utilized what would be a plan for rehabilitating it step by step by step so this is the next phase of that plan this is the first request for actually implementing a piece of that plan and the piece is a walking path that would go throughout the park that would provide access for people in wheelchairs with strollers on walkers etc etc and make it a more usable space in the center to the outside and around the periphery so this as you all know is just a construction site plan this is not the actual construction and this is a request for thirty five thousand dollars and then finally p q playground revitalization project has paid noted this is phase two so this is the big ticket request to actually do the work that was planned out with the first request a year ago and as with some of the other projects the proponents have agreed to do some fund raising which has lowered the cost to six hundred fifteen thousand dollars still a big project it involves playground equipment but it involves a significant amount of site work which includes remediating some drainage issues there and both the proponents and jay could speak more to  question so let me just make another point and that is the c p a was behind getting all these telescopes fixed up because in about two or three years it's going to be a high school project i'm going to say three to five yes because you're going to have to get i have a pretty good night project up there this gives the opportunity for the high school to figure out which one of these courts they want to use for the various groups so that's number one and number two the little investment we're putting up now and i granted it three hundred thousand but that's going to be child's play if we had a bus these kids out of town to other courts so that was really our thought process as far as pushing forward to get all of these court up and running thinking ahead what's coming down the road in twenty nineteen twenty twenty and let me make one final comment there dollars i actually put in the question about the demand study and my impression that there's no question that the grove street courts are in terrible condition and that if you were going to do any work down there replacement of the courts make sense rather than try to rebuild what's there but it seems to me that there would be little harm if this project waited a year because the work has been done and p q before courts were put in it went broke or are going to be put in and when broken it was explained last year that the one of the reasons for doing for when brooke was to have a sufficient number of courts to run high school tournament and given that i recognize that the me there's something to be said for waiting a year and assessing what the true demand is for these courts and i would point out that there are two seemingly with a wonderful parking area that also get very little use and if we found that the existing tennis so these were oversubscribed then i think i would be more confident that doing four quarts of grove street was a good idea or potentially only two quarts of groceries rather than replacing everything there simply because historically there have been that number of courts there so that that is my concern about this project not the condition of the courts but simply the opportunity to actually question i thought you asked for an assessment of the if we had to meet course in town of there with the questions are related to the the if you are asking anyone that lives near any of these parks they will tell you that the tennis courts are used all the time very expensive and at the end of the day if it turns out that yes it's there while the use of the use all the time and it and it's it's something that we've looked at recreation wise is something they really need to start  future west but it seems that this money is always just generally always a scarce resource because one of the projects that to me is  a little bit more gentle and we could either be more sure that it's a good idea that year from now or do something else a year from now if the indications were that the demand wasn't there i keep thinking back to i know five six years ago when these tennis courts were on the chopping block a town meeting for actually moving forward to restore then it was the gross straightforwards that triggered that you know the ones that p q not the ones that went broke i believe that there is i don't have those words i don't see the usage of them but i do believe there's a lot of time i think it's something that we should do now when we have the opportunity to do it if we have the money to do it and then not find us find ourselves later on with the operating budget because we didn't do it well not i'm not saying not to do it i'm saying that there's we would learn something if we waited a year that's my proposal yes and you know the rich very moved talked a lot about tennis and so i think that the land is to utilize the assets you know more and to also generate more funds from when we have tennis that that's a possibility and i do recall a town meeting the way on said that gates said people put more money and when we were talking about at that time you know having a whether we should have the courts or not so it sounds like we're going to have to do the course of we're going to wall bit public back when outbid the following year so the more you shot in a window the more you don't give us an opportunity is to kick those courts into a big process he kind of back us up against a wall because genuinely believe that once this high school projects start to arkaroola those courts are going to go and we need to have a fallback position we need to be able to play and at least from that aspect of the you sports up at the priority for recreation right now these tennis courts or is it something else from the recreation well can we really use for certain kinds of recreation like open open space that can't be used for recreation like to fix the hockey rink for example it can be only used for fields below what it can be used for as it is this is a top priority i don't know that there's been a prioritization of all of the assets and we have talked about whether the town should you know look at sort of all the open space in town and try to figure out it seems that we've done things more piecemeal but i think that in general i don't and i don't know if we voted on this but i think in general there's been support for from the tennis courts can't say for sure whether there's been a board on it but in general we have supported the other renovation of the other tennis courts in general there's been support all of the projects of them been brought to the recognition for discussion and there was not a vote i've lived in the grove street area and abut the park and when the tennis courts went we all presented that the recognition and i don't think you voted but i think there was a general agreement of the projects that that the courts have been resurfaced and they're used all the time who is a member of the community preservation committee and i'm also a member of the board of commissioners for the housing authority so we are requesting one hundred seventy three thousand dollars to conduct a an assessment project redevelopment of sherman gardens sherman gardens as an a v unit to take down the public housing development for seniors and the disabled already so first of all none of the units at sherman garden not one is handicapped accessible forty of the units requires the person living there to climb a flight of stairs access their units all residents must climb a set of stairs to access the laundry room as well as storage facilities so the development is built in one nine hundred seventy one and even though it was intended for the first seniors and disabled it really wasn't built with them in mind so this hundred seventy three thousand dollars would be used to  look at the feasibility of adding a new construction building with elevator access for the elderly and disabled residents of belmont to that site as well as look into the creation of additional affordable apartments asherman gardens according to the comprehensive plan the most comprehensive plan the number of seniors in belmont is supposed to increase by about twenty five percent in the next fifteen  has both have medical needs or an elderly person who needs a personal care attendant having in that new construction building with elevator access would allow for that configuration so we would like to explore those options and one hundred seventy three thousand dollars would be used to hire a housing development specialist as well as entire an architectural team to look at the most the best use of the that space and what could be created there the housing the salt will look at development partners financing options and really complete a market research study to see what best suits that that location so that we think that with the to as an anecdote anecdotally looking at just the belmont housing authority list for seniors there right now eighty six residents elderly and disabled residents of belmont on that list and again with the numbers of seniors rising over the next ten or fifteen years that number is going to go up and again their needs for a suitable housing is going to increase and sherman gardens doesn't meet those needs in waverley oaks right now has another seventy four apartments of elderly and sable apartments but only was appropriate parents three apartments are handicapped accessible there so there's really a need in belmont to look at more suitable housing for that elderly and disabled population looking at financing options for the new development and working with a different town department as well as of voters to make sure that again we are looking at this as a proactive step so that we can really get the neighbors the residents of the town  focused on the needs of the of these elderly and disabled residents and then look at design options that would meet those needs and then we would hire an architectural team that will look at a variety of options presented as options to the we would be working with the mass housing partnership and we would who works with state aid to development and there have been a number of stated developments around recently the summer bill and chelsea housing authorities were granted very large funding from the state and are doing this not designs in their elderly portfolio but other designs in their stated portfolio and to increase the numbers of units as well as  the list to actually help this that's right i mean this is what we need we need to have something to go to them and say here we are we've talked to the the the different members of the town the a butter's the resident we are on board for this development what can you do for us and again they have had others a special program that up to ten million dollars of funding cuts and given by the state again we would require additional funding through probably nonprofit developers to work with us but that would be a huge you know a huge funding opportunity for us but we have to have something first they're always looking for that's when the reasons we need to have something like development ready to go to them is they then take it on do you get your money back for doing the pulmonary planning and all night i don't believe so this is an investment and i think it's an investment for the town again this isn't just for work i don't want housing authority this is for the residents of belmont  like you so just understand the process that we would theoretically fund the hundred seventy three thousand to be a study that would then give you the ability to go to some group in the state and say hey help us redevelop this german gardens if that happens then would theoretically the state pay for all of the work when they pay for some of the work how how how should we think about it is exactly what would be the future obligation for belmont to partially fund this work or the state doing it how should we think about that so we would preservation funds is because it's a sign that the community supports the development and no matter how much or how little it's a signal that the town is behind that development because of the way the community preservation committee is formed and it has to go through town meeting or whatever process so the amount of money we would be looking for again i'm not going to put numbers out as i have no idea what that number might be most of my would come from the state or nonprofit developer the money from the c p a committee would be again more of  an amount that would be looked at as a support for the project but certainly not as a critical piece of the of the development as we're all looking to for it at belmont to fund this development so belmont would not think what we're waiting for is to see those what the development recommends in terms of the number of additional units and the size of those units could be an additional number of one bedroom apartment and it could be funded not just from it won't be funded all from state public housing funds or could be tax credit funding for example that would go into this development and so there were there could be c p a funds there could be some units then funded up to one hundred percent a very median income because c p a funds allow for that so there are a lot of different ways that this could be developed and the units are constructed but it's just a matter of that having a professional in here all the options and see what could be done well and i had two questions you mentioned on the residents that there were many of them are residents who are going to need this but this is everyone usually there is a velma preference answer was will be for cushing village and those are was for the royal belmont i think it's a matter of how that is publicized and how to attract people to apply for those units is certainly critical but again there is a need here in belmont and i think that's what we would be looking for is to draw people from our communities to those units we would also really you know there are eight public housing units and we're up again we're not sure yet how the funding what what funding will be available but we would like to guarantee that those eighty units are continue to be funded by the state and state public housing have down payment or an incentive instructor in place to to get substantially more money from the state to then support affordable housing in belmont feels like almost the perfect use of c p a funds to me so i didn't from my perspective it seems like a very sensible thing to support and that the time frame suppose of the study is sounds like it has a one or two year i was crazy two years that went to hire the consultant and will work with me as housing partnership to put together  consultant that that person would be on board for probably six to nine months gathering somebody from asian and then hopefully that way we can go out for an architectural team and then that might take another year or so my guess is a year and a half to two years would be the time frame for the project and do you know how many units the mass housing partnership has funded in the last year or two i'm sure hundreds i mean they're there they're the a major funder for a lot of fam affordable housing in the state so that i was so this plan was ready by two thousand and nineteen it's possible the project could start reasonably soon there's a lot so i wish my guess is that there are many other affordable projects out there and many other communities looking to adopt affordable housing there are probably many factors to be taken into account including the availability of up to low income housing tax credits and things like that we would need to secure a developer so i think optimistically you know it would be you know several years down the road from that point time just to gather together all the different pieces i worked at the cambridge housing authority for many years and we've done many redevelopment we did many redevelopment projects there and they you know there was a pretty lengthy timeframe but again the basis is getting all the players to agree on the plan once you have that agreement on the plan then it's just a matter of sort of figuring out how to put the money together is like a puzzle in putting all that putting the initial development hybrid or well that's what we want that's what we're hiring these folks to to term and i mean i i have been i've seen many options you know from replacing some redeveloping others new construction to you know if it's could go out lot of different ways and that's why we want to have the experts in place to give us some sound options that we can evaluate the g benefits of the different options to the possibility of increasing the number yes definitely we want to increase and we think that if you're going to build right now all the apartments are two story apartments there sentenced century if you look at look at there's a series of buildings and doorways you walk into one doorway there are two apartments on the first floor two apartments on the second floor and there's a string of either you know six apartments or twelve apartments or twenty four apartments so you could think about if you put and an elevator building on that site you're going to have some of those folks that are living in these two storey apartment could go into that elevator building and so you can redevelop on those were those the part where those folks moved out of so  there's a lot of different opportunities i've seen plans where we could just build on top of the current two story structures i mean i've seen architects have i've been meeting with some of the a student team at the boston college just to get some ideas about what could happen in sherman gardens and that's one of the options so there's it's all over the place but that's what i would want the community input to help guide us and give us  background so there's not an easy it was for me to take and when i took it i discovered that there was a room in our headquarters you know by the way the headquarters is i ninety have you know right down the street from the high school it's a very nice building and they've been there for thirty years you know it's their home they love affair you know and they move there because belmont as a community had a lot of the talents getting in they were very friendly to us we moved it well it's the hub of all our operations and so every think they close on throughout the state not these little lodges and all these communities is run from that building in belmont ok now so i get this job i go into the work they open the door and we see stuff i mean document statue the ninety's there was water and so they lost quite a bit so now from an intelligence standpoint we have to figure out if this stuff is valid from a historic people who are in fact confessional profession and this a woman who had just finished the ross perot mark museum in texas and had just finished that she just finished about a month ago  kennedy family museum on the cape and she now has the b western public library project i guess what happened was there was damage down in the in the downstairs and so now she's working on it now she sort of fell in love with  and if somehow this can be put together professional confession then it can be shared first with stoops down the street is the high school and then with the community anybody that and we and we applied for a for rent and as this grew so and as word got out we got interest from other groups so individuals that want to see this happen because they have items to donate belmont residents that are interested in their italian heritage and want to see if like their ancestors were involved so the idea is to kind of make buy in from the friends of the italian cultural commission and they they do an event every year called the telling me where they raise money in regards  members messages of the sons of italy and we we saw this list of these funds we have this is funding and you know it's not a lot but we did we might want to do something with it so we brought them in we showed them the use the street the the c e o president is a member of the sons of italy and they looked at the materials it's a boy we want to be tied into this database you know so as people research their genealogy from throughout the world benefits when it stuck not only can it be viewed used for research but that database that we're using called past perfect which by the way we have six volunteer docents already studying that database taking classes on how to use database can be tapped into from throughout the world i mean i think that's fascinating and all of it we go into the school system right away with a powerpoint presentation with a website ok classes can come and visit our site walk through or we could just take our materials and go through the clerk of the classrooms we have a letter  from the superintendent superintendent and the idea is just a record to video the whole process so that it's accessible to belmont residents for them to see how this process works in preserving artifacts  d also doing a talk to the historical society about how the preservation of process works and the artifacts themselves the other interesting thing that's happened is the said that the idea is kind of grown is that other organizations specifically ones that have to do with encouraging the italian language are looking good would like to bring in the italian language and there's some funding that goes along with that to belmont high school easy in certain can even those that are already teaching italian that they you know you come in and they says well you will pay for the textbooks and then you know hopefully they'll say yes and you can help them pay for the textbooks or we'll give you a local television and have them do special programs on you know channel five chronicle i mean that's where we're trying to go to make something dynamic and engaging so that you know the history of the belmont residents and my first question is assuming this is to be kind of a museum where people could come in how much display space do you have what we own the whole building and there were rooms there th might be used you know one night a meet and week two nights a week for meetings but there's you know there's multiple rooms for con you know the money's going for it's so there which we get a lot of space so it's not a commitment then to additional ten times but the real hidden value of one of the terribly is the fact that it's there in that building which the sons of italy knows they've been around for one hundred years they're not going to go away you've got a huge population base here in mass they get an executive director and staff you know watch watching over all of it it's open during the day for people like all of these doses these volunteers we if you have six thousand members of the sons of italy and you want twenty four thousand dollars that's four dollars apiece shouldn't this be funded privately by those people that have this abiding interest in what you're trying to twenty four thousand dollars is my vote for just a clarification with with ford or for peggy i mean as i as i remember i mean part of the whole c p a actors  processes too is to have this from the open door for the open door from community projects and while you know often we get focused on projects that get really sort of triggered within how you know th that seemed like it could be projects that could be funded by the town money as well i mean there is there is this separate track that that that actually does it doesn't encourage projects to show up there that we would our budget is pretty pretty you know straightforward ok and we didn't budget for this however we do have the f i c c which is where we take our funds that we want to  go we donate it to these funds that want to go to projects such as this and you know other six thousand members i would say that you know whatever the f i c c has for funding i would say maybe eighty percent of it comes from sons of italy members and  spent i don't think it ought to be for this single purpose for this particular ethnic group did you say that there was a ten thousand dollars cash supplement coming from another source correct so the top the total cash budget is on the order of thirty four thirty five thousand that's correct and bob veitch i share the general concern i think it's a balancing act because the c p a also does allow for this sort of thing and i think the the it's not unreasonable on a first this is kind of an experiment to limit the exposure and i think twenty five thousand dollars is a size i would be comfortable going and if it triggers an avalanche of similar applications in the future i think we would just have to reassess reassess how sustainable that is but i think for present purposes  given that there is a ten thousand dollar contribution in addition to what's here seems like a significant fraction of the total so i am at least i'm appropriate response is to go back and see whether we're happy with the level of c p a tax and because we can always scale that up and down and change the program that way so i mean so that's what the issue is is it is project it sort of goes back to sort of the bigger issue that we were discussing the last time around and you mentioned that the c p a the act allows for it but i guess i'm sort of still trying to figure out what it is we want to be doing with our c p a funds i know we gave some money for the home or house which was also a a nonprofit not government but most of what we've done has been you know dealing with some of our issues around town assets and this whole sort of you know town versus completely private projects like should our town funds be going to completely private projects and i'm really sort of torn on all of this and i think this sort of is emblematic of that i find it hard it seems to me that if if the effect in the end is for belmont to actually gain a small museum that to me makes it more appealing if it were simply preservation of artifacts that would then be put back into storage that it would be much less attractive to me thousand dollars whether that can be accomplished because having you know had cabinets built in the past it's very expensive to have that kind of things and so that's one of the reasons why i asked what the total amount of the project was because it feels this could be the museum but i also want to get things in the lobby should it so the idea is that it be like ninety five open the reason why we went for the additional funding and it's for that reason is that we wanted to make it  more dynamic that people could have like a touch screen and you know follow along in you know see know what these different artifacts worse is that would have to be somebody that was there you know twenty four seven during that time so that's the idea of the additional funding to make it more you know museum like follow along you know and you know what you're looking at and getting that information but we can be open in the evenings open with a pointless so if in fact there's a group that would like to come in the evening set up an appointment so i think about this a little bit as an experiment i don't think it's an enormous amount of money here i hear your point bob but i think that you know if you've got some public private partnership on this it is the state headquarters for for the  for this organization you know i think it's an opportunity for us to put a little bit of money towards this see whether or not it actually is a good use of funds monitors you whether or not we actually have some uses and then if it's good minute then you might you know based on limited standards of proof something like in the past or maybe  were all neighbors and boaters to try to come to some kind of consensus around what we were going to do with the activity master plan study there were a lot of recommendations in there and we wanted to understand how the neighbors felt about enacting that and what we settled on even mothers with strollers as an example if you want to get from dalton road to the playground you basically have to walk all the way around the park on a long grove street to get there and there aren't sidewalks except on gro access points to the park that would also accomplish getting people into the park but once you're there there aren't pathways there basically you're now so confronted with a lot of chain link fencing and a big field of grass there's of designated area or or even a hint as to where you might want to walk and so it's not very inviting for somebody to just enter the park and enjoy it and once you're in the park there's no landscaping there's there's just nothing there it's a straight up cow would hope to accomplish that in the coming year and then be back before you next year with an application for funding but in doing this plan we can also then immediately take that on into the community and try to do some fundraising as well  so that's basically it anticipating a question the construction cost on this could be anywhere from three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars depending had a peg had a pretty high figure around four hundred thousand but that included a lot of a lot of fancier a know we've not been approached movements well we haven't talked to them you know there would be we would definitely be engaged with them in the design process but at this point i mean we haven't heard anything from them so baseball batting cages would be  you know i don't think it was an effort cushion it was just making sure that before we went too far down the path that there was there was some discussion about where we're batting cages be and how that would impact this or how that c changed or had this would be interactive by them so that's all just to think about the background of that activity also identified as a spot for the best cages which looks looks interesting and i think that the point of the construction site plan is basically to bring with and what type of material and construction and there's a lot of things and the soccer there soccer youth ball they were all one i remember they were going to be part of that process of a draft and then maybe park was came together after the public meetings that the town held when the activity ass plan was presented and what what the group did was to synthesize and i'll say this as politely as possible many different voices that came to the table and what our group did was we went through every single variable that was presented and we we we really just as i said synthesize it down to the to the lowest common denominator and we realized funding was an issue we realised that we had people that wanted all the bells and whistles and people that wanted pure open space and so how did we bring that together in something that was sustainable manageable eighty eight compliant in this is really as you know with the addition of some of the landscaping and some benches and so forth it feel so i i'm not sure if you know the answer to this or very marty you're not sure but the notion of a of a walking path of growth strikes me as being a pretty sensible idea the thing that i don't really understand is how this actually fits into the overall plan and whether the overall plan is actually appropriately bait so as to justify doing this now so you know there's a there's a ridiculous footprint about where this path goes and so if that's consistent with the way the you many things going on just in a line along the baseball field across grossinger that that that path is going to have to move and shift around it will so so this is just that that's you know it's a representation of things  the process is there to be just plan there is this has three baseball fields on it it has tennis courts it has some things there are a long grove that may or may not stay like is that big and we know that it's those things are going to be there or yes ok so it's just that's all part of the  step it's taking it's taking over not replicating what we've got replicating what we've done and it's moving it to the to the next phase which is to get us ready to actually build something and it's going it is taking an element of the activity t this you know you say there's going to be some wind scrapings invention i understand inches but basically this plan is essentially a perimeter path and it comes in from the perimeter across where the tight lot is a little bit near the field but why is this going to be so qualitatively different from walking on the sidewalk there aren't any sidewalks living there now there's one sidewalk along grocery road there are no other sidewalks you can't walk around the perimeter of the park so right now because these are active sports fields and if you're in the park that's even why when steve says that you know four feet may be the only margin that's available we are looking at something to bring people into the park on days that there's not a game there which is frequently and right now folks really do they don't they don't get into the park it's it is this big vast ocean of grass which is basically what it's for right i mean it's a  you know the folks folks that were giving us the go ahead to the park is little shabby right now to tell you the truth so we're again i'll go back to the lowest common denominator getting folks and getting some very sustainable landscaping and a very sustainable path for little kids to ride bicycles people in wheelchairs what have you mean i you know i have a parent in a wheelchair there are neighbors in wheelchairs and they don't  into the park so even though it's on the perimeter i mean it's difficult given all the constraints it's really difficult to figure out what the path would be inside there could be potentially one of a route run that goes from gro down to the tennis courts that's one possibility in the to bring people more into it but right now you took you can't walk around it on anything but on the street basically and some of it there you just walk across the field mentioned in their opening remarks we were from c p c about a year ago with the idea of revitalizing the playground at p q and we were advised to take it out take it in phases with the first phase being doing more of a comprehensive outreach to the community to really get by and input on what the the revised playground should look like if you keep so last year we requested twenty five thousand dollars q hire a designer to work history that outreach process go through various design integration and come up with a plan we started the process last summer we had a series of public meetings back and from that came back with various iterations throughout the public process and came up with a plan and you see that plan in front of you larger picture it will have some walking past we have a lot of intergenerational family members of our community that come to the parking for for various uses there's two different playgrounds one for smaller kids we have a lot of preschools in about our fundraising plan ok so people are really excited about what's happening at p q m just to give you a little bit of background you know one of the questions are going to ask is you know peaking is first who's next loop in their original design and that's used by scooters and walkers and bikes and and so people like that little loop so much so that it's the impetus for the larger loop you see  then there's that p q dirt melons that kids play on now and that was a popular that we want to keep them out in but there's the the big man's going to stay there where kids want to you know right over it on their bikes and such and then there is going to incorporated as its name to get our nonprofit status so we have seven board members and you know three of us are here so p q friends of p q is not just here for the project and then going away the idea is to take  a place that has not had any money put into it in a very long time put money into it upgrade it make a really nice park and then work with the town to maintain any just in terms of we have a longer window to be able to do that fundraising so it's not like they're going to don't raise those funds and how does that get take how does that get so that's kind of both that's you know like do we  raise our money and then you know and then go to the c p a or do we go to the c p a first and then raise our money so we chose thirty five thousand dollars after you know kind of looking at analyzing what's a practical amount to raise so we said even if this project will not have the spade in the ground much before the summer of two thousand and eight another word for it you might get approved may june  will not stop much before mid summer to eighteen so this times do some fundraising that's the way the thing frequently and i have a question about governance so there's now there's a frenzy of grocery park which may do private fundraising there's friends of p q park that may do private fundraising but it's a clear when the project is all done that this is going to control by the town of belmont and not by any private organization we've been working on our bylaws and have that exact line was that yes it's an asset of the town we serve as a resource for the park and know this is a bit of a hybrid just like joe is part was in a whole bunch of others i'm curious how this to relates to how a building committee works with something like the under with pool so in that case the town completely ran the project and you know we are the we were the building committee we you know made decisions and such but it was completely town run and joe was perp was a very different model in this case is the project run by the  paying the bills was done by me but if with so if we we tell meeting approved six hundred fifteen thousand dollars and it goes out and it comes back again it's going to be you know to same as a press box or a seventy five thousand dollars privately but it's honest job for a while three or four years from now someone else will have a different opinion of how to use the money so we're we're very specific on making sure we get documentation before we accept those funds about the other question comes up about what if we decide that we're not going to give the money to the town i said well you know that's your decision just be prepared when you start getting a lot of it by the i r s because you know why that five a one c is still around and what happened to those funds because i get those letters occasionally want to know has the money been turned over to the town and what has the town done with the money and so all of this is pretty transparent pretty open so as a big project but quite so much from town time needed if you will for the veterans memorial projects i'm not sure but it's it strikes me now that as the c p a projects develop as we get different ones with different levels of engagement there's going to be if not straight out cost to the town significant opportunity cost for the staff in terms of their own jobs and what we ask them to do in various ways that seems to me to be something that needs to be formally considered as part of the project as they get brought to the c p a table just how that works and how it fits into the work plan of the staff overall and and what departments are going to be involved in will there in fact be telling resources used and is that appropriate i mean these are town assets certainly the playground is an asset we should support it but it's i think it's a significant question it's becoming more so as the projects get bigger because there are some big projects have they would just be putting the storms up there which would be alleviate the issue that we have of flooding there just for a point of clarification the drawing we have here is not the yeah it shows that it's one of the older drawings originally other considerations on how to treat storm water on the site  on yeah i'd like to sort of touch on the fund raising piece of this we've had a few different recreation projects come before us tonight one of them i'll just c ast the tennis courts which the d p w has proposed that we do and p q park which a group of residents has proposed that we do both of which are one hundred percent assets and because one is proposed by residents there's a fund raising suggestion and because one is proposed by a town department there's not a fund raising suggestion and i think we have  i think that's a funny line to draw that if you know if if we as a as you know if our town department says we need to go redo the playground then we don't ask for private fund raising but if a resident group does then we do ask for private fund raising and i just i want to raise it i don't know that there's anything to say about it right now but i think we're in this very funny spot agreed i think if residents are willing unfortunately for me i think that that's one of the things certainly that i was thinking of because both but the butler playground which is on school grounds and do his part raise a significant in the funds that were used for that so i hear what you're saying and it totally i totally do so i guess the question just came from you know the fairness of it i guess but but then i realize with grove street we and at the time the the policy was that school playgrounds were paid for by parents and so they set upon that path joe is park was not a school playground technically so but we as the winter p t a were asked to fundraise the c p a happened to come along in the same year there have been funds for the capital budget but now we have this new c p a so we applied to the c p a for a piece of it and then but we're still under the assumption that we needed to fundraise for the bulk of it and it's it's morphed over time to applying for the funding for the whole thing but with the suggestion that you might want to fundraise for a piece of it but matrix of the different factors at the c p c looks at one of them is whether leverage is private money so it's a factor it doesn't have to be the factor i guess on a case by case basis and project by project basis sounds like parents really want to put money into playgrounds and they may not one of the tennis players may not want to put it into the tennis court i don't know what the answer to that is this also is aside from just being a playground it is alleviating a major flooding problem in that area because there's an underground stream there which you didn't point out during this presentation i've heard you say before and also that the seniors who came to the meetings i was that really wanted a path and that exercise equipment in the west and so adults have something i think it also may reflect though the priorities like for jay the priority when he looks is capital projects a priority was to do tennis courts over over a playground for example so it was really generated from it it's just you know and maybe we need to look and i think grants for example if community bikepath or whatever because i think this is sort of piecemeal and each project is different and we treat it differently you know and so with peaking in particular so we we got the cost estimate and the estimate need to be reviewed by the the state c p a to make sure that everything qualified and part of their recommendations back to to the c p c committee was you know everything qualifies and typically on a and probably all the recreation assets would be crumbling i don't see this as a warm fuzzy body that would support putting tons of money into recreation assets but because we have the c p a and this was the wisdom of the legislation that money can only be used for very specific things here mark so it's you know it's a two edged sword i hate to say it but the the position of the c project are not things that would have been built with capital budget money i mean it would playgrounds might have been built i mean but they wouldn't be as elaborate or as much of a community asset as these proposals are at the playground of joyce park as there was not a proposal but it's the original joyce park was that way i mean it just it's a different kind of object of what might be envisioned if we were just using our resources and balancing them against fire engines and whatever else you know  so it doesn't seem to me to be reasonable to think that there would be some community contribution to these more elaborate ideas you know one thing i'll add is that last year when you know a few of us got together and decided yeah i guess it's really two years ago to say we want to see improvements to the park we did some research on our own and i went online and said oh it's like it's little cost this much and i say and so we came to the c p a at first and said we want a hundred eighty five thousand dollars just to rip out what's there and replace and instead the feedback we got was you know put more thought into this this is going to be more a longer term thing hire you know some expertise to do this and that's how we got to the design we have and two different animals joe is was a community build it was a tremendous amount of volunteer labor it was a lot of donated services by contractors frankly i'm  i mean you know the the piece of the of the cost is the equipment but a lot of the cost is dealing with you know all of the site issues and that was true but the playground as  own there there isn't there isn't a built in constituent but the school has a built in constituen and it's interesting the group working on this are you know younger families it's me again actual homeowners in that p q area and control but we're building a part that's going to be used by a lot of transit a lot of people who are only here for two or three years did not vote to not approve it so we didn't take a vote so we didn't disapprove or suggest that we weren't going to again approve of having the farmer's market on the parking lot in clapham street  kevin foley from what to tell it properties trust are concerned and had a member of signatures from a lot of the businesses there that frankly i was surprised suggesting they don't support putting so when my colleagues on the board wanted time to sort of  canvass some of the businesses i wanted to move forward through i think it's a quality of life issue it's been there for eleven years we have no other place to put it this relationship at home we can send e mails saying that you're disappointed that we didn't approve it we haven't taken a vote on it so it's now been pushed committee only thing i want to say brief time is that there's a first community forum about the from on high school or by the belmont high school building committee scheduled for april sixth at the street center at seven p