good evening everyone and welcome to this special edition of candidates debates tonight for the first time housing authority candidates for the three year seat thomas you know olson and paul richter will face off in a live debate in just a few moments tom tommy and paul will have the opportunity to give a two minute to minute introduction about themselves after that chuck and i will take turns asking them questions about housing authority related issues and paul will go first with this introduction welcome paul thank you i want to thank you chuck joanna and tommy for the opportunity to get together and discuss the issues facing the belmont housing authority and for this chance to introduce myself i'm a town meeting member from precinct eight and i'm running in a town wide race for the first time i'm enjoying the chance to meet the voters of belmont and i'm actually a belmont native though my family moved to arlington when i was four years old and that's where i grew up i came back to belmont in two thousand and ten when my wife and i bought a house on cross street near the wynn brook school we love the thing and don't want professionally i'm a programmer i work for a software company called medi tech we make information systems for hospitals and i work in westwood there are three reasons why i'm running for housing authority one is my commitment to safe clean affordable housing affordable housing is a value not just to the residents but to the entire town this is an important part of the fabric of our community the second reason is my depth of experience serving a nonprofit boards i've served twenty five years on various boards including ten years on the national board of the unitarian universal association i've shared boards i've chaired finance committees i've cheered search committees i've got a huge variety of experience in this area the third reason i'm running is that i want to use my commitment and experience to help you know me as tommy and i'm running for the three years vacated by my friend backer when he moved him i've lived in belmont with my husband since one thousand nine hundred seventy five we have four children three sons jay ted and matt and a daughter giuliana all of completed college one with an m b a and all work either in boston or new york i serve on a number of town committees council on aging traffic advisory economic development i founded in produce the pay some park music festival and four years ago i began producing a belmont media series belmont rising to end violence towards women i originally became aware of housing authorities when i called belmont housing authority for advice over a year ago a friend in a neighboring community had been a victim from his horror affordable housing unit this individual was a senior citizen who did not smoke drink or do noisy chin ups in his apartment he was however a hoarder and because of his depression forgot to pay his rent as a board member of belmont see a way i believe systems could have been put in place in advance to remedy both of these issues however the neighboring town summarily addicted him carting off all of his possessions to a storage unit as we learned from going to several legal aid associations it was not possible to change the local ruling it was also not possible to get a response from the state governing body he spent thirteen months on the street living in shelters or his car since he was a veteran and became ill the v a finally got him a bed in the bedford v a hospital he got well and is presently living in a private home of a friend with these two areas of support as a citizen with knowledge what our social programs are intended to do i believe what he went through with the travesty i want to ensure that our belmont housing authority systems provide the support along with the clean safe environment that our citizens ne thank you tommy i wish both of you the best of luck in the upcoming election on april fifth i'm going to briefly review the rules about tonight's debate and everyone this is a live debate we actually have a live studio audience here all right chuck we'll ask you the first question tom ok all right the first question for you guys tonight is as you know the belmont is currently talking about the community of one of the routes and it seems to be the preferred route of the yesterday ok i believe it would disturb the peace and quiet enjoyment of our resident housing authority residents deserve the same rights as peace and quiet enjoyment as the rest of us belmont ranchers and homeowners further i don't believe this will occur having served on the community path advisory committee to the selectmen our recommendations were turned over to the community pat implementation committee that committee has recently issued an r f p but i believe there will not be a recommendation for the bike path to go through belmont village but rather on m b t a property we should not be taking property away from you know longing for the day we get to finally use the path of talking about it for so long and i'm confident that it will be built but of course the devil's in the details again there's the question of there's questions about the entire route and certainly the question path going through belmont village i know there's a lot of concern on the housing authority about the traffic heavy traffic on the path going through an area where kids are going to be playing potentially so i think this is  this is a great opportunity to find you know an alternative route it sounds like going along with the m b t a property it sounds like it's going to be a tight squeeze so i think that will work but in my opening i talked about creative solutions that make a difference in people's lives and this is an example i'm confident we can find a creative solution that helps make the path go in the right route and helps deal with the concerns of the housing authority so this is a challenge i'm happy to if it is for seen or discussed the preferred route is to go through bowen village or go along the existing train tracks how would you weigh what the town would like to do in terms of putting a bike  president's been one village and how would you know those waters tommy well are you going to i think first of all i think that the consultant with this r f p that's going out is going to know the all the things we've gone through community path advisory committee took a long time i think where it sat for thirteen months community pap implementation committe think that the town's going to recognise that they can't disturb the city the residents of belmont village i mean maybe that's what you are hearing from sitting on the housing authority committee but i  i maintain close ties with a few members of both of those committees and i don't think it's a concern and certainly if they started talking about belmont village i'd be the first one that that route seems like the preferred route for the community then i think you find a win when you find a way to work work out what are the objections that the the residents at belmont village have and can we figure out a way to come up with a route that that works i think it's up i think there's always a way if there's a will there's a way there's a way to make it happen it sounds like it might be that the preferred route is going to end up going along the m b t tracks which would solve the problem but if that doesn't happen then you know you find a way to work it out it's it's it's not hard we know what we want we want the community paths of just need to make it happen right now ready for the next ok paul you will go next do you think there should be an additional board member seat for someone who actively lives in one of the housing authority communities this is something that's being discussed at the state level so i think it's a i think it's a great idea and i think it will work i think it's really important to ground the work of the housing authority by having representation of someone who is affected day to day by the decisions being made by the housing authority so i think it's a i think it's a good thing it's and it's good that's a good thing because it actually is state law already that the law passed in two thousand and fourteen and right now we're just waiting for the regulations to be written to implement how the tenet representative will be selected and how that works i also know that if if cities and towns in massachusetts that heard of housing and urban development properties there's already a hard requirement that there be a ton of representative on those housing authority so there's a lot of experience in various towns i know what town in there and brookline have very very good housing authorities and they have tons of representatives and sounds like it works well for them so i'm looking forward i think this is this is a is a great opportunity i'm i'm in favor of it ok thank you tom well given that it's law obviously i think we should implement it but i would want to you know to make sure that the person who gets who gets chosen is willing to bring forward those issues i recently spent some time with residents at one of the housing locations and they gave some very valuable feedback they i think it's important to bring that feedback to the housing authority and and respond to their issues i think there was a follow up question and i don't know if you're going there are you going to th residents of the housing communities in the been afraid to come for with complaints about issues they have they're having are afraid of retribution by the employees against them as well as fellow residents complained about them concerns the residents i spoke with was that the meetings where they could air their concerns had moved from what was an easily accessible location to a more remote and i believe they said  evening most of the older rabbit residents have minimal access to transportation the te's not accessible many don't drive at a minimum i would advocate for a rotating monthly schedule so that one month it would be a sherman gardens the next belmont village then waverly oaks and then repeat the schedule i would also advocate for an anonymous suggestion box for residents regarding their concerns so that they c bring they could present their concern in a non threatening way taking those concerns i would look to other town departments council on aging belmont board of health for assistance in resolving these concerns  that that would be i mean i think there needs to be more inner agency collaboration based on the concerns i heard from some of the residents thank you tommy also i could see how this would be a challenge coming forward with complaints especially those who are small communities where everybody knows everyone else and i'm sure there's situations where someone would feel like they are you know going to make a complaint and people know who their word to complain so seems to be the way to resolve it is to just have a variety of options that people have you know to use to raise a complaint and to resolve it not just one route i think it's important that the primary route should go through the executive director but there might be other ways to to to solve problems there i know there's open time before housing housing authority meetings and that might be a good time to for people to raise things but you know housing authority board members should be open to receiving you know any complaint from any resident so you know communication is key i think it m akes sense to conduct regular surveys of residents to make sure that any issues that are getting raised already you know bubble up i think there's room for creativity here you know the programmers there is there are technical living in in the residence that you are you know you said yeah you talked about that that should certainly help like you know i would just going to add that about these meetings where the they  easily sorted out if you have other agencies like it to council on aging is involved some of the complaints are not you know oh they put their laundry out in front of my  daly she knows with the belmont police department works very well helping seniors you know i don't i don't think that the anonymous complaint would be a problem paul would you like like i agree i mean the problem of the novelist but one thing that strikes me is what if somebody anonymously complains my refrigerator doesn't work i mean there's stuff that gets away with music you know maybe that would be bad i wonder if there's  any issues with language and culture these are you know diverse groups of families living together and if there's any issues that come up along those lines well that's a potential challenge as well as far as interpersonal relations between neighbors so but but yeah i think we do have a board member who has a different language and his primary well i just got notice that we only have a lot about ten minutes left only so i have a lot of questions so i'm gonna ask the next one and this will be to me the belmont housing authority is state funded what would you do to increase state funding as a member of the board how would you approach our state senator and representative for additional funding so i was recently talking to a housing authority executive director of another town and he said the three most important issues facing local housing authorities are resources resources and resources so it's a it's a key issue i think our representatives will brownsburg are and dave rogers have been tremendous in their commitment to getting the housing authority as much as much funding as as is possible i know will was helpful i think when it was a state rep expanding the parking lot it wa oaks but there's never enough money to go around i think the state subsidy for housing authorities has been level funded for the last five consecutive years it's important to remember we're not alone as a housing authority we're part of a larger group called mass nero it's the mass nasa choose the chapter of the national association of housing and redevelopment officials i have it written down here to remember it i know they were lobbying at the state house last week pushing for a modest increase in the funding that goes to the housing authorities and that's great i think we should also seek whatever creative ways we can get more funding community development block block grants is an option that i'd like to pursue so we're not so reliant on community preservation act money which i know is that an issue that people have asked about  so thank you paul tommy the last time the housing authority was brought to the town meeting floor it was regarding the needed upgrades to the electrical systems at all three facilities sycamore gardens waverl oaks and belmont village a very lengthy discussion ensued the gist of which is this is the state's responsibility we shouldn't be paying for it at that time both senator brownsburg or in representative dave rogers complained that the state had no funds to meet their responsibility this was during the prior governor's administration when office decor at the state house was more important then electrical safety of our housing authority units that evening i spoke in favor of using town funds for repairs because they were absolutely needed to date belmont has authorized nearly eight hundred fifty thousand for these  repairs i'm more than happy to keep the pressure on senator brown sperber and representative rogers to ensure that this governor charlie baker said ministration recognizes its responsibility and sets aside funds necessary for the belmont housing authority and i would add that i believe this is a very responsible fiscally responsible administration so i would hope that in addition to the advocate the advocacy that the group whose acronym i don't remember i would hope in addition to that there would be recognition by this administration that this is needed oh i don't have to do that so far he's all right we may have time for one or two more questions why i think it would be fair we had a number of questions from the audience tonight so i want to make sure we think there might be rolf just like you would have if you did around all contract but it's known that that animals give so much more comfort to people especially in you know especially the elderly for whom we have many people over i think well i'm thinking of something else but we have a great number of people in sycamore gardens and waverly out who are who are seniors and they're just a great comfort i do think we need to have a role but that's like anything paul you know i agree i mean it's it's i think we can find ways to have roles for you know no big dogs or no multiple more you know hundreds of cats sort of stuff i mean there's rules for stuff like that but really you know  allowing people to have the ability to have cats or dogs that are not disruptive to their neighbors seems seems seems fine with me i don't know what state whether there's any state regulation of whether housing authorities are supposed to deal with pet issues and i know there's a lot of things that a lot of state regulations so but i i think it's sort of heartless to say no you can't have any  pets we have time for one more question i think we remain but i'll limit it ok just try to limit your sponsor to one one term another question is that the belmont housing authority automatically has a seat on the belmont housing trust in automatically of the city community preservation committee so not necessarily the thousands already deal with that but what do you think about the role if you were to get a likely what do you think the role should be about more affordable housing coming to belmont do you think you know should take an active role in paul i think we i think both the housing trust in the housing authority should take an active role in  the properties our state own did they are beholden to state regulations and they get money from the state budget housing trust seems very much like a town creature it's appointed  sort of connected to the town administration so they're kind of two different two different things but it's good they're both those focusing on the same issue which is more and better affordable housing and it's great that there's a liaison so that they can stay  connected housing authority is i think mainly more focused on very low income like thirty percent of area median income whereas housing trust is more broad i think going up to eighty percent a very median income which is really moderate income but it's good to have a lot of words a mood in the water pushing the boat along because you know we're at work under four percent toward our chapter forty b requirement of having ten percent subsidized housing inventory so everybody doing their part is helpful i know there's work that the housing authority is sort of a pilot project they're working with students from the boston architectural college some potential redevelopment work at belmont village and that's a good thing learn about grants to learn about how to do how to do this so our time our time is just about up i just needs the differences between the two the housing authority is under the state housing authority and the federal one nine hundred sixty eight fair housing and it's responsible to provide as you know the clean safe environment for the red housing trust as an advisory committee to the selectmen and planning board has in it is is to advise on that on the needs for low for the low income housing that is needed  belmont and to create a housing production plan the most recent draft that was completed in may of two thousand and thirteen by the end metro area planning commission showed that over half of those needed units at the lowest levels of income were for elderly with one to two member households as a member of both the board c away and housing trust i'm especially interested in seeing and we have to do going forward unfortunately our time is up i want to thank both tommy and paul for coming see evening i wish you both the best of luck on election day  i want to think chuck for being my home moderator and for serving the housing for authority like you have for the past five years you've been lucky to have you and i want to thank the belmont media center staff producer adam dusenberry volunteers julianna tavia camera and don't forget that the league of women voters belmont is having a candidates night march thirtieth we'll have the opportunity to hear tommy and paul once again it's seven pm at the tenor the middle school and also be sure to pick up a copy of the belmont citizen harold or visit with the local belmont dot com every week we have a question of the week that they've been answering as well and i want i hope everyone has a great night don't forget to vote a