every couple of housekeeping matters obviously the configuration of the generally is a little different so the non town meeting members are in the back of my left staff is here to my left down meeting members in the center and right we have recognize a number of committees and individuals to the floor down meeting in the i would just add to that have been m hony of the minuteman vice president of finance let me talk a minute about what's in front of us obviously is critical decisions around that but this year in particular with the voter approved override so there's a lot of serious business and there will be a number of presentations i've  prisoners to be as brief as possible but the same time of course they're presenting important information so that we can make informed decisions so it's a balance of two or three minutes before they're expected conclusion i will probably remind them that they need to complete shortly their presentations when i look at what's in front of us we certainly should be able to complete action in three nights but i'm not sure we can be any speedier than that you know time will tell depends how long will have a better sense of that after tonight but i'm certainly hoping we can do it by complete action by next monday in that spirit i remind you of the rules that i discussed in the may segment namely limiting all comments to five minutes limiting questions or whomever to two questions and i think the best way to do that is if you have more than one question to ask both of those questions at once and then i think we can streamline getting the answers to those questions and also directing those questions through me the moderator we have a as you know six amendments that have been filed at this point for consideration by town meeting  depending on circumstances one or two may be withdrawn but at this point we have six amendments before us and as a result that will extend the discussion which is appropriate course the give due consideration to those amendments and the full article but the same time i do or jus to focus your remarks and steer away from repetition where the point has already been made i think with that i will turn to the town clerk and with the unanimous consent of town meeting members ask her to read only the return of the war that evening pursuant to the warrant for the annual town meeting to be held a june one two thousand and fifteen ellen o'brien cushman do hereby certify that i gave notice of said meeting by posting an attested copy of the warrant on the town cork's official bulletin board into the town hall and at least five other places in town seven days before the date of this meeting in accordance with dr thirty one section ten of the general laws in section thirty d one ten a of the general bylaws of the town of belmont furthermore i do hereby certify that i gave notice of the continuation of the annual town meeting to june one two thousand and fifteen by causing a copy of the warrant and the continuation to be sent to town meeting members at least seven days before the date of this meeting and by causing copies of the warrant to be made available at the public library and on the town clerk's office bulletin board all in accordance with section thirty dash one one zero b of the general bylaws of the town of belmont and the representative town meeting acts of one thousand nine hundred six as amended thank you alan before turning to business let's do a check on electronic voting just press one for showing that you are here keep this open for so ok now you can go ahead these are all who are present anybody at this point as it's growth through to you that their name is missing right anybody who doesn't see their name right thank you will now turn the beginning here of of our business and we're pleased to start with a proclamation or bruce davidson and mr ba sammy baghdadi chairman of the board of selectmen and i am happy to read to you a proclamation for bruce e davidson where as the town of belmont more mourns the passing of brucey davidson a well known and highly regarded member of this community and where as bruce was a native of champaign illinois but was raised in chicago and later moved to belmont he called belmont home for over fifty five years living on orchard street and where as bruce was married to martha de davidson for over fifty nine years and was the father of two daughters hannah are davidson and elizabeth  davidson he was also the grandfather of alexandra m or ren and where as professionally bruce worked for the boston globe for forty years he was respected for his work in different capacities that included financial journalist financial editor columnist and editorial writer and where as throughout his life bruce was deeply involved with the local community in belmont he was elected to serve as a town meeting member and precinct one for thirty years in addition bruce was a member of and and member of the warrant committee for eighteen years including several as chair now therefore it resolved that the board of selectmen of the town of belmont hereby honors the memory and contributions of brucey davidson and extends to his family its deepest condolences board of selectmen by sammy  moderator over here because i am is this under article one we have taken up the order this is pretty previous to all of that ok i had the opportunity to work with bruce davidson when he was at the globe many years and also here in belmont and i just want to say that this proclamation is richly deserved so thank you mr baghdadi the order of the article sammy baghdad the chairman of the board of selectmen that the town meeting here the motions in the following order one ten thirteen twelve seventeen fourteen eighteen sixteen fifteen eleven nineteen twenty nine reconsideration twenty one twenty two twenty three second mr cunningham has made a motion which i will accept to what article well before article thirteen do you want to speak to that mr cunningham sir thank you  moderator i find myself in the awkward position of proposing a change to the newly proposed order of articles when it was i myself who first brought to your notice the issue that is ultimately led to the proposed change in the first place as i wrote to you mr das has proposed amendment to article twelve presume that article thirteen was treated first even though that was not the order of articles that have been presumed in the motions for town meeting thus far the motion proposed this evening with article thirteen before twelve tries to address the oddity in mr dashes proposal by changing the order of the articles to confirm conform to mr dashes expectation while in certain cases i would agree that the order would be immaterial in which different pieces go i believe strongly that the change of order proposed here potentially undermines a reasonable discussion of article twelve to about the f y sixteen budget by preceding it with a long discussion of the longer term use of override money and furthermore is technically prejudicial in favor of mr dashes motion therefore i propose the original order be restored that is to say twelve comes before thirteen thank you  let me comment on this mr cunningham it indicated to me that he was going to make this motion let me give you a little context in terms of the order of the articles we we being a group a planning group  ultimately it's my decision as moderator but we have planning meetings before town meeting so we establish an initial order of articles at our first planning meeting and then as things evolve we review that order of articles and we almost always make changes so the two changes we made at our most recent meeting last thursday morning was to move thirteen before twelve and fifteen before eleven so this is a practice and the intent here and it was agreed upon my decision but it was agreed upon by all of the attendees at that meeting which included the chair of the warrant committee the school articulated many times and i work very hard with others to try to carry this out and that is to have the smoothest functioning town meeting as possible and to minimize the confusion when often with amendments and complex issues  there is always some confusion so the purpose here is to have a moving thirteen before twelve is to have a smoother now meeting pacifically when mr dash filed his motion is amendment two to the budget under an end to have as he articulated a fallback position if article thirteen did not pass article thirteen requires a two thirds vote to put the money into the stabilization fund his rationale he argued was too in twelve but they have a fallback which are to put it in the current committee reserve fund but which only requires a majority the difficulty however is if we considered wells and this amendment before thirteen we're putting the cart before the horse in and buzzing great confusion ally frankly a quagmire and so if we do end up doing that i think we will see the result is it will be very confusing for most if not all of us thought it was and others as well much cleaner to do thirteen first thirteen essentially implements the override vote and puts the money into the stabilization fund requires a two thirds vote to go in but keep in mind it requires a two thirds vote by town meeting it come out so any of that money is protected until town meeting by a two thirds vote votes to withdraw it so it's a clean discussion if you will and it's to implement or not the the override and it would have been massively mor confusing to have mr baxter's amendment considered bursts and then under twelve and then thirteen so mr dashwood you care to comment as well adam dash precinct one member of the warren committee in the us who filed the twelve ga amendment i think that was well said mr moderator and much what i was going to say i would i would just rebut far as what mr cunningham it stated i had no presumption in filing that if anything i'm not involved in the setting of the order of the articles i think it's just an efficiency matter for a town meeting to hear thirteen and then you never have to hear the twelve because i would withdraw if thirteen passes whereas if you put twelve first you'll hear my man that was i'm not going to withdraw it ball goes first to hear the amendment will argue sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen speaking for myself because the boy didn't vote on the order of the articles i think for the sake of efficiency i would support the order as proposed otherwise i understand what  i understand kevin's objection but the problem i have from an efficiency efficiency standpoint is i think if you go with kevin's ordering you're to get multiple motions that are just going to that that are just going to result in the same matter but just prolong the discussion longer so i say that from the interest of efficiency thank you is there anything before  is my intention i don't believe it's neutral to have thirteen before twelve in terms of the way the discussion will go about twelve that's that's my intent in doing this i do think that there is a procedural way to address this that does not muddy it does not have all kinds of complications which is we treat twelve we lay that on the table after we've done a through i we go to thirteen then we can return to twelve and then treat the emotion on jay that i those opposed a the motion fails we now turn to the order of articles as presented is there any further discussion of those in favor please say i  was opposed i adopted unanimously we now turned article one mr baghdadi sami baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen move that article one be taken from the table all those in favor  when i briefly addressed you at the may segment of this town meeting i stated that as the new chair of the board of selectmen i look forward to working with you and my colleagues on the board to make positive change and progress for our town tonight i welcome the opportunity to describe to you many positive developments some of which have just transpired since our meeting in may to began here are some current projects which are moving first the belmont center improvement project it has been at least thirty years since belmont center has received a major make over last november town meeting appropriated two million seven hundred fifty thousand for the reconstruction of belmont center in april the board of selectmen signed the construction contract for the reconstruction work the work on the center has begun and the project is scheduled to be completed by early two thousand and sixteen it is our target to complete much of the leonard street or road work by november to avoid impact on the holiday retail season i believe that once the improvement project is complete our center will become a much more attractive destination for businesses and residents next the belmont center bridge unrelated to the belmont center improvement project the belmont center bridge will be power washed this summer over the years i don't see the picture of the bridge i picked it out myself over the years the bridge has become dark gray and black in color recently we did receive the approval of the m b t a which owns the bridge to perform the cleaning work there it is and thanks to the fundraising efforts and donations of a few motivated individuals the cleaning of the bridge will be at no cost to the town how nice it will be for the gateway to our center to be restored to its natural stone color the underwood pool as i drive by the underwood bowl each morning i am amazed at the progress from the previous day a true collaborative effort the fifteen point six million dollar project excuse me the five point six i want to make sure you are paying attention the five point six million dollar project is being funded from community preservation act bonds town bond proceeds and private donations the pole is expected to be open for public use by august which is an exceptional effort in light of the past winter season many including my family and i cannot wait to go to the pool this summer the uplands in two thousand and seven the town issued the developer of the off of the uplands property in chapter forty b comprehensive a permit to construct by four storey residential buildings known as the residences at acorn park this project will create two hundred ninety eight new residential units the project is located on an environmentally sensitive multiple litigation cases by the coalition to preserve the belmont uplands and the belmont conservation commission succeeded in delaying but not preventing the project as the cases were ultimately dismissed by the courts the board of selectmen has tried to purchase the property from the developer but at attempts to obtain state funding under the patrick administration were unsuccessful support from neighboring communities to acquire the property has been lukewarm and the developer has been unwilling to sell the property for anywhere near its market value on advice of town council the final building permit for the project was issued in april if you drive by the project you will observe that the building foundations are already in the ground today we must accept the project for its most redeeming quality once completed there will be sixty affordable housing there will be sixty affordable units of the two hundred and ninety eight units constructed however belmont will receive credit to its affordable housing stock or the total number of units being built two hundred ninety eight currently belmont has three hundred eighty eight affordable housing units with the residences at acorn park our affordable housing stock will increase to six hundred eighty six units or six point seven percent bringing the town significantly closer to the chapter forty b temper sent threshold cushing village nearly two years have passed since the planning board issued a special permit to authorize the construction of this project which will consist of one hundred fifteen high quality rental apartment units and approximately thirty eight thousand square feet of commercial uses much to the town's dismay project has stalled however we have recently received the most encouraging signs that the project is moving forward first the developer smith legacy partners announced in late april that urban spaces c of cambridge will be a development partner for the cushing village project urban spaces is a cambridge based real estate development company with a track record of developing and managing high end residential properties also within the last two weeks the selectmen have received a submission from the developer indicating that it has secured a commitment for construction financing that said the board of selectmen is beginning it financial due diligence which is a precondition to the sale of the municipal lot to the developer it is expected that there will be construction activity on the site beginning of the summer the sale of woods of the would fall road property after as several year process of trying to sell the town on would fall road property i am very pleased to report that the board of selectmen at its meeting last thursday signed the final purchase and sale agreement with the successful better the final sales price is one million seven hundred fifty thousand well above the next highest bed of seven hundred fifty thousand it is anticipated that the closing will take place within ninety days finally the deed to the developer will contain the following limitations first the use of the property will be restricted to single family residential second the property cannot be subdivided into more than four lot thus the property will be developed with four upscale single family homes other projects finally you heard in may that the belmont light substation construction project is on schedule and on budget also later during this town meeting you will be receiving a report from community development director glen clancy on the progress of the trip of a road improvements as you can see a lot of good things are currently happening in belmont now time to focus on the future as you consider the budget articles later tonight i want to bring to your attention several projects which can move forward with your support first roads and sidewalks the capital budget includes an appropriation of nearly two million six hundred thousand dollars for road and sidewalk work that is considerably more than past budgets please bear in mind this year's appropriation just about maximizes the amount of road and sidewalk work  from a practical perspective be completed in one year second the community passed at the recommendation of the board of selectmen the capital budget also includes an appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars to fund a community path feasibility study this appropriation will provide the newly created community path implementation advisory committee the resources needed to technically evaluate the feasibility of route options on the ground no decision on the location of the route has yet been made this effort will also include a firm analysis of available state funding sources which would be approved requisite for the construction of the community front of the community path to proceed third the library another appropriation in the capital budget provides forty five thousand dollars for the partial funding of a feasibility study that will examine the construction renovation or expansion of a more modestly sized library on its existing site the remainder of the funding for the study which is expected to be an additional forty five thousand will be provided by the library trustees i thank the capital budget committee for being mindful of these three important projects finally a few words on net metering which was a topic of considerable discussion during a segment of this town meeting at its meeting last thursday evening the board of selectmen did publicly voice its support or at belmont light department rate structure that would be more supportive of residential solar system installations in very simple terms the board of selectmen stated that it would support a policy that would be somewhere in between the current phase one policy and the phase two policy proposed by the municipal advisory life board we would call that proposed compromise and modified phase two shortly after town meeting the light board will appoint a balanced committee of experts to study the technical aspects and make a recommendation this process must proceed in a manner that is open and transparent our objective would be to adopt a modified face to within sixty days of the appointment of the committee as a community leader i try maybe a little too hard to reach consensus on town projects and policies we must bear in mind however that it is inherent in the nature of community governance that there will never be absolute consensus on any specific town matter for example there was not a unanimous agreement on the new design of the underwood pool similarly there isn't unanimous consensus on the new design of belmont cent yet today as we see the new underwood becoming a reality we become proud of what we have achieved and i predict the same for belmont center net metering will follow the same process in the end i believe that most belmont residents set their differences aside and band together to keep the progress of our town moving forward in short they focus on the big picture and here is the big picture for belmont bond rating third we have a strong sense of community and we are one of the best places to reside to raise a family and to retire we have so much to look forward to and to be proud of lastly i want to thank our town administrator david kay all our assistant town administrator phyllis marshall our department heads and our department heads for their commitment and dedication to the town we would not be able to accomplish so much without their hard work belmont let us keep moving forward thank you i'd now like to recognize for our other report under article one tonight dave rogers who is belmont's representative of the general court and has in past years he  predecessors before have used this occasion to give an update from the state house representative rogers thank you thank you mr moderator and through you to the members of town meeting it is good to be with you this evening to report on your state government i'm dave rogers i am your state representative and a town meeting member at large and i have a lot of ground to cover and i want to cover it in a reasonable period of time so i don't contribute to keeping you here too late and so i have a slide presentation i'll move pretty quickly if you have follow up questions just get in touch and the first thing i want to touch on is the state budget the house completed state budget on april thirtieth it's about a thirty eight billion dollars budget and it's based on a consensus revenue forecast of one point one billion dollars increase over the last fiscal year the state fiscal year runs from july first to june thirtieth so we're coming up on fiscal y and sixteen on july first the house passed its version now it's the senate has passed a version and it goes to conference committee which are can be tough negotiations there are significant differences between the house and the senate this  year the next slide some hallmarks of the house budget it maintains the state's highest ever bond rating and double a plus state bond rating it does not draw at all from the stabilization fund this is the first time in a long time the state is not drawing at all from the rainy day fund it reduces reliance on one time revenues and it's based on i think realistic budgeting which is good because then we won't have mid year corrections there are some budget challenges that we face and they affected this fiscal year and the one we're about to go into when the affordable care act obamacare was passed we at the state level had to create the health connector website and that website had significant problems you probably read about it or saw it on the news and when people couldn't get on to the system to get health insurance as a stopgap measure they were put into the state's medicaid program mass health so that cost some money there's different estimates between one hundred fifty million to three hundred million also the state income tax is going to go down based on a ballot question passed years ago from five point two zero to five point one five point zero five sounds kind of small but actually it's well over one hundred million dollars but despite the budget challenges there's good news for belmont in this year's budget there's over a five percent increase for chapter seventy funding which is education funding that's a good number and we're up over five percent on the unrestricted general government a we're up almost four percent which is a respectable increase of over seventy two thousand  next you'll see it's a phenomenal year for for roads and sidewalks and infrastructure funding is up over sixty five percent for belmont that will be a dramatic increase and means over about three hundred fifty thousand dollars from the state for roads bridges not so much bridges roads and sidewalk and my top budget priority is always going to be the communities i represent belmont arlington  cambridge but in addition to that i think my constituents want me to fight for things that matter to the quality of life and to justice and in the commonwealth so i had some statewide budget priorities  sorry i skipped that's why the special education circuit breaker is fully funded which is good news that has not always been true and finally meco which is i think pretty well received in belmont has been a successful program that that received a nice bump as well banks by state budget priorities were homelessness we have families living in hotels and motels we have other challenges with homeless individuals  on that it was able to get a nice increase working with others the d p the state department of environmental protection it the twenty eight twenty zero nine recession an easy place to cut i think was perceived to be d e p t it is dramatically cut over twelve hundred employees at its peak we're now down to only eight hundred one third the number of employees a two thirds the number of employees used to have and so i've been funding for more fighting for more funding for d p and we did ok there we got some more money and then finally civil legal aid you're accused of a crime and you're indigent or poor you have a right to counsel but if you're poor and you face eviction disability  proceedings you don't have any right to a lawyer and over sixty five percent of people who are indigent and seek civil legal aid are turned away for lack of money so i pushed hard for more money for civil legal aid and we got a good bump this year from fifteen million to seventeen million and i think that was a victory the next item is legislation that i've introduced and as a as a first term rap last time first term representative i did not introduce much legislation i was sort of learning the process this term i've introduced twenty six bills and and well thanks and i would say the central focus of the bills i filed are criminal justice reform and that comes really from both sides i filed bills on behalf of belmont's own da a district attorney marian ryan that come more from the prosecutorial side where i think there are gaps and then i filed a whole bunch of bills where i think our criminal justice system's footprint is too heavy and i just want to talk about one bill for now solitary confinement for those twenty one and under there's all sorts of research now from psychologists psychiatrists that shows segregation isolation solitary confinement call it what you will is particularly damaging particularly pernicious for young people and so i filed to build a significantly limit how long they can be isolated and in fact i just to today i went out to m c i surely the state's maximum security prison went through their isolation and segregation cells and i respect the people who work in corrections it's a tough job and i told them that and i hope to work with them on this bill ninety seven percent of prisoners are coming back out to rejoin us very few are in there for life and so how they're treated while they're there really matters for public safety if nothing else the next bill i filed is the right to counsel in civil cases if you're facing eviction again if you face a criminal trial you automatically have a right under the constitution to a lawyer you do not under state or federal off in civil cases so the indigent an uphill climb the way i put it is what good are legal rights if you cannot exercise them so i filed a bill to provide a right to a lawyer if you're facing eviction and then on a few other things i filed  there we go bike safety pills along with senator brown's murder thank you one protects bicyclists who are in bike lanes veering into the bike lane can be a ticket able offense for motorists and also have a  users bill and then finally i filed a series of animal rights bill bills there on my website rather than go through them in detail it's just an issue i care about a lot and the next item i want to get to is on a lot of people's minds and that's the m b today and this past winter revealed problems at the n p t i say reveal because it didn't create the problems they were there but it revealed them and our system buckle under the weight of this past winter and twenty thirteen twenty fourteen the biggest thing we didn't the legislature was transportation the best thing we did was a big vote to put more revenue into transportation and i took a tough vote in that session saying we weren't doing enough that was my argument to leadership that we weren't doing enough to put revenue into transportation and so i think the biggest thing we're going to do again is probably transportation  problems with the t are legion in terms of financial problems the maintenance backlog is over six billion that's deferred maintenance a state of good repair is the term you sometimes hear the words we need over six billion of investment just to get to a state of good repair not to improve it to get it to a state of good repair there are a series of other financial problems big dig debt now the governor does have a plan to address the t and that's the next slide and some of what the governor wants to do i think is reasonable he proposes a financial control board so that they will instill more accountability into the he's made some recommendations about maybe read the boston globe or seen on the news absenteeism he made assertions about absenteeism he wants to eliminate the pichichero law which makes it would make it easier to privatized services  where i agree with the governor i'll support him i i do think that the governor's plan falls short in a number of areas the governor's plan could actually cut money to the department of transportation which to me it is shocking and i think ill advised in two thousand and thirteen twenty fourteen we set a schedule for fares to go up for tea riders he wants to get rid of the schedule we just created and lift the cap completely i think it's a bad idea and  so there's it's an incredibly complex area there's no way i can cover everything in this presentation but suffice it to say a major thing that i'll be working on and others in the legislature is the t i've talked about this ever since i first  it to to represent you transportation is the backbone of our economy we have to get it right and up next i'd like to move to local projects some of you driving through fresh pa may have already noticed construction going on  this is a project that i've worked on hard and we are going to get a redesign of the whole wife rotary which is a traffic nightmare it's already begun there is going to be expanded lanes there's going to be  better the way the lights are timed is going to be improved and i'd like to invite you all june sixteenth to sixty eight corn park drive there's going to be a public meeting put it on your calendar if you can make it it starts at six pm and they'll be a detailed presentation for all of you about how that rotary is going to be improved and i think it's that that's a very tough area it's never going to be perfect it was literally the state intersections on a  through rafters like a report card it's an f it's probably going to be a d after the improvements so but you know it's an improvement and so we're happy to see it come to fruition and then the t road update that's going along there been some unexpected problems with sidewalk repairs but still hopeful that that will be completed this year so that concludes my presentation here's my contact information i'm always around please get in touch it's my pleasure to serve you thank you sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen move that article one be laid on the table all in favor please say i was opposed a adopted unanimously we now turn to article ten  dash who is chair of the government subcommittee of the warrant committee that is re sponsible for this area mr dash thank you mr moderator adam dash to tell me the member precinct one member of the war committee and chairman of the general government subcommittee  did tell you you would see me again move that there be paid the elected officials of the town of salaries for the fiscal year commencing july first twenty fifteen the amount set forth opposite the name of each officer as town moderator two hundred dollars chairman of the board of selectmen five thousand dollars selectman to four thousand five hundred dollars each town clerk eighty eight thousand and sixteen dollars town treasurer ninety seven thousand four hundred ninety four dollars chairman of the board of assessors three thousand and thirty dollars assessors to two thousand two hundred dollars each as a board of selectmen have a vote on remember at large were committee unanimously recommends favorable action there discussion on this motion yes bonnie friedman precincts very i know these are the kind of numbers we get every year but it would be really nice to see changes from previous years when we get these numbers that's just a general comment and then second of all the years i've seen the selectmen get a little money and assessors but i don't quite do have the change from the prior year to this year i believe if you look at the town's website and look at the budget they have some prior years history is well we only call out in the work committee report anything that changes more than five percent and five thousand dollars to sort years ago when you hear me is on but fifteen years ago there was a proposal that came before down maybe needing to pay a school committee and it was a very vigorous debate shall we say and in the end it lost in a very close vote though some towns pay school committee but belmont never has further thank you any further discussion on this motion saying non all those in favor please say i was opposed to a adopt motion is adopted now we will turn to we now turn that's better sorry we now turn to the budget articles and i'm going to introduce mr levinson will make a present taishan on the disco two thousand and sixteen state budget which essentially encompasses the next several articles that we will be considering mr levinson but everybody on michael events and i'm chair of the warrant committee and town meeting member at large i will speak to the budget and that actually covers a wide range of things so i actually speak to articles twelve thirteen fourteen sixteen seventeen and nineteen to some extent so in my remarks i'll cover a number of different areas actually have  quicker so i'll start with a bit of background in terms of how the budget is developed i'll then get into an overview of how the revenue comes to the town and what the different departments of that i'll speak to expenses in the categories a bit of expenses that we have as a town and then i'll move on to talking about a couple different topics i'll give an update on free cash a speech of the four different stabilization funds that we either have or will potentially create during the course of this town meeting and then finally i'll end up with some comments on long term trends so once again two thousand this fiscal two thousand and sixteen process i would say was a collaborative effort of a strong team the process that we always go through is in the late fall we look at our best estimate of what available revenue is going to  be we then subtract out certain fixed costs from the budget which includes things like engines and debt and other items that i'll mention later and that leaves us essentially with what we call the operating budget and again i'll get into detail as to what that means that operating budget then is divided into two different chunks divided into a school or sion and in municipal portion which also includes discretionary capital and it's done for the purpose of allowing the school department and the municipal departments to then develop a draft budget that is the starting point that is used every single year now the big change that happened this year was that we had an override and that altered the amount of money that was available in terms of available revenues so the available revenue budget that will go through is actually a one hundred million dollars budget because of the inclusion of two point eight million dollars of overawed funds that are a portion of that or point five million dollar override that was voted by the town so the original allocation was fifty eight percent to the schools forty two percent to the municipal and capital discretionary that then became ultimately in the budget that i'll share with you if the eight point eight percent to the school side and forty one point t the school side the budgets were then developed through an extensive collaborative collaborative process between the different departments school committee and subcommittees of the warrant committee they were then voted on relatively recently the work committee report dollar revenue budget that we have for two thousand and sixteen that shows the percentage is interesting the enough we're dealing with a hundred million dollars that means that the amount of dollars spent actually matches up with the percentages so what you see is that there are four broad sources of funds from a revenue perspective property taxes local receipts free cash and some other buckets and then finally stated what i'll do is i'll get into some detail on two of these different buckets the eighty one million dollars that comes from property taxes and the six point nine million dollars that comes from local receipts you'll note that free cash is down just slightly by one hundred twenty five thousand dollars state is actually  flats represented rogers talked about how there are some categories that are up what happens is that we're no longer receiving state aid or this school so this school is now paid off in fiscal fifteen so by having a reduction in state aid for the school and about  little less than four hundred thousand dollars of increases other places the net net is that state is actually flat almost exactly model receipts is up by more than thousand dollars overall and property taxes is the largest share of gain which has is up by four point seven million dollars for a couple reasons which i'll get to momentarily ok so if you if we are focusing on that large eighty one percent of the pie i'm not going to break that out so that this pie is just that property tax portion right so the eighty one million dollars divided into it's five different categories the large reddish piece which is seventy two million dollars or roughly eighty nine percent of all the property taxes was the property tax from last year now property taxes th effectively automatically increased by two and after cents which is the yellow sliver of the pie which is one point eight million dollars then there is new growth which is new building that takes place in town which added another four hundred seventy five thousand dollars based on the most current estimate of the board of assessors the three point eight million dollars which is the next chunk of the pie is money that we get from debt exclusion votes that come in with that number is actually down again a little bit this year because of the going away and in the last sliver that is pulled out a little bit is the two point eight million dollars of the four point five million dollar override that is expended in this budget for fiscal two thousand and sixteen so again this is property tax which is the largest source of the budget eighty one million dollars so if this is the overall pie again what i'm doing is i'm going to break out the local receipts the yellow portion which is six point nine million and what you see is that local receipts comes from a number of different categories but eighty percent of all local receipts comes from four categories so motor vehicle excise represents three million of the six point nine million that's the green piece of the pie then comes and dylan's receipts which is the blue piece of the pie that eight hundred five thousand dollars that's a little larger than we've had in previous years because of more advanced life support that we're doing the recreation number is seven hundred twenty five thousand at the yellow piece of the pie and then finally the licenses and permits portion which is the orange piece of just over a million dollars and again those pieces represent about eighty percent of the overall local receipts ok so if we go back to the the middle piece of this chart this chart basically talks about one hundred million dollar budget it breaks it between it separates out the fixed cost which i'll talk about in a second leaving the eighty roughly eighty four million dollars for the operating budget that gets split again between the school side and then town and discretionary capital so what i'm going to do is i'm going to focus on the middle column behind me and then i'll talk a little bit about some of the changes and then we'll get into the details on the expenditures overall so the overall budget is one hundred million the fixed costs are fifteen point eight million dollars  up by point eight percent but that actually is up and down on a couple different categories and i'll get into specifically what's in there but the lion's share of the fixed costs as i mentioned before are pensions and debts but i'll get into a little more detail about the fixed costs in a moment right  that then leaves the operating budget which is overall eighty four million dollars of the school portion of that is forty nine point six six million dollars which is a seven point six million dollar inc i'm sorry seven point six percent increase that percent increase is again driven largely by a couple factors the override being one of them and other factors that we'll talk about and i will bet the town side budgets is just under thirty three million dollars with a three percent little over three percent increase in the capital discretionary budget goes from one point four million to one point eight million and that's a thirty percent increase and just to be clear this cap this budget the cap of discretionary budget which will get to an article sixteen which enry mahoney will actually speak to and that this actually focuses on basically the discretionary portion the budget not the roads all right so this includes the two hundred thousand dollars incremental for the sidewalks it also includes three hundred eighty six thousand dollars of state aid that would that was larger than wh t we had previously expected and was allocated to the capital budget relatively late in the budget season so that created an overall thirty percent increase in the capital budget but you again here an article sixteen ok debt and so that's six point five million from pensions and four point four million in debt and that's that expense that's you that used to pay back things like the wellington the the pool other areas where we've borrowed money  charges is the money that we spend to reimburse the m b t a you see the roads money right here which is one point five million dollars now just to clarify this one point five million dollars is not including the chapter ninety funds that we get directly from the state that funds the roads so this is essentially the one point two million dollars in funds from a two thousand a year two thousand override that was done plus an additional three hundred thousand dollars that is from this override from this year so that's one point five million dollars here you'll see another eight hundred plus thousand dollars in chapter nine hundred eighty eight which brings the total spending on the roads to roughly two point three million when you add in the two hundred thousand dollars for the sidewalks that gets you to roughly two point five million dollars that was mentioned by chairman b earlier or total spending on roads and sidewalks in fiscal sixteen and then finally and just a last mention that the minuteman which is eight hundred thirty two thousand dollars it's up about eleven percent so the minuteman is up by eleven percent road spending is up by twenty one percent the debt is down by thirteen and a half percent so that one's going down because of the chancery as i mentioned before and then the pension expense is up by eight percent and i'll get to pension expense later on in my my remarks ok so this is then that eighty four million dollars of operating budget ok and it's broken out into in this case seven different categories these seven categories the first six of them represent are all in article twelve which is the core budget and article twelve is these first six and then it's an ssion debt and minuteman so there are nine different motions that will deal with an article twelve it's these first six pieces and then the three and then the the three that i just mentioned apple discretionary which is this part of the pie is again poor a part of article sixteen that henry mahoney will talk about ok you can see the fifty eight point eight percent that is represented as i mentioned before that's the school budget that's the forty nine point six million dollars that i mentioned before public safety is the second largest piece of our expenditure on the town side so that is police and fire primarily and that's twelve point eight million dollars the next piece after that you see is human services facilities and those are the three broad areas that are in public services and that's the blue piece of the pie that you see behind me just under ten million dollars nine point nine million the next portion is general government and general government is four point four million dollars again will vote on that as part of article twelve then comes human services as i mentioned incorrectly human services is the council on aging the health department and the library and so that's three point one million dollars of the budget the next sliver is the orange piece the three point three percent you see there it's there it's insurance where it says there including thirty four b what that refers to is that refers to the portion of retiree health care that we are paying for for as we pay as we go it's for the people that are currently retired or paying for their health care now so we'll talk about retiring health again later on in the context of his other  post employment benefits and opap is basically broken into the portion that is for current retirees as well as the unfunded portion and again i'll talk about the unfunded portion especially later on right of this of this portion here one point two four million dollars of the two point seven eight million is going towards current retiree health care benefits ok and then the last piece right there again is that two point two percent which is one point eight million is the capital discretionary budget ok so this basically is a large chunk of article twelve that we'll talk about and one of the four motions of article sixteen the capital piece ok so a couple highlights from the budget as a whole the municipal to the departments are all funded at level service or better the school department cuts that were articulated prior to the override have been avoided as a result of the override so that has resulted in a sixteen f t e increase in the school department as well as additional funds for special education and other areas we've been lucky again but i just was not lucky with theirs because based on good work done by folks in belmont in the past members of the work committee boars lukman  others we've been able to manage to keep our health care costs for our to be flat and so for the last four years we've actually had zero percent increases in our health care costs and that lack of increase in health care has actually allowed us to put some funds towards investigating financial task force recommendations around recreation there was a bunch of work that my colleague and helen worked on and they'll be worked on by the board of selectmen to look into that so healthcare costs allowed us to make an investment there and then overall what you see is an additional million dollars of spent in capital as a result of this six hundred thousand dollars a little over that five hundred million dollars on the override and then a little under four hundred thousand dollars that was that additional funding mentioned before from state aid that has been put in the capital so what we're doing as as was mentioned before spending about the maximum amount we can for spend on roads and the largest amount we've ever spent on roads ok thirtieth of any given year the department of revenue takes a look at that very carefully and then they come up with what our sort of fraud free cash is which is dated as of the life or so our first certified free cash for july first two thousand and fourteen was seven point four seven point five million dollars the work committee as well as well as the boarders in the selectmen then took a look at this year and said hey we should actually have some guidelines for how much free cash we should be maintaining and so what we did is in doing some investigation came up with a guideline that said that between five percent three percent and five percent of free cash of the previous year's free cash should be maintained so last year's over budget was roughly ninety five million dollars and so when you see these little blue lines right here the three percent guideline suggests two point eight six million dollars of free cash should be maintained and the five percent guideline suggests that four point seven six million dollars of free cash should be maintained and so what you'll see as it was we go through the various steps of where town meeting has already or potentially over the course of this town meeting will allocate money from free cash you'll see that that seven point five will get spent down in the course of the town meetings school fifteen to three point three million which puts us right in that range of the three to five percent with three point three million so we've already allocated one point three million for belmont center this budget that will go through allocates one point seven five million dollars of free cash to the budget we've already had a town meeting voted in the last in in may or seven forty eight thousand dollars in snow and ice and then will vote in article that been seen i believe it is for  third thirty five thousand dollars which comes from free cash there's an additional small amount that comes from enterprise fund so the total amount into the opap stabilization fund is actually slightly larger than this but this is three thirty five from free cash so of all of these things that  either have happened already or do happen in this town meeting we will be with three point three million of remaining free cash ok so i wanted to mention briefly the notion of stabilization funds in part because we're about to vote on article thirteen which is the general stabilization fund we actually have three stabilization funds today and we're potentially going to create a four stabilization fund through article nineteen which is a capital debt stabilization fun in the last town meeting in may we essentially emptied the special education stabilization fund we did that in article two in the special town meeting and so what was done in fifty thousand dollars is effectively emptied it had grown a little bit with interest so there's a small amount of money left but that is something that has already taken place erm there just as a reminder for something that the moderator said earlier which is that all stabilization funds require two thirds vote to put money in and a two thirds vote to take money out article thirteen which is the next article that we will take up is the general stabilization fund it currently exists today it has a very small amount of money and in it and the intent of article thirteen is to take the just under one point seven million dollars of funds that have not been deployed in fiscal sixteen the two point eight million dollars of the override has been has been included in the budget the one point seven million dollars to add up to four point five million is not in this year's budget that requires an allocation somewhere in order for it to be taxed and so that consistent with the the discussion during the campaign is to put that one point seven million dollars into a general stabilization fund again article thirteen the opec stabilization fund as i mentioned is article seventeen that's a total of three hundred sixty six thousand dollars that will talk about later and then finally the capital that stabilization fund is created by article nineteen it purpose is to have money go towards for specific projects that are very large the high school the police station the d p w facility and the library there is no money being put into that into that stabilization fund by article nineteen this creates that stabilization fund and will then allow town meeting to put money in it at a future dates if it so chooses ok so and with long term trends there are a couple long term trends that were talked about in the work committee report if you had a chance to read it we are a town of homes which basically means that whether we have a two point five percent increase in revenue because of just proposition two and a half or we have potentially having her mental revenue because of new growth or because of pension increases in local receipts or state aid we are typically seeing on the order of two and a half to three and a half percent revenue growth right in the absence of an override and what that means is because we have to balance our budget we have to have our expenditures match up with that with that revenue now employee compensation is sixty nine point five percent of the budget when that number competition growth increases greater than our revenue growth that creates a significant challenge for the town not as an issue that we have seen in the past it is i would argue the number one challenge the town must continue to face from a management perspective to try to maintain compensation growth that matches up with our revenue growth we've also experienced over the last number of years and roman growth in the school and mandated school costs in the particular in the form of special education but also english language learning that has put a lot of pressure on the school system and has resulted in incremental money being put into the  budget in part to avoid increases in classroom sizes and others that the school department will talk about as a long term trend we've also had an issue with our roads in capital projects including sidewalks it irritating and underfunding those projects for an extended period of time the override addresses that in a meaningful way for the first time in quite a while it does mean however that we're going to continue to have to focus on how we actually spend that money wisely and we have a facilities department we've got a capital budget  a department of community development all of which will have to continue to focus on men managing our capital assets as thoughtfully as possible and then finally in terms of long term trends we have continued growth in our pension and health care  obligations including on opap and i'll talk about that more on the next and final slide ok so it's important to note that there is actually a distinction between pension and no pad right pension is the money that people get for retirement  like in the in the private sector one might get for a four zero one k opap again is retirement health care right so this year we're making a six point five million dollar contribution in the budget in fiscal sixteen that represents an eight percent increase over  fourteen what that does is that it keeps us on track to fully fund our our unfunded pension obligation by the year two thousand and twenty seven we are required by the state to funded by two thousand and forty and one of the things that you'll see is there is actually an amendment been put forth talked about how the war committee can do more work to evaluate how we might think about pensions in different ways and what i'll tell you right now is the work committee will do that work independent of whether or not that amendment passes but we do support the amendment in article twelve it related to pension the intent on the part of the town is to fully fund the pension by two thousand and twenty seven under current course and speed but that does of course have those numbers ratcheting up to as much as nearly fourteen million in two thousand and twenty seven once that pension obligation that unfunded pension obligation is paid off those funds would then be used and redirected towards our unfunded opana obligation now just to be clear of the six point five million  dollars thirteen percent of that is going towards existing pension obligations and five point five million dollars or eighty three percent of it is going to large our unfunded pension obligation it was a question that was asked during the league of women voters night and for your benefit i just it finally on another person point benefits so pab there are two approaches that we take to this so the the law requires us to fund our obligations as they occur so gabby forty five says that you pay it as you go that's the one point two million as i mentioned that's part of that insurance portion of article twelve and then the unfunded liability is then the big chunk that remains that is currently one hundred seventy one million dollars based on our most recent growth of health care was reduced as at least part of what the actuaries came back with right so that's the overview i hope that was at least somewhat helpful and i'll be happy to entertain questions as we talk about the budget as a whole thank you mr sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen move that the town raise an appropriate to the general stabilization fund the sum of one million six hundred seventy four thousand and sixty nine dollars board have a vote on this yes the board of selectmen unanimously recommend favorable action and the warrant committee have a vote on article thirteen mr levinson yes the work ask mr baghdad you have comments before we turn to the amendments and if briefly in the short amendments if i may just explain the board of selectmen position yes as was represented to the voters before the override vote the board of selectmen believes that the entire portion of the override funds that was not designated for schools capital projects roads and sidewalks should be raised and appropriated to the general stabilization fund this is necessary to leverage t override so it can satisfy the needs of the town and the schools for a longer period of time in the future this will also give the town the maximum flexibility to address its needs for this reason the board of selectmen would not be in favor of appropriating any portion of the funds to a specific purpose account the board of selectmen believes that it would not be proper to appropriate the undesignated portion of the overripe funds to any other account overview on an article so mr bunning ham has presented two amendments for your consideration one amendment a an amendment b mr cunningham do you want to present please amendment amended to change the amount from one million six hundred seventy four thousand and sixty nine dollars two hundred fifty thousand dollars and target funds from the general stabilization fund to the special education stabilization fund though the section reads in whol the town raise an appropriate special education stabilization fund the sum of two hundred fifty thousand dollars you would you like to speak to this amendment sure i'm aware from my interactions at the warrant committee meeting the other day that what i have to say now is going to mystify some of you enrage others and have a just a bit of people scratching their heads what i'm actually trying to do here my goal is not to advocate for a particular position but to make some comments about process just in terms of where i'm coming from so you'll recall that i was on the school committee for three and a half years i estimate that it cost me fifty thousand dollars of lost revenue to do that volunteer work for the town i worked vigilantly for that that whole period of time to ensure civility in the town and also to ensure long term planning so i think a lot of people have this are under th impression as it was communicated to my wife that i was in the no camp for the override that's false i don't know where people get that opinion i was raising a concern which i will continue to raise here and this reflects that so  mr moderator i am constantly reminded that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance i rise now to exercise that vigilance in the defense of democracy in belmont democracy is not about the results of an election it is about a process i am here to discuss changes to that process that color my view of article thirteen i am fully aware that most of you will feel compelled to vote for article thirteen as it stands because you believe that it is the honorable thing to do an election was had town leaders in the override sponsors made promises and it is only fit that they try to keep their promises but is it fit that we try to keep their promises to a meeting but i do not stand here to defend article thirteen nor to oppose it i only wish to provide some background for a town meeting to consider as they debate this article article thirteen i'm talking about the basic question is what was this override actually about to the typical voter it looked like a simple question about whether to fully support the schools or not indeed from all the rhetoric you would think it was a contest between virtuous proscribe all idealists and arch conservative anti school luddite that of course was and is rubbish practically everyone's for the schools breman has always been to what degree do we support the schools and how should we go about funding the schools to that level now there is a very reasonable disagreement to be had about whether the funding that has been provided right here to the schools has been adequate to the needs and whether instead we could start restoring some lost programs there's a conversation worthy of the town and one i certainly supported on the school committee but alas the override and the report it was based on did not address that issue the school funding in the override only meets the funding gap in f y sixteen with a few changes to cope with enrollment and that's it it does not resort services cut in previous budget years and it makes no promises about restorations in the future people want to mean that but it simply doesn't that is not in the override what what is the override actually about here i will quote from a letter that i wrote to an old roommate of mine who moved into belmont just before the election and turned to me for my take on the issue i wrote as follows while i was on the school committee we developed approaches or long term planning that see their fruits in the superintendent's multi year proposals these efforts inspired the town to do something similar and that was part of what led to the creation of the town's financial taskforce that group ultimately produced a report that included the overall recommendation that was put on the ballot unfortunately there are several problems with the f t f report first it is not a long term plan it basically does some terrific work in assessing trends and creating projection models but it never really raises the issue of what exactly the town should be doing over the next few years to the extent that it doesn't discuss any goals it is either simply projecting for with the status quo or memorializing the wish lists of department heads or quietly embedding the specific ideas of a few key players for them or more importantly it was never reviewed by the general public so it is not a town consensus and it is really not a plan at all at the level of detail that the school department plan is i'm referring to the plan that was put forward about exactly what would happen if the over i would pass it was an equivalent in the in the the voters and perhaps be forgiven for being under the impression that the document includes a long term plan since the creators of the report seem to think it does however  demagogue what is your point of order well i'm giving him a little poetic license here but i don't take your point but continuous mr cunningham do have a much longer do you because well i've given if you can focus your remarks i mean i'd like when somebody make an amendment i do like to give them a little license but you are straying a bit so if you can do your best please continue please continue to feel it's entirely relevant to what i understand please continue the fact that you disagree with me based on some prejudice that should not prevent me from speaking my full piece mr cunningham dismissed mr cunningham i have given you nobody's talking about prejudice here i remind you that we do not use that kind of discourse in town meeting certainly i gave knowledge of the go ahead yes thank you please continue thank you talking about whether it was  consensus of the town i furthermore remark that my friend that i had personally heard of at least three key members of the f t s committee who had in hindsight decided that they did not even support the recommendation and they were  cunningham mr cunningham you have now said we we can't start talking about people from a committee who reported to you personally and then you're saying this is beyond the appropriate discourse go to the content please of your motion of your amendment mr moderator i'm sorry in order to mr comey in order to clarify the point of my amendment i need to provide the context in which i'm making it yes but you're talking  about unnamed people in financial taskforce so afterward i'm talking about the consensual on this of the report done with iraq is not appropriate to talk about we had a incident in the previous town meeting and i interrupted that person too and said  not appropriate to talk about selectman this or unnamed people this was subsequently had a different point of view that is not fair to discourse here in town meeting discourse should be on the substantive issue and i've given you significant time here so please complete your reason taishan on the merits as you see them of your amendment you i'll just end with these sorry ladies and gentlemen i was and am a great supporter for the schools and for the town and voting any override that addresses true needs whether it be enrollment roads capital projects what have you i've always said let me see the data and i will tell you if i support an override but the idea of stashing away a large amount of money without any specificity about its use only takes power out of the hands of the people and bypasses their ability to make their voices heard about the use of their money when money is around it will a reason will be found to spend  it as a side note my proposal to replenish the depleted special education stabilization fund is merely a gesture to indicate what i would like but i would like to see specifics about where the town is headed and where the money is going i could have used any specific project it is not it happens to be that the spread fund was depleted and i think it should be restored but it could have been anything it's not as if i'm just trying to get school money funneled into for this override again it's completely arbitrary that way but the notion that it should be a specific project as opposed to general money for some unspecified future use is the is the core of my motive behind my amendment the question i now ask is and excuse me mr moderator are the promises of elected officials in appointed one committees and town leaders sufficient to justify the release of a hard money to an uncertain future i have no and i have no intention to suggest how you vote on article thirteen but i wanted you to hear a perspective that may not you may not considered as you turn to vote it makes sense to me to vote for the article because it reflects the vote that happened in town it also makes sense to me to oppose the vote because it creates an unexpected change in the balance of power which i did not plain i circumvented that sorry it's up to you decide thank you now turn it will continue so it isn't the end of a process it's just a beginning that's all it was intended to be when the financial test force put together its recommendations in the financial modeling group he spent countless hours if not hundreds of hours on the matter to suggest that we want to bank one point six million dollars without any sort of specified action on that and that is incorrect when we did our financial modeling whether you agree with her or not and some may disagree with some of the revenue pretty some sins that were invented in that  suggested they were too conservative in some might suggest that expenditures were overly not overly conservative or not overly conservative enough what we came up with was that we were going to have a phony projection of a shortfall taking into consideration the need that significant resources to the school budget because of the growing enrollment romans going through the roof and there for that to continue are mandated costs on the special education the absolute need without question ladies and gentlemen to continue to fund our capital budget which is clearly still underfunded frankly and so the model suggested over three years to four year period of time that there would be a deficit around seven point eight million dollars we understood that in the year one twenty sixteen we would only need two point nine but we would need to bank the one point seven refute your use so that we could extend this over right out for several years in fact the model suggests that we needed an eighteen if you read the report my hope is that we won't need an eighteen based on some favorable trends would say from a revenue perspective a navy expenditure perspective and maybe some of the we're working group's recommendations that we very intend to continue to work on that might draw some additional revenues into town we can use that one point seven for future years now understand ladies and gentlemen that the stabilization fund takes two thirds to establish in to then takes two thirds of this body this is the appropriate body we're not you're not giving up any control whatsoever the board of selectmen might recommend to you in eighteen or nineteen out of spend those funds us tommy members will determine as the appropriate embody in town how to spend it and there will be specificity around that if you look at the financial projections in the mud and the model that's clearly outlined in terms of where some of those funds might go but we made a change that throughout time based on the conditions on the ground so we're not bankrolling this so we're going to hide it somewhere you're going to have every opportunity over the next future years and sent to an end to every opportunity in the next few years to decide how that money is spent thank  amended article thirteen to put this money into the stabilization fund this is as such an impulse stated moderator this is the left over money from this year part of the override toward stretching the override to future years by putting it basically in the bank which is what the stabilization fund is this amendment knocking that down from one point six seven million down to two hundred fifty thousand is gutting the override voting no on article thirteen getting the over i just to be very clear what we're talking about here is the numbers get a little confusing putting the money into the override allows town meeting to maintain control over that money to be spent in future years there's no reason to be hamstringing our future town meetings by putting it in a particular place it may be in them that some of the money goes to the special education in the future and is a definite need i don't know that we have to state that one hundred fifty thousand has to be used by some future town meeting for that specific purpose when we may at that time of other needs at the time that we want to shuffle the money around this by putting out a call thirteen without these amendments retains town meeting control over this money by two thirds that's very important this gives article thirteen an amended gives town that gives town meeting the power this is basically just a token allocation of a very small portion of the money that's going to force the will of the voters i would hope that even if those of you out there who are opposed through the moderator if i may oppose the override would at least respect the political process of the people who turned out and voted and fifty five percent came out and voted in favor of the override to at least finish it by appropriating the money we may recall we did this with the ball mr moderator where sixty two percent of the people voted in favor of the pool a town meeting actually had to appropriate  money town meeting could have said no one meeting nearly unanimously said yes way more than the people the percentage of the voters because i believe the town meeting understands the voters speak and they respected the process to have a bunch so many of the youth turned out to vote for this override to show them a civics lesson where they win an election but still lose it's just not not a good way to go forward i would state that we should follow through to what we promise this is what the select promised and this is just following through at the end here that this amendment basically what's the breaks to i would also state that when the time comes i would hope that we would end up with roll call votes on these amendments and on article thirteen because i think the voters need to know paul roberts town meeting member precinct data it excuse me mr roberts is mr cunningham is just said that he would like to with your almost both of these amendments was the work many recommended april action by a vote of twelve to thirteen members of the war committee who were not supportive of the four point five million dollar override and reflected that in their vote and yet their own reason mr dash suggested that we would not have implemented the override and yet it seems that taxes are going to be raised i'm going to pay the money so where what i counter what fund with this money be in six that it's not levied it will not be levied thank you and there is however an amendment under article wells to raise an equivalent amount of money and put it in the warren committee reserve positions because of the increase in a row meant for ongoing capital funding as well the roads and sidewalks are projected to be funded hopefully in perpetuity to two thousand for sidewalks three hundred thousand for roads this money is not appropriated and that interrupts that funding it also interrupts our ability in eighteen and nineteen in future years of fun you know some of the needs of in the schools so again and so here it's a good question because you know things change so in future years operation may need the funds a little bit differently than i just suggested depending on where things fall off from a school perspective from town government but generally when we do the projections begin we spend a lot of time on this that's really where the money was primarily going but is that helpful d an opportunity to just describe you see that free cash has been drawn down to about four by about four million dollars or immediate demands like things snow and ice and such in the operating budget whereas for the stabilization funds this article we're building up the stabilization funds for about two million dollars really the some shift going on would you money that's really an income britain not appropriated it's really a bank account if you will are any dates on and as described by the chair of the work committee we work very closely with the work me the board selected to establish guidelines where we we felt that we want to have three to  free cash is can only be restored in two ways one is our revenues command higher than budget or expenses come in less than budgeted so that's the only way to free cash in b b stuart it's almost like your bank account if you don't spend the money on something that  just goes back into your bank account that's what free cash is stabilization funds or direct it or direct to purpose the special education stabilization fund which is an idea we had a couple years ago i mean i certainly support  of view that we probably do need to see that at one point in time we wanted to get that two million dollars we should consider their future years to help us smooth out if you will the the sort of the the speaks in values of our special education c although they continue to go up and went right and then the cap stabilization fund will be used for that set purpose and the that we operate stabilization fund or the money that we're putting in today will be used for operating budget at this time meeting will determine through an appropriation before that's helpful so it's directed in the sense that it's directed towards operations of the dis tongue meeting in future years based on recommendations frankly that will come from this board of selectmen in work communicate the budget committee  spend on those funds it will take a two thirds vote by this time meaning extract those monies and if we need to hear from others mr mercier before hear from you a second time so mr weis jack weiss a precinct one going to echo a little bit of what adams said before seems to me that if one is against this article one has to either believe one of two things either you were against the override personally and this is your opportunity to have that opinion prevail if that is your motivation i would suggest as has been previously suggested that you ought to set aside that personal opinion and respect the will of the voters the other motivation maybe well the voters didn't really fully understand what they were voting for when they voted for the override and they didn't want this million seven sloshing around i would again submit that the override campaign was very clear that he amount of the override exceeded the immediate need and the goal of the override was to extend that those override dollars as far into the future as possible so therefore it seems to me that but the more logical assumption is that the will of the  town was to support the override and the more logical assumption is that the voters knew absolutely what they were voting for when they voted for the override and therefore i would urge everybody to support this schreiber precinct a town meeting member and member of the warrant committee we have a choice now whether or not to appropriate this one point six million whether or not to tax it  decision is if we decide not to appropriate it that the money goes away and it goes away forever it's it's not going to be sitting in our coffers if we don't do this i guess i have a fundamental opinion that we need to follow through on our commitments that we were told we were promised by the selectmen by the financial taskforce that the tax levy limit would increase by four point five million that is what an override does but we were also believing that it would that we would be taxed four point five million dollars i don't think that's a surprise to anybody we were also told that in the first year two point nine million would be spent on the f y sixteen budget and that we would not need all of it in the first year and therefore one point six million would be saved for future years in a stabilization fund a stabilization fund isn't a new concept it's something that we as a town have used on many occasions and it's it is a very safe mechanism the goal of all of this is to avoid the need for another override for as long as possible and i don't think any of us want to have to go there again in the near future the stabilization fund transfer is the mechanism for carrying out what the voters voted for the mechanism is as safe as it can possibly be as we have said as we have heard town meeting decides by a two thirds vote what to do with it it is the best possible mechanism once we have taken it the money is protected by town meeting  how is it going to be spent we decide how i believe it will be spent is on the budget and the budget needs that are determined through the entire budget process and we will vote on it again by a two thirds majority i believe that this is really crucial to maintain the trust of belmont residents i believe it's important that we do what we say we're going to do if not if we don't appropriate it we're not doing what we said we are going to do and if we divert some of that money to other needs we're not doing what we say we're going to do i think that by not doing it we'll feed into the cynicism of divisiveness that none of us want in town i think this is a commitment  made as a town and we as town meeting member therefore need to support it boileau stated earlier that we had tile meeting got the vote for this money that's going to this reserve i disagree with that we vote on what they decide goes with the money they present the articles tom leading can't all may if they come up with some dream and present an article or a war but the war comes from the government so we get the say yes or no told their decisions we don't make the decision per se all we do is decide whether they've done the right decision as to blow and i think that was i mean you stated a committee works for months on budgets there are budget hearings that take place as war where volunteers were elected officials so on and so forth so there are residents in this community that do construct the budget it was a tommy member have an opportunity to comment on that throughout that entire process if you care to come to t meaning in suggest that as a certain appropriation does not make sense you can certainly do that but it's the mark receive mean that if you say that we should not spend x dollars for x reason or you may all be only one of two hundred eighty votes here whatever may be so i firmly believe that this body has the ultimate authority to vote on what we suggest clearly yes we do suggest that but you certainly have the ultimate authority to come to town meeting and say yea or nay in terms of how we construct a budget or file amendments and you know there has been amendments filed in the past so i understand your point that we don't ask everyone in the room to come with their own budget that would be very difficult to do that or i respect the boys in towns that construct it but i believe that you have an ability throughout the process to comment that we need to do a more effective job at times communicating clearly we do have precinct means as you know now and we want to be more transparent you know we continue to drive for increase override in my opinion and it was discussed here on the sa tickle of the separation of where these monies would go and i believe i believe when i spoke on the spur earlier and other places that if the if the override was stated properly as town reserve fund and school fund you may or may not have got i believe you would not have gotten the reserve money but you are of have been pressing for miss i'm not moderator i foresee that we are going to get a lot of taxes from the new construction at the at the park and also from way out from cushing square and also we've had many new construction which means that we are getting more taxes so a lot of tax i'm pushing a lot of taxes additional taxes coming in now can we not add to the stabilization fund in the future banks year the year after when all this extra tax is coming in in terms of those projects some white suggest here and some economists in the room that have done projections we actually lose money on cushing village in a calm park the operational impact of cushing village likely will just be a break even now i don't hear the debate that's or my point of view in question village it's a revitalization revitalization of cushing square not a money maker it won't be as a beat students in our schools of the other operating needs as well no different than there will be for the op and so if there is a net amount that is brought to the parent after all the expenditures associated with that additional school age children that will go to the uplands and that's wonderful but i don't think this board or anyone in the room for that matter would with think that it's going to be a windfall for us at all the only windfalls we will see for to see from a cowboy perspective is the sale of would fall road we saw the parking lot of freight hundred fifty thousand dollars those would be capital funds but from an operating perspective i know that the cushing village a group has advertised all of this windfall to the town and never took an into consideration the other side of the ledger which is all of the expenditures that will occur as well thankfully that answer to question or so nothing is coming from two hundred eighty units a clearly to be taxes assessed on those projects but my point to you is that it's not expenditure free to be school age children that will attend our schools there be a need to provide all the services that we provide each and each of you individuals in town so they don't come in just pay taxes there's a need to provide services to them as well so when you run models and remember i think was also when she was would question is the stabilization fund the only way of putting this money aside by the way i am in favor of raising the full amount of taxes in the town been able to spend it all and then the second question is would we have to repeat this process every year if we do not and there's other articles in fact there is a one under article twelve so right now it's just a stabilization fund i don't it is a paid that will be it will be will be a need next year to again appropriate additional funds to the stabilization fund to there would be next year there million six hundred four zero sixty nine to the stabilization fund i'd like to say that i think that the process of both campaigning for and passing the override was was actually quite straightforward we had a financial task force that work for close to two years they came out with a very detailed plan the override was part of the plan the selectmen put the override to the voters and there was a very transparent campaign to pass it and it passed as a part of a team of volunteers that called close to a thousand owns in town when we reach people and didn't just talk to their voicemail and they asked about how the money was going to be allocated the stabilization fund was part of a plan that was laid out because that was part of our understanding of how the money was going to be spent so i think this this piece of it was very well understood throughout the entire campaign and i think this is the final act which is for this body and in you know i would say to mr white that actually it's not the government versus us we're actually in this room part of the government it's up to us to now finish the job and pass this article thirteen and allocate this money to the and i think would force the overrides the mentally was to save the schools that's all we heard about to save the school save the school so the people went out and they saved the schools whatever else they got on the sidelines but i really don't think that we should be blowing this kind of money on the taxpayers when you've got a very large percentage that did vote no you know for these extra taxes when you need the money you have border before the town for the money but not just arbitrarily whatever this is kind of money when there's a large group of elderly eccentric people that cannot afford this   people who voted either for or against the override were very well educated on both sides on the topic all the material on both sides describe the components it was always clear that was never just the school's override and that's i have a lot of faith in people's ability to educate themselves before they take a vote and i think that it would i don't presume that i  better educated on the content of the vote than anyone else whether they agreed or disagree with how i voted so given that i think that people were really fully informed this is really following through with a natural progression from the very very wide margin that was actually voted it was occasion pushing village will be a money maker it has been projected and ms allison is analysis project that my recollection is it should net about sixty thousand would be a heavy loss project once once it is occupied we did a very informal analysis and the numbers came in that between  depending on within this range of reasonable assumptions cushing village will net somewhere between eighty six thousand and three hundred thousand in revenue per year that is because it has a this gavin has moved the question all those in favor please say i those opposed a it's approved by more than two thirds we now go to the vote under article thirteen and i'm going to start immediately with an get just one sec obviously approved by more than a two thirds let's take a five minute break i don't know if everybody heard some reading reading glasses were found halfway up the aisle on my left somebody wants to claim we do all right let's see if we can complete action on the budget here tonight so i'd like to turn to mr leavin sen and go through article twelve a vote on the motion board of selectmen unanimously recommends favorable action in the warrant committee the work committee unanimously recommend favorable action and a discussion of the motion a under article is likely to announce myself each time or should i refrain from doing so i think you should ok michael even censure of the word committee and town meeting member at large just as a reminder motion be refers to pension this is the six point five million of pension moved be that under employed benefits six million five hundred two thousand six hundred thirty five he raised in appropriated for retirement expenses and does the board of selectmen have a vote sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen board of selectmen unanimously recommend favorable action the warrant committee the warrant committee unanimously recommend favorable action and we have an amendment under this committee if you've read the i'm going to read every article twelve b pension amendment moved that the main motion be an article twelve be amended to add after the words quote retirement expenses and quote the words quote and that the warrant committee prepare a pension report that includes an analysis of the impact of the pension payments on the annual operating budget such report must be delivered to town meeting members by october fifteenth two thousand fifteen and quote so the motion reads quote that under employee benefits six million five hundred two thousand six hundred thirty five dollars be raised in appropriated for retirement expenses and that the warrant committee prepare a pension report that includes an analysis of the impact of the pension payments on the annual operating budget such reports must be delivered to town meeting members by october fifteenth two thousand and fifteen  is like men have a vote on this man tammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen the selectmen voted unanimously to abstain from taking a position on this amendment and i will explain why if i may mr moderator please to have senses the board of selectmen does not oppose the amendment but it use it as a town meeting directing its war and committee to take action and amendment as you heard the word committee eleven to one in favor of this this is proposed by i'm just one of many members as you see of the sponsors of this one at least one from every precinct in the town and we felt that it was in light of the issues that were raised by select williams and we thank him for raising that about the issues regarding our pension problems at the time may be right to revisit our prior discussions about our plan to address the pension we have a plan we felt it might be time to have the work committee do some research as to of that option or other options or anything on the table and see whether we should continue on the path we're on or not we're not making any prejudgments we're not protect and vacating a particular position we're just asking for a study to be done we're very fortunate on the war committee to have greg menaces a member who is an expert in this field and we are volunteering him because he is not here tonight to to lead the effort on that although he did say he would i'm at the war committee and he also said october fifteenth was doable as a deadline to just relook at it as a bit of a summer project if you will it would also so we thought it would be good to bring it to town meeting as an amendment you heard chaired levens and said they would do that we would do this anyway regardless of whether this amendment passes or not but at least  it's something that i'm proud to say it is one committee by limited ability but they'll do a very good job on it and as i close already said going to do it but why am i opposed to that well first of all i don't like being told what to do and sammie i think that's was just saying i don't think we should be directing that can we more importantly this is to analyze the impact of the pension payments on the annual budget and we'll need to deal with that about one year artificial deadline and i assure you you'll get a very good report but take away the out of it she doesn't like me i have a process question i tickle nineteen of the bylaws describes the  of the water committee and one committee must report on financial islet bills and they may in their judgment report on any other matters that's a by law now we have this which is a direct and i so meant to be mandatory and just to get this report sylvie cruz precinct five town meeting members my first time so i apologize i do anything wrong i know this isn't required special time meaning they're just asking that whatever report that the warrant committee produces that they deliver it to us it could be via e mail but it does not require a special town meeting and the reason for the october deadline is just that i'm wrong that's when the budget closes but i think there's the first quarter the first quarter  amendment to a budget amendment it does not have anything to do with the budget and i think it in that respect could set a dangerous precedent that all of a sudden we start loading up our budget articles in the future with lots of things that are not particularly budget related as man and man precinct four it was when jim williams ran some of us sat down and talked to him about the budget and actually the impact that this potentially has on the budget is huge the reason that we asked her to be presented to town meaning members is that we know the war in committee does work and that they're wonderful but the thing is we haven't really focused on this before we need all of you to see the snowball  turning into an iceberg that's headed towards belmont and all we want to do is provide you information this assures that you get it because we feel like our heads the bed in the sand too long and you have to see what's coming please please pass this amendment thank you mr roberts paul roberts town meeting member precinct eight i'm one of the eleven sponsors of this bill representing precinct eight and with due respect to my fellow town meeting member mr mclaughlin i would say that we actually it is important to ask politely for war committee to do this report i've been on town meeting now for close to ten years and it seems like each year a budget season we come this issue of pension obligations comes up we basically rubber stamp it because what else we do and we roll over to the next year i don't recall there being a detailed report or discussion to town meeting about the long term prospects how the town will pay for its pension obligations what the different options available to the town are that is made by the pension review board and we in rest the government or committee meeting more or less rubber stamp that this is suggested a polite request to say when we talk about the big picture and we take a look at where this is going and what some of the options available to us are maybe other than the options we have right now or continuing with what we're doing right now and why and that's all it is saying what we were going to do in any way is you know encouraging but at the end of the day i think it's a it's a completely reasonable request and i'd like to urge my fellow town meeting members to vote in favor mr moderator ralph jones precinct three if it's a polite request the language seems a little strong and says such report must be delivered to town meeting members it sounds like an order rather than a request however as i understand mr hall's comments this is not binding and the body receiving the order can do or not do whatever it wants to do with respect to this and in that context said we ha shows that this show is oh thank you for putting the site up i think the reason that you need a report like this is exactly what this says the expenditures start this i would take an opposite view on this is or expenses that should have been covered a long time ago and were not for some reason and it seems as though we should it's a community step up and cover these as fast as possible if that means twenty twenty seven so be it if that means that we have to put aside other things to cover these expenses so be it any further michael events and chair of the warren committee and town meeting member at large moved that under employee benefits two million seven hundred seventy seven thousand three hundred seventy five the raise in appropriated for other reserves including health selectmen unanimously recommends favorable action and the warrant committee the work committee unanimously recommends favorable action and he does got any discussion any non all those in favor please safety twelve million seventeen thousand two hundred ninety dollars be raised and appropriated the board of select tammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen the board of selectmen unanimously recommend favorable action in the warrant committee war committee recommends favorable action by a vote of thirteen to one and the school committee has a presentation and the slap could you give a vote of the school committee at the beginning here yes the school committee or a slap of the school committee the school committee voted unanimously in favor of this and you may go ahead with your presentation i will try to keep this very brief as i know it's getting very late in the evening but we did want to give you include a few photos in this year presentation to give you a glimpse of the into the range of activities that take place in the schools every day it just continues to offer a very rigorous academic program k through twelve  remains a top tier district and once it once again this year u s news and world report ranked belmont high as one of the top and high schools in massachusetts i hope you've had a chance to look through the booklet about the schools the town clerk's office sent child and there is a myriad of extracurricular activities to draw a large number of students every day after school and are vital to a well rounded education for our students community service remains one of the tenants of belmont school starting in the elementary grades into new a strong program in the middle school and thriving at the high school in fact the student body at the high school has collectively performed a proselyte lee thirty two thousand as hours of service in this past year alone the arts to remain essential to the school system i hope you all will have a chance to visit the home or our gallery to see a samples of the amazing works created by our students in grades k through twelve and have a chance to have a chance to see their productions this spring at the middle school and the high school these and other productions are amazing and the sheer number of students involved is remarkable as many of you know belmont also continues a long tradition of exceptional music education and once again was selected  national association of music merchants as one of the nation's best communities for music education and of course one of the big highlights of two thousand and fifteen is that we welcomed our new superintendent john failon on the first of july i'd like to thank superintendent for the extraordinary work that he's done in his first year in the district the transition seemed extremely smooth and it's a good sighting to have in place a superintendent who will def they guide the district for many years to come the school district did of course face challenges during the past year we all know that a reputation for excellent schools along with the most convenient location next to cambridge and boston has led to rapidly increasing enrollment the chart behind me i hope shows the dramatic rise in roman in the last five years and this trend is expected to continue the number of students needing english language instruction has also climbed dramatically and special education costs were extraordinarily high this past school year as you know from the may town meeting even after achieving more than four hundred thousand dollars in savings due to freezing supplies and leaving fizz positions unfilled septra wherever feasible the school department had a five hundred thirty five thousand dollars project by the end of this school fifteen two hundred fifty thousand dollars was transferred from a sped stabilization fund back in may by this town meeting and the two hundred eighty five thousand dollars transfer from the reserve fund was approved by the warren committee last week as we look to the future we know that in light of these challenges worked on by the top financial task force addressed one of the school strategic goals to support overall program matic and fiscal stability we're grateful that the april override will provide needed infusions to the special education accounts and add positions and the financial taskforce multi year plan provides bunched needed stability for at least the next three years and hopefully more we also i'd also like to share some of the other initiatives that are currently underway in new educator appraisal system is being fully implemented a review an improvement of the budget tracking systems in student services will soon begin and a review and revision of the fees schedule for rental space is underway this summer and  strategic plan for the district is being developed and we'll be looking closely at short term space themes for the district and we'll also await the decision of the m s p a late this year after once again submit a renovation application for belmont high school and lastly will continue to explore the full set of financial taskforce recommendations relating to education particularly in the areas of social and emotional learning supplemental revenue operations  maintenance and compensation and now i'd like to us superintendent failing to come forward and highlight some of the details of the f y sixteen budget that is before us tonight in particular to explain how over right funds will be deployed each year when we start the budget process we begin with a discussion with the leadership council as to this achieve goals in the priorities for a budget and we did so this year the fiscal sixteen during the financial taskforce process it was clear that if funds were available it was very important to address the pressure points on the district the first being the need for additional personnel to work through the enrolment increases we have been seeing and also making a deposit into the three budget lines that have escalated over the past several years in the area of special education this slide outlines the three budget line items that will be provided with that infusion of funds to the overwrite support it we have in the fiscal sixteen budget you can also see in the slide behind me that there is a three year fiscal plan that we have presented to the town or the past few months to show exactly where the positions will go and are needed in years one two and three of the next additionally when we talk about the positions needed for the schools we also have to talk about the rising in rome and in the space needs that will accompany those enrolment increases next year we will be looking to increase the footprint only at belmont high by utilizing increase and we will work with the capital committee to ensure that we proceed cautiously conservatively to provide space for our students and teachers we want to make sure that the public understands that when we went out over ten to thirteen times to talk about the needs of the district we promise that we would do two things one is we would decrease class size with the added positions and the second would be that we would add engagement programming to both the middle school and high school to ensure that students are out of the hallways and off the benches at the high school and out of the study halls here in the middle school in creative and enriching in needed programming throughout the belmore public schools we have already added to next year potential courses in creative writing economics global leadership p e and wellness art music reducing class size in math classes at the high school and also hearing grade five when we look at the technical sums that are associated with the budget in fiscal sixteen we just want to make sure we bring to your attention that the original task force number was forty nine million seven hundred seventy thousand but through the hard work of the town hall insurance was reduced and that even for next year which allowed us to provide one hundred nine thousand dollars back to the town making the appropriation for f y sixteen forty nine million six hundred sixty thousand and seventy dollars we know very clearly that the assumption is that we will get even funding for our grants that come from the state and federal government and that we continue our sixty percent balance with user fees and gate receipts in the athletic department and that we roll over the existing population of staff with the ten addi positions we do have some unknown variables that we want to make you aware of we always have a concern about the variability of our special education in yellow populations and we also are awaiting the final state numbers from the senate in the budget as representative rodgers pointed out that budget has not been defined as of yet one of the major pieces of that budget would be the full day kindergarten grant that supports our students attending kindergarten full time here in belmont as you can see behind me the proposed f y sixteen budget with a dollar and percentage increase involved as amounting to a total of forty nine thousand six hundred sixty and seventy dollars an overview of that f y sixteen total budget salary indoors nonce our breakdown is behind me on the chart above school department respectfully requests that forty nine million six hundred sixty and seventy dollars be appropriated for the f y sixteen budget we stand before you very appreciative of the vote this bring it we promise to to ensure that we spend your money accountably inappropriately over the next three years  is there discussion of this motion here is my question however when we look at the seven point six percent rate of increase project it forward particularly if one looks at that as an acceleration as well as a percentage  increase this looks like a very hard problem to solve only on the revenue side i e only by increasing the amount of revenue going to the schools each year by seven point six the nine point six and so on so my question is the level of enthusiasm and commitment or looking at in a more structural way by which i do not mean telling people to buy fewer supplies i mean the kinds of recommendations that were laid out in the warrant committee report and more fundamental rethinking of the ways education is delivered that we do take a good hard look at the war committee recommendations from the two thousand and fourteen report i believe it's page forty five recommendations were in place one was achieved in four appending and we have very much looking into how we can make those recommendations into a practice or a system throughout the district we believe very strongly that we have benefited by these funds and it's our responsibility as a good partner in town government to spend the wisely to make sure it's spent effectively and also offset some of the costs that we have within our district so we are looking at recommendations of the financial taskforce for example utilizing some fee structures that we have as we write our space making sure that we belong to the right collaborators to reduce costs but also looking at the heart of picture of how do we provide services especially in regards to special education funding that can be done more effectively and more efficiently at a lower cost and look in again  at the sorry line of our budget and see what we can fit that work in this well so we did hear the word committee we do respect and value their opinion it will be working towards those goals ms bass to bass precinct three and i appreciate listeners question and swinton phelan's response that's that's very good news i have a couple of points one is that laurie slap showed these great pictures of extracurricular activities and and it is wonderful what the kids get to do but there's one problem about that down line charges very substantial fees and i grew up in a family that had to make a lot of afterwards is you know you can afford everything and even more if you have a couple of kids and if they have a couple of different or three different interests or want to try something out new the fees are tough and even with special scholarships and consideration for people who say oh i can afford it all my family would have done that they would just have said no you gotta choose you know and if that's not necessarily the best thing for children they should be able to try different things out so i am concerned we're not going to amend the budget tonight i'll support it but i am concerned about the fee structure and i i think that the school committee been working on this and that use a superintendent in the administration should work on this and there's a second thing for years now it's been more than a decade  studies have shown very clearly that high school children high school age children have a different circadian rhythm are live on a difference or kadian rhythm from younger children that they should really not start school before about nine o'clock because they're just not awake if they're starting school at seven thirty or eight they're asleep in their first period and little kids are different little kids wake up early but at this school committee and the administration i think really needs to grapple with this this is not new news it's at least a decade that there's been serious research showing this and puffiness it is to work out a different bus schedule and a different schedule for afternoon activities i think it has to be done and you know since we care about what they learn in school we care about whether they're actually awake thank you know mr failand you have a brief response or please a brief only that we have a well this committee in the belmore public schools and we did a survey where over five hundred fifty community members answered in one of the top five categories was the start time so we will be looking at that issue moving forward and if we were all teenagers we'd be wide awake right now but we're not all teenagers so don't you wish that we were all teenagers right now  ian precinct seven i have a question with regard to the funding from the override and the question is is there a formal mechanism oversight of how that money is spent we asked how meeting members  come once a year you know to see what we're seeing tonight and we have materials to read but i'm just wondering if there is going to be some community perhaps a committee an committee to work alongside the school department to see how the funding is is appropriated through the next couple of years and i'm particularly concerned with three guys i'm delighted to hear you talk about special education i'd like to take be able to have a close a look at in district alternative programming because our out of district costs while i certainly understand the need for some children to be out of district one of the ways to reduce the out of district costs is to have more in district alternative programming so again is there a mechanism for more mechanism for oversight i would suggest that i'm responsible to report our quarterly to the school committee we also work with the word committee in meet with the subgroup that reports to the liaison from the work we need to the to the sub committee of the education committee if i'm saying that correctly i do believe that we are invested in making sure that we are accountable to our school committee and we invite you to meetings and i don't know if chairman slop would like to add to that secondly we do look forward to strategizing around on additional placements being more available programming in district so we will look at that as well as part of our attempt to decrease that line item keeping in mind that that is a direct opposite direction of our space needs that we have so we're going to have to recognise reconcile some space needs along with bringing programs back so that with that we'll take a little strategy to try to pull that off as well i guess i would just encourage perhaps a little bit more community output i know that i'm familiar with the quarterly reports that go to the warning committee and certainly school committee meetings you know what budget time but i'm just talking over a period of a couple of years i think it might mr baghdadi just again to put your question in context and tell me if i'm not being responsive but i think what we heard earlier this evening is that cushing cushing village could net somewhere between one hundred twenty three hundred thousand eighty six thousand to three hundred thousand depending on how many school children there are ok and that's net as given to us by the board of selectors the board of assessors that's their job and mr kale our town administrator but at least report out based on their memo and report to the board of selectmen that we use in our financial modeling in terms of the new growth superintendent went so i just wanted to suggest that maybe in future years i think it would be valuable to add your presentation was really helpful if you could maybe in the future add one slide which i know i've seen at a school committee meeting but i think it's  uminating for a town meeting to show the very very substantial non tax dollars that are provided by parents and other donors to the school system it's an enormous percentage of the overall budget and it's very important i think that all town meeting understand the very large numbers that are that support the school system and that are outside of tax dollars if those monies went away we would have a very very substantial problem with our school system and i think we need to acknowledge that at the time that in the that a vote is made on our tax dollars supporting the system for failing a brief i agree and i will include it that the amount of funds that are dedicated by agencies of groups like foundation to belmont to education to fees to parents pay for bus courts in full day kindergarten  very much adds to our ability to provide the basic services to our students so we will include that in upcoming presentations thank you and he further jus a quick comment in my precinct precinct two we have had i would say end to twelve very expensive homes that have been built over the past year or so and they will add a new houses being built have been added into the new growth program but as those buildings get completed there's new buildings coming on so it's kind of a rolling process that keeps going through when we're going to notice it most is when the building stops  likely vinson chair of the war committee and how many members at large moved at that under minuteman regional school eight hundred thirty one thousand five hundred twenty five dollars be raised on a perforated warrant committee favorable action mr weiss in brief comment but minuteman is close to a twenty million dollar budget and it flies under the radar here i think in our town so i think it's worth taking a few minutes last year when we presented the budget the operating budget minuteman increased by just under six percent and as a school committee member that was a concern to me but belmont's assessment went down by one hundred thousand but i think it was largely a non issue this year we have the reverse situation minute bandz proposed fiscal year two thousand and sixteen budget is nineteen point eight million dollars that is a little less than one a one percent increase from where it was last year and most of that one percent in fact really all of that one percent increase is attributable to the line item called instructional services which is largely teacher salaries so that represents about forty five percent of men a man's budget that line item went up about two percent so that's what drove the budget increase juxtaposed to that is next year as mike lee vinson previously alluded to has gone up by eighty thousand dollars or over ten percent now the question the obvious question is how on earth is that possible well in order to understand how that's possible you need to understand how minute man's assessment is determined in the nalla hated the first thing it does is minuteman looks at its other sources of revenue those other sources of revenue actually cover about forty five percent of the minuteman budget and the two largest are staid aid and two wish in revenue from non member communities who send their students to minuteman nonresident tuition is about two and a half times larger than state aid so it's the largest by far source of  assessment revenue that number the nonresident tuition number next year those down by about five hundred thousand dollars and the reason it goes down is twofold first the number of nonresident students that minuteman has declined by about five percent secondly the states allowed to wish in that minuteman can charge those nonresident students has declined slightly over year over year so because of that loss of revenue even though the operating budget is only going up by less than one percent the amount of money that minuteman needs to raise from its member town assessments in aggregate is going up six percent now belmont once once you have the aggregate revenue then it needs to be allocated to the individual towns in belmont's case are or are in rome and the way that that assessment is allocated is basically based on the students that you have in minuteman relative to all of the sending towns belmont's enroll mint is essentially unchanged from a year ago but the aggregate member town enrollment is down six percent so what has happened here is belmont now has a slightly larger share of a slightly larger overall policy and that's why there's a one percent increase in the budget but a ten percent increase in our system bottom line at least from my perspective as a school committee is the fact that there is only less than a one percent increase in the operating budget is a positive thing and when you look at not the year over year change but the two year change belmont's assessment is actually down twenty thousand from where it was two years ago so even though there's a fairly large year over year change overall were about the same as we were in fiscal year fourteen is there discussion of this motion michael e vinson chair of the warren committee and tammany member at large moved g but under public services nine million eight hundred ninety six thousand two hundred twenty nine dollars be raised in appropriated and a vote unanimously recommends favorable action discussion motion by scoring detail at your leisure but there are a couple key points that i do want to make if i can i  have and a couple things i know that one thing we want to talk about are changes that are going on not only in the library structure but also give you a little bit of information about accomplishments and fifteen and plans for sixteen boy knowing that matt lauer he is here served in many years as our chair for the library board of trustees and has retired we thank you very much for your service i'll try we've also had a couple under changes we have a new director of the library peter through drew's arrow who is here with us i think folks have had a chance to meet him we've also had leadership changes and some of the key departments in the library we have a new children's librarian a new reference librarian and a new young adult librarian we also have a big change i think that's probably long in coming but the library is moving forward to joining the facilities consolidation so i know that something that has been under works for a while but we are looking to move forward with that with the physical years sixteen budget into you'll see that in some the line items in terms of how we've doubt some of the expenses and put them reciprocally in that category to facilitate that transfer i'm going to go quickly through these next line so something for everyone at the library i love that phrase we have sixty eight percent of our residents with a library card that's a phenomenal volume of folks with a card and not only that they use it we have over half a million in circulation this year we're on track to be that number three in the state and circulation on a per capita basis so it's not only do people have the card but they're using the services we do see a grows in some of the downloadable materials that's what we would expect that people are accessing that not only from home but also in the library as well children's services huge users of the library big volume in terms of the programs continued growth and we love that i think that's a great partnership  we also see with with coming up in the summer we have the summer reading program will expand the hours so that people can take advantage of that if they're working families that they can come and participate in that we've seen a lot of growth with young young adult library and the programs there and the partnership with the schools i think as the budgets have been cut over the years in the schools i think the library has stepped in and we look forward to even more stronger partnership with the squalls on a go forward basis continue to invest in databases and you can read some of the  slides we also have strong partnership i know it was mentioned for the for the schools we have strong reliance on the friends they are supporting us and delivering value with the book with the computers so an invaluable resource to us in the library but also to this in the schools as well in terms of the contributions that they're making and we've also made some changes to the physical structure of the library we've put an automatic door opener handicapped folks making some prudent investment in the elevator to make it a little bit more reliable but there's no doubt about it that's one of the big things that we're talking to you about that we need to do more in terms of investment in the physical plant of the library it's fifty years old it's on the verge of needing some significant investment in terms of plans i think you can read it will continue targeted programs we want to reach everyone in the community book has been a strong program will continue with that and we will continue to look for partnerships some ways to expand our reach in the community and one thing i'll just mention quickly is a feasibility study it was mentioned earlier so we are looking to do a feasibility study looking at the library facility and so people say why if usability study if your old building the failed six times this  specified from one of the meeting rooms we really are at the right point for us to be looking at what the right investment needs to be not only in the programs and services but the building do we need to support that behind me is is the framework for the feasibility study is there is a core in the center that talks about the mechanics of that piece but really the most important is the part that you see on the left in terms of developing that long range plan and that's something that we need to do every every five years to be accredited we need to have a long range plan on file we want to extend that horizon and look longer term that we have a ten or fifteen twenty year projection but what's critical is getting the engagement from the community so i know that we've done in the past when we've done and building program but even more important to get the input from all of the community in terms of what's the library of the future what do you want for services how do you want to access that information what do you want that facility to it's the right time for us to be doing this work and for us to be partnering with the community to get that important and i think that's the lesson learned when we've done some of the projects in before in the past not getting the public engaged in that first section as we critically need and want you to do so on the bottom there's a notional timeline when i would ask you to take away is that we're going to be busy doing a lot of work this summer and what we really wanted to come back in the late summer and start to frame out how we want to hear from you how we want you to engage with us and to give us the input about what it is that you want for the library in the future there is a new grant around that is anticipated but really we need to look at and we live within the existing building building that we just renovated and that will get us what we need in terms of a library of the future or do we need to do something more than that so that's all work to come but the key is getting the engagement from the public from all of you and letting us know what it is that you want with all of our e mails for though the entire bourne is behind me as well as peter in terms of the directors know we do want to hear from you this is a very important asset for the town and it's used by everybody in the community sixty eight percent is an awesome number and we want to continue to keep that high and the utilization high as well now look forward to hearing him from all of you and working with you as we plan and then the path forward thank you was there discussion under the motion under twelve  committee unanimously recommends a favorable action board of selectmen sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen the board of selectmen unanimously recommend favorable action and discussion action under our budget article twelve thank you all thank you very much for the award committee and mr leaving going to try to do one more article tonight given what i've heard i think there's a chance if we can complete action on this tonight that we then we may be able to complete the rest of the agenda for town meeting on wednesday and avoid next monday so that's why i'm going a little bit longer tonight  sixty six thousand and seven thirty eight to the other post employment benefit open stabilization fund for the purpose of funding of a post employment benefits and that the money shall be provided by transfers  funds by transfers from the departmental enterprise funds as follows free cash ninety one point three percent brand thirty four thousand eight thirty two light and the price of cow well point five percent sixteen thousand five hundred three dollars saw rent prices account two percent seven thousand and three thirty five water at the price of child two point two percent sixty eight thousand and sixty eight dollars for a total of three hundred sixty six thousand and seven thirty eight the current balance of the old pep trust as of five twenty six is two main thirty thousand dollars principal contributions remain eight investment growth has been about two hundred ten thousand what major capital projects are in the future and i say major capital projects belmont high school a d p w facility police station and a library it is important that the town of belmont be a solid aaa rated community to be able to get into these markets it has been almost seven years since we've had any sort of financial correction you know when it's common there is no  coming we just don't know when also sounds like the same message we've been getting from men school board authority as we submit our paperwork you're in you're in the queue to get approved it's coming but with us crew credit rating belmont will put itself in a position to be able to borrow and go to the open market for any funding for any of its capital projects i ask you to approve  seventeen mr layton sent a vote on this from the warren committee the work committee unanimously recommends favorable action and mr baghdadi the board of selectmen sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen the board of selectmen unanimously recommends favorable action if i may say of course ok i just want to say just as town meeting has requested the warrant committee to produce a pension report the board of selectmen are going to appoint a committee to review our opec policy and to make recommendations on what more if anything the town should be doing our objective is to be is to appoint this committee so that it works concurrently as the world as the warrant committee works on its pension report so that that way the town can have a full picture of you know our obligations and what more we can do to address both pension liability and opeth liability there any discussion on article seventeen policy to maintain its reserves including free cash stabilisation and capital endowment funds at ten percent of its general fund revenues a few years ago the town adopted a policy  policy whereby it would contribute five percent of its rich reserve level that exceeds the temper sent target to the oh perhaps a billion sation fun to haul to help offset the town's all pub liability current balance of the open stabilization fund is about two million dollars town meeting was made aware of this policy at a precinct meeting on zero pad and pension obligations that was held in october of two thousand and fourteen credit rating agencies such as moody's take a favorable view when the town can demonstrate that it is aware of its all pub liability and it is addressing it albeit some balik lee and i think that's what you heard from our town treasurer and it's want to clarify that it is not accurate to say that this is our total contribution to open as i mentioned earlier in the insurance section of the budget there is one point two million it's actually one million two hundred forty three thousand seven hundred twenty two dollars that is going towards a gigo portion of the pension if you were to add this three hundred sixty six thousand you would get roughly one point six million dollars that is being contributed to the pension if you are so i'm sorry to  health care if you're did pay make that is a parallel to the six point five million six point five million for pension includes both pay as you go one point one million roughly and the contribution to the unfunded liability which is five point five million but simply to clarify i'd just like to point out that our total contribution of that is not just three sixty six it's roughly one point six million dollars for the discussion of those in favor place say i was opposed i adopted unanimously remained two hundred ninety seven thousand three hundred twenty five be transferred from the following available funds to me the portion of the fiscal year two sixteen operating budget expenses and such and such as listed tax rate c one million seven hundred fifty thousand from and reserve fund balances the ninety thousand from parking meter receipts the one hundred sixty three thousand from one of revenue thousand three twenty five from kepler projects fund for various capital expenditures and that the entire revenue derived from the sale of electricity to private customers municipal departments including the cost of street lighting and from jobbing during the twelve months beginning january first two thousand and fifteen be allocated appropriated for the operating expense of the municipal light to power but including out of state travel also an appropriations payments to be expended on the direction of the minutes polite board and that the time accountant is here by authorized to make such transfers on the books of the town we aren't committee have a vote on this sorry mr moderate just  selectmen sammy baghdadi chair of the board of selectmen the board of selectmen unanimously recommend favorable action and the discussions you see mr moderator capital budget committee unanimous recommends favorable