town meeting members who maybe haven't been to one of these things before the goal tonight is i'm sorry my throat's a little hoarse from a call they've had all week the goal tonight is  to answer as many questions as you have as we can fill in the time allotted about all the warrant articles for the special town meeting there's actually quite a few of them i'd like to follow the same format that we've used in past briefings just to give everybody a chance to speak like to keep everybody at the microphone to posing no more than two questions within two  minutes this is not a time for speeches or debate this is just information gathering if you want to be have a argument you want to make please save that for town meeting itself the goal here is to pose a question and there are people from all over the town of ministration and proponents of articles to answer your questions and if we don't have an answer tonight we will get you one just as fast as we can am kind of a stickler for time in these things i realize we're about five minutes late but i want to break no later than five past nine just because we all have to get home at some point and if if we're going on too long in a particular article i'm going to move us on to the next none of this time we can come back if there are a lot of people left over from a previous question so what i've done is prepare a couple of a number of slides that summarize very briefly what sometimes are kind of lengthy warrant articles i've put the warrant has been distributed i thought you've had a chance to review it because i'm not going to attempt to cover the substance of the entire article in the slides that would be way too long but just for starters and i'm going to do this in the order that they appear in the warrant the  substantive article for our purposes will be a question to approve authorization of debt for a new school on the assumption i suppose that the  question is approved of that of ember six the election if the november th election is negative on that i i don't know what happened to this wired article but i think for present purposes the article is predicated on the assumption that the school question is successful on the th and then town meeting will then be asked to formally authorize issuance of the debt so the project can go forward just to summarize what the sc project is about this is a rendering from one of the school department presentations of the proposed building which will be largely a replacement for the existing belmont high school some parts of the existing building will be retained but most of it will be new  you can see that the existing buildings about two hundred and sixty five thousand square feet the new building will be considerably larger you know about four hundred and forty five thousand square feet but it's designed to accommodate a much larger number of students and that's because the new school will not be just a grade nine through twelve school but it will in fact be a grade seven through twelve school and the reason for that is to try to alleviate crowding that right now as a problem for the entire school system and you can see that about sixty some one thousand square feet of the existing structure will be incorporated into the new building now the timeline is two and this is summarizing information that's been provided at a number of public meetings i guess over the course of this year the idea is to have this goes forward to complete the remaining aspects of the design that are still outstanding break ground in the summer of two thousand and nineteen and open the new building in phases so that students would start in two thousand and twenty one in grades one through twelve and the project would be completed in two thousand and twenty three with students and from grade seventy eight moving in also there is an expectation that the m s b a which is the state school funding authority will reimburse the town about eighty million dollars so the net cost about a month right now is estimated to be just over two hundred twelve million dollars and that in a nutshell is what article two is all about but if you have any questions please come to the microphone introducers identify yourself your name and address and if there are no questions i don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign this is the this is the largest construction project that i will ever undertake can you tell me how many students the original high school was designed to carry i think about one thousand six hundred but i hope somebody from the school department can putting more grades in this one physical location but because we've been told the you know the school is is not and cannot do the current educational facility even for the present and roman i was wondering what the original roman what it does i don't roam it was fifty years ago schools may have been designed a little differently today the school is being designed in conjunction with the m s b a guidelines based on design and rollman which is so in rollman is putting students in core classrooms but in a high school setting there's many more space other than the core classrooms so an estimate of total capacity is about thirty percent greater so we have all the desk counted in places like art rooms and p e and music which are not core classrooms and also technology you don't know where the full capacity is but it's going to be around three thousand and because a high school all right any other questions about the high school well we can always come back if something occurs to you  so the next article is in the south pleasant street zoning overlay district which is the text of the article is lengthy but i have summarized it on the slide it's intended to provide additional uses in what's currently n l b one zoning area and the intended use is or the i should say the additional allowed uses would be either an age restricted housing development or says that living and it would explicitly prohibit the banks drive through is and adult entertainment the area in question is not all of south pleasant street but the section running approximately from the back of the car wash parcel which actually extends all the way down to the white street extension so it's basically the exit of businesses on south pleasant street but it stops i don't know the flight of the flood parcel is the end of it but that's that's the general area  and what the you know whether i live proposal is being entertained for that or if there's a timeline i don't know any of those questions is the text of the article in the and the rest of the article going to be a presentation a town meeting ok thank you my i have several questions for my principal question and maybe it should be my only question is about traffic to and from the street now i would like to see from this site i would like to see built and to article three a requirement that the developer co operate with the town or maybe just put it up themselves a pedestrian bridge and bicycle bridge across the railroad tracks because if you think about it look at six so i think sorry to interrupt but present as a question yes is there any such thought of alleviating traffic motor truck traffic which is terrible unpleasant street and making it easy for the senior citizens to get to waverly square by building in a requirement for the such a pedestrian bridge thank you that's thank you for that is there somebody from the planning border or geoffrey wheeler can you answer that question one i'm interested in this is a detail in just understanding the thinking behind the parking requirements and the bicycle parking requirements specifically as it relates to assisted living it doesn't look like there's any reduction in parking for assisted living and it would seem to me that arguably there would be less of a need and even dependant living and the ratio of  one bicycle space for five car parking seems high to me for senior housing and so i'm just interested in the planning boards thoughts on both of those requirements under it's page seven of the warrant it said assisted living facilities and age restricted housing developments shall be exempt from the residential parking requirements ok and they are however encouraged to provide one for potential employees that may have a bicycle and choose to ride a bike to work the other piece is with respect to parking in any relief of sorts that might be granted to assisted living facilities and has directed the housing developments at this point the way it currently needs is that applicant waiver to have the parking requirements we do sed so they start off just say two parking space for a two bedroom unit and if they can make a reasonable argument to the planning board they can have that as you all know living in belmont parking is a significant issue in the planning board wasn't prepared at this time to make across the board reduction without actually speaking to th that only that it's zoned to allow development to occur but it is publicly owned property so it's really up to town meaning the marsh like mean the town to decide how they want to use any other questions about article three article four adult use marijuana establishment zoning overlay district this is the article  then identifying an area where a marijuana retailer would be allowed by special permit and it looks like the possible area for that is what's indicating actually i got this map from jeffrey the other day that i did not see any other part of town highlighted as a potential location for a marijuana establishment this is what it is mccarthy precinct wanted he spent some time reviewing both article three and four and i've been very pleased to work with geoffrey wheeler and supremacy going on between warrant article three dollars and four dollars and i think that's going to be addressed in the next draft so that it's a very easy fix to make it clear that what you have to comply with if you look at the marijuana guidelines it's a fairly simplistic require but basically it's good lighting nice parking very let me put that in the form of a question jeffrey is there a conflict right now that has to be reconciled  a couple left out words that i need to be added in so george halas in the process of raw as writing a revised motion to include those all in it it won't be the form of an amendment it just will be a revised motion the issue about the clarification however publicly will have to be for movement and so be on the lookout for those two new documents they probably won't see them for anything else but open space as associated with the mclean district but then the way the way this map is drawn then it seems like the potential locations would be on  the south side of pleasant street but if the excuse me of the if the age restricted development went through and the store market remains there where it is and the gas station remains at the corner of propeller road how many store fronts or potential locations of where that whole strip is roughly sixteen acres and the plan board believes that there is sufficient area within that sixteen acre strip that's in front of you for two stores  precinct one other detail question interested in the the thought process behind an eight pm closure for marijuana retail establishments with most other retail stores i think allowed to be open till ten and in some cases eleven and with this being an adult use product it seems to me that that's an early closure and i'm just curious as to why that is more restrictive than other retail uses natalie lane a precinct date just a question about voting if we were to vote no does that mean the two stories could be anywhere or does that mean that you stories could be nowhere what's the what happens based on how the vote  that article self explanatory but is there any questions i invited the sponsor of that article that would tend to night but i didn't hear back oh sorry  my understanding is if you're doing a moratorium you have to do something during the moratorium period such as study things it just seems to me that the planning board has done the students of amount of study so i don't know exactly what war they would be during during a moratorium period in order to make the moratorium leap at people discuss this i guess the question would be either to the  maybe put that question to the sponsor of the article what's what additional study would you like to see that hasn't been done already you know more or less says due to the complexities of the fact that this the legislature was going to pass a revised law and regulations had not yet been promulgated etc that it was you know it made sense to hold off until those things happened and now conditions well maybe i could rephrase that because i was wondering myself i've now forget the explanation at a town meeting last year why we we that but that was that was the rationale for the one last time i don't think that rational and i think we've done the all the work that would need to be done there is there's a very limited role that the planning we're trying to identify where the stores could be look what the buffer zone is going to and who's going to be responsive special permits it's pretty much it i mean there are other pass precinct number three i have one question the traffic really stinks when you get over to triple zero and and pleasant street as it is why did the recommendations to fix some of our traffic problems that we have presently and the one well i'm not sure what article that pertains to well i think it actually contains to both because we're talking about rezone in the present street area and which would be more retail shops from my understanding along with the pot shop probably the traffic on trip l o r d backs up practically to cushion now and if extend the business area and have even more retail shops and stuff you know we already have a traffic sit i mean it's hard to even i live in the precinct i live off a trip hello it's miserable to try to get home at  charles clarke i'm sure the planning board let me just in sort of inform you about both of these amendments especially the overlay which i believe that the traffic impact will be more for the overlay on south pleasant street when we do the other uses i think in terms of adult use marijuana it will be like a retail and what we have done is anything that gets developed in the overlay district is by special purpose and part of the special permit process if you want to go you know get the extra f a r get a bigger building get one of the uses like we've talked about senior living or adult use i mean the adult but you have to go through the special permit process one of the parts of the special permit process is that you have to we will look at parking and we will require that you submit a parking place a parking and traffic plan and that's the time we will look at the impact of what we'll do we will approve in the special permit there and one of the one of the things that you know and so we've gotten word that they would the attorney general would indeed allow another six months for further study the question becomes has in the town already studied it so why would the attorney general which well because some of this will come up again at a time maybe i think the questions have been asked and the answers can be debated a town meeting but at this time we can come back i do want would basically give access to the school campus from under the tracks at the foot of alexander avenue this just to be clear is four hundred thousand dollars for design only and the idea is that once the design is completed the funds for construction would come one hundred percent from non non town sources be on the rendering of the high school campus the if you look at the at the right side facing the screen if you look at the right side of the running track and go straight links provides a schematic design of where this would go along the lines of what senator brown's burger just said but if you want to see a map and also provides  controlled by a group called the boston metropolitan planning organization or the boston m p s and funding for passes competitive and so there is no way we jack weiss precinct one just a request i know a lot of work has been done on the design vincent you just mentioned some visuals i wasn't aware that they existed and i think it would be great to have them do let me put it differently events is the is there going to be a presentation on the title of town meeting yes i just want to point out the distinction between if is a feasibility study and twenty five percent design so this budget is to start designing what we have from pear corp is a fuse ability study they did what you could call schematic design but it's  subject to amendment by the the the documents that were produced as part of the initial route feasibility for the path are on the town website state agencies are supporting this tunnel as a standalone project but obviously how it actually construct the tunnel and coordinate it with the high school construction is something would be addressed that at that time but that is job one is to get but as in terms of the the question that was asked the the construct the designing and construction of the tunnel will be coordinated with the high school of the high school goes forward and it will be built even of the high school doesn't go ago the d p w in the police department the if you read the article i think you'll be under a misapprehension because as written the article seems to say the new building committee is going to be appointed  actually not the intent of the article and i believe it's going to be read written or amended by the time of town meeting the this is a very narrow technical issue that the article creating the building committee a year ago had a technical defect i guess where it did not give the building committee authority basically cut checks for the contracts that it was authorized to enter into so it's been administratively cumbersome to pay our bills and the only thing going on with this article is to give the building committee authority that a building committee generally has make payments on property tax deferral is under clause forty one dollars a and in case you're not familiar with clause forty one dollars a that is a program under state law that allows seniors who meet certain income criteria to basically not pay their property tax but instead have the liability of crew and ultimately when the property is sold the t ax gets paid up at that time in the tax a cruise as a as a lien on the property as part of that program currently in belmont there's an interest rate forty five million dollars it has nothing to do with that asset it's only the income as you might have two million dollars in assets and you're drawing from that on a percentage basis i may be only able to draw fifty thousand dollars a year of those conditions would be eligible i think this is what stops people from going they think you're you have it's an asset no it is not based upon the essence it's just only those two issues the income and the age and i think it's a way for people to draw some of the record from their property i went through the numbers if you got a tax bill of ten thousand dollars and it runs for ten years even at eight percent it may cost you four million fifty thousand dollars in interest that you know that's the interest always and now you sell your house three hundred thousand dollars was forty or fifty thousand dollars is not a very big percentage the only one that is going to gain from the sale of that house is the heiress and so me i'd like to promote more people in that age category to use part of their part of the record in the house by doing that they want you know and they don't have to do it every year it's five cheaper to do that than reverse mortgages reverse a very complex complicated and expensive one deferring you could defer this year or maybe you don't want to defer it all your defer some this year and next year maybe as you go a couple years ago and you deferred as you need to via new car you'd like to take to one on one of the young want to know why the they want to lower it from eight percent for four and a half percent the reason i think we ought to keep it under eight percent i was convinced of this by other parties is because i'm soo that's precinct three and i'll try my best to phrase this is a question i thought i was going to agree one hundred percent with on which is would be a record breaking thing but i think it should go down to four and a half percent but only break for senior citizens that's available there are several of them from from their taxes and it's done commonly in many other towns but i believe it used to be or another place is it is dependent on a rate set by the department of revenue and fluctuates with inflation because you know the issue is not is eight percent moral in four and a half percent immoral or vice versa but are we really charging people who are up against it an exorbitant rate rather than just paying attention to the flow of inflation so and somebody answer my why why was it not set by to some standard that reflects inflation that will change automatically instead of having to come to town meaning every time inflation bumps up or down well you know what but you know a lot about this c well the reduction be retroactive no that that's one thing i know i can say that the warren committee actually had a similar question to sue bass about why four and a half percent and i think the answer was that at least my translation of the answer is that four and a half percent is closer to a market rate than eight percent these days and the work committee was interested to know why not just make it a self adjusting index so you don't worry about it anymore  periodically decide if they wanted to adjust the rate or  not ok well that actually exhausts all of the ward article so we can start from the top of that any more questions or we can end early  have a little more questions i would say thank you very much for coming and please vote on the sexten so you were town meeting