twenty mr carm will do article twenty which is our usual article and then turn to the budget and complete action tonight mr carmen he opened stabilization fund floyd cam in town treasurer article twenty other post employment benefits opap stabilization fund moved the town appropriate transfer of four hundred seventy two thousand and ninety two dollars from the general fund free cash into appropriate  transfer total of ninety nine thousand six forty five from the water enterprise fund the sorrento price fund and the light at the price fun to the other post employee benefit opap stabilization fund for the purpose of finding other post employment benefits as follows the time of eighty two point six percent four hundred seventy three thousand ninety two dollars like three point six percent twenty thousand six forty five uk seven point three percent forty two thousand water six point five percent thirty seven thousand for a total of one hundred percent five hundred seventy one thousand seven thirty seven voted the board of select your question is probably about probably about eighty thousand high and there was some seventy thousand additional moneys to came out of the water and so at the price fund and i think the calculation for the general account side of the house is up about twenty twenty five thousand and second question and i believe this is just a drop in the bucket in terms of our overall have obligations you know what that is the overall obligation is somewhere around ninety three million dollars the the town itself we have a policy in place where a little bit ahead of the cur e in most communities we have an open trust that was set up by statutory legislation we have a policy that was approved by as i said the board of selectmen the work committee in the town administrative office and we've been finding this since two thousand and eight currently we have three main five in the open trial so if you think about what's happening in the next couple of years we're going to have a want to recognize an individual was served the last ten years on the warrant committee and he's stepping down he was chair for three years so you've seen him in operation and you know ho thousand budget moved a bit under general government four million seven hundred eighty nine thousand six hundred twenty two dollars be raised in appropriated and the board of select well the most important request i got in the last five minutes was to do this quickly so i took that very seriously in this i'm going to skip a couple of slides but let me give you the highlights which i hope you're familiar with of if you look at the committee report which was distributed earlier in may the budget this year is one hundred sixteen million or just a little bit over the great majority of which comes from our local property taxes that's ninety two million out of one hundred sixteen followed by state aid local receipts which are things like motor excise taxes and restaurant taxes see that in terms of the split of the budget the majority of the budget goes to the schools and that percentage has been steadily increasing for at least for the last ten years  schools are about fifty seven million dollars out of one hundred sixteen the town is about forty and the share of the schools has been steadily increasing it's a little bit each year but it's been it's steady each year largely because of three factors steadily rising in roman enrollments which is necessitated additional staff teacher compensation and special education expenses they all lead to this growth in school budget which you can see is particularly large this year the school budget is up seven point six percent in the single year largely reflecting the issue of in romans  we'll get to these and in a moment we just this just summarizes what you can see on the warrant itself of the different broad departments of the town and how they're funded the school department is the largest followed by  public safety which is police and fire is the second largest and then it goes down from there is is it the same headcount as the year before and it's it's the same head count so roughly the same services are being provided on the town side the school the partment you can see has additional staff and as you heard earlier from bill of out tonight and romans has grown and in a very dramatic way in the last couple of years which is creating pressures throughout the school budget this year we have good resources risk pools  sidewalks health insurance is a light item that is one of those things that is largely out of the town's control and this year the health care consultant that we use said we should expect premiums to go up  percent not long ago they only want to two percent but eleven percent translates to a lot of money and we just have to pay it and the pension expense you can see is up substantially that's part of the average position process that you heard about  earlier tonight and the whole plan is to pay off the unfunded portion of the pension liability by two thousand and twenty nine the contribution for f y nineteen of seven percent is the last year of a big ramp up starting in f y twenty that rate of increase will drop and then it will stay at a lower rate through two thousand and twenty nine i do want to talk a little bit about the way free cash behaves because to my mind that's one of the most fundamental constraints actually on the town's whole budget so let me walk you through how free cash evolves over time free cash you can think of as sort of the amount the townhouse and its savings account that's not exactly true but it's close enough in a perfect world you wouldn't use money in your savings account you would have enough tax revenue and revenue from other sources to handle your operating expense but what happens in practice is that the town draws upon free cash  and then historically it's been the case that even though we use free cash through the year by the end of the year we find money which is called replenish mn and the finding of the money comes about because either your expenses during the year were smaller than what you had budgeted or sometimes you have revenue that you didn't expect so examples would be if somebody retires during the year that position is unfunded suddenly your salary expense is lower than your budget called for an alternatively suppose you had a very good year for building permits where you pulled in an extra half million dollars that would be unexpected revenue that replenishmen goes to hopefully to top off free cash at the end of the year and if everything were perfectly balanced even if you drew free cash down but then replenished it to the same amount you're saying his account would remain  unchanged from one year to the next the way it goes is this the state department of revenue looks over the town's accounts and issues what's called a certified free cash number which is essentially the money the amount of money we have on hand in the free cash account on july wanted to each year so in july one of two thousand and seventeen that was eight point five nine million dollars so how does that evolve over the course of the budget year well the way i've drawn it here it drops from the eight point five nine starting point to six point two seven and it does that because that's how much of that difference of roughly two point some million dollars that's how much free cash is going to be used in the operating budget and then on top of it  it turned out that this was a tough year for the weather and roughly four hundred thousand dollars of free cash is going to be is for the snow and ice budget and some other unexpected expenses of that nature that brings it down to five point eight seven then as you just voted on an open contribution the open contribution as he saw in the articles voted out of free cash that brings it down by another four hundred some thousand dollars that brings us down to five point fo and then the big question which right now is unknown is how much replenishment is there going to be that actual number won't be known until the fall when the department of revenue completes their assessment of free cash as of july two thousand and eighteen that hasn't happened yet but if you look historically what has replenish been that been recently well in the last year replenishment was two point one million dollars that actually is lower than it had been just a few years before but the evidence we reviewed suggests that free cash replenishment is actually a declining trend so just to illustrate how this might work we started for free we have a starting point for free cash we drove down five point four if we were fortunate enough to replenish at least a two point one million dollars that we had done last year that brings us up back to seven point five but the seven point five which is a hyper which is a potential level of free cash as of july two thousand and eighteen is already about a million dollars below what it had been the year before and that means you're drawing down free cash and it's not being replenished in a way to keep your savings account topped off we also have a free cash guideline in belmont which is  we have a policy of keeping free cash at a certain level which is basically a percentage of the operating budget but if in the future free cash keeps ticking down like this year by year you're going to hit the lower limit of the free cash guideline and that basically means you have exhausted your ability to use free cash to fund your operating budget remember were using free cash because tax receipts in a sense are not sufficient to support the budget and absent some very favorable development on reducing your expenditures pretty dramatically or pass and override and that's the decision the town is going to have to face fairly soon the way things are going me just talk briefly about how things are looking beyond the coming year you know we have proposition two and a half in town so that the property tax levy increases by two and a half percent each year you actually get a little bit more because of something called new growth so if houses have improvements or new developments are built that generate additional property tax that actually is an additional source of revenue and historically even with prop two and a half belmont's property tax revenues have increased between three and three and a half percent per year that's the increase in your property taxes that's most of what you have to support in organic growth in your budget if your budget is increasing by or four and a half percent or something more like that you really can only get there if you're joined on free cash and that is inherently a short term strategy beyond fiscal nineteen as you heard also from bill of all of the school enrollment are likely to continue to increase so they'll probably will be continued need for additional staff and related resources in the schools we have continuing capital needs you know you heard a man rima honey last week that certain capital items were postponed this year but sooner or later we will have to replace the fire engine and that sort of thing we've talked a bit about the pension liability the general stabilization fund which was created a couple of years ago with the benefit of the of the last override is being drawn upon for the first time for the f one thousand nine hundred budget so that was conserv very thoughtful way but we finally have to start using it and when we do use it we're going to use it fairly rapidly so even its first year will be next year but it will be probably depleted by sometime in f y twenty or if my twenty one and the general stabilization fund which was only intended to be a short term kind of mechanism will have run its course which raises the question what do we do fiscal twenty one and for those of you who may think that the warrant committee always worries too much about budgets well it's because we look ahead and we say well gosh fiscal twenty one is races lot of questions and we're just trying to plan for it regarding opeth there's a very good development in the last year which is that the actuarial consultant had projected the liability at one hundred eighty six million dollars which is gigantic belmont convened a special op ed study group which worked with the consultant in the last year and using what we hope is a more reliable analysis with more accurate assumptions gives a current estimate of only ninety seven million dollars bad which is still huge but it's obviously less huge and the plan is to start paying that down in a significant way as soon as the regular unfunded pension is taken care of  and lastly this is something i showed last year i'm just find it i guess reassuring looking at the growth of the  town the total town budget over the last couple of years comparing it to housing prices and just to pick a unit of comparison i got data on actual sales and belmont for the last couple of years and this is dollars per square foot and we can see that bomb on a still a very desirable place to live because since two thousand and thirteen housing prices on that basis have actually been and i think that would be the best policy but that in a nutshell is where we stand i urge you to take a look at the executive summary of the committee report which talks about all these issues in greater detail but not more than nine pages so hopefully it's all the just the bill thank you mr epstein we now turn to discussion under article nineteen a motion on general government is there any discussion member five can you tell me whether the seven point eight million dollars is just our scheduled amortization payment or whether that's the schedule of payment plus what we call the pay as you go mr epstein that is the scheduled amortization plus what's the the current portion so it's the total bill ok and then i'm one comment every year i look at the morning committee report and i see this category which is fixed costs and then every year i watch that these fixed costs  and under the fixed costs are the pension and i think that it would be really useful if that pension obligation was pulled out of the fixed costs and shown separately because it's the pension that nineteen d nineteen d that under public safety fourteen million five hundred eighteen thousand two hundred eighty six dollars be raised in appropriated a vote of the warrant committee committee unanimously recommends favorable action and  r toss parker precinct five the fact that mr mercer was even in doubt about that i think shows that we're getting too little information every year i'm up to saying i think we need more information in order to be able to this tax write up it would be very helpful to have some more information about what this comes out to her crime how would rate how is it different from arlington or lexington you know some of the drive expense how many fires do we have what did it mean for all i know it could be cheaper to just let houses burn down and replace them it's it's i feel that i can't vote no to public safety it would be sort of hard to explain to the people who voted for me but on the other hand i also don't really feel i can express lane why this is the right number and sort of exercise that oversight that i feel that body should be doing what is frustrating is that i could probably just replay the tape of what i said last year in the ever fall could we finally do something about that i don't think it's so it's so one reasonable to get a little more  thank you well let me first respond the warren committee report does try to address at least some of your concerns there's a very detailed breakout of the cost for both police and fire with analysis of particular issues in the departments and recommendations for certain actions by the department in terms of the broader suggestion i guess you made of making all sorts of comparisons across towns we have actually made various attempts in that direction over the years it turns out to be extremely difficult and  there are difficulties in making comparisons that are actually reliable to the point where we just decided that without some really specific issues that could be analyzed  well what we review is a bore select what is the detail budget book so that is online we can try to send that through through a p d f but is available and accessible by every town meeting member in this room to review we surely would take any questions that you may have when we do post so you marking i think it is a great idea i agree with mr epstein that it is difficult but it is pretty common practice among across communities to look for benchmarking in terms of services i'm not just pointing out public safety i'm just speaking generally about public services across departments in belmont we've done it a lot in the school department a lot of us have seen comparisons in prior work committee reports and there are some in this one but about comparing cost per student and various other metrics across numerous committees for schools but we haven't seen that for other kinds of departments we're lucky to have a highly compet new town manager and i know that she's done that in other circumstances so maybe as the budget progresses and and we might be able to do some of that in coming years because i think the point is well moved that under the belmont public schools fifty six million nine hundred eighty five thousand five hundred ninety two dollars be raised in appropriated superintendent phil and we'll give a presentation on our budget does the going to get the votes for mr failing good evening john failing superintendent of schools first before we go into the budget light to acknowledge and thank a few folks that have helped out the school department over the last year and recognize some folks as well first of all  the table in front of you we have a proud father of a graduate of belmont high and adam dash and his daughter so congratulations  we had a very difficult year in public safety and we'd like to thank dave for sal and chief mclachlan both the both chief people often provide extraordinary support to keep our students safe and buildings we truly appreciate the partnership we have with them and it's more important now than ever to work in partnership with our public safety official thank you to both schieffer  you just when we thought there would be no school days this year that march storm came around and truly tested the d p w so we truly appreciate j mark heart and you have to say mike's into a lot again just because we haven't heard his name in about a half an hour or so and m as we approach the budget the continued support of the war committee the board of selectmen the building committee the capital committee that belmont high school building committee is truly appreciated by the school department as well as our own school committee here in belmont and the most important folks would like to thank our teachers who work hard with your children every single day the first few things we're going to go over you first of all we do have a presentation tonight we have a booklet that was sent home to every town meeting member we have all seven hundred thirty seven lines of the general budget on our website that was presented to the school committee and we have about a forty slide presentation that was done that we will not do tonight that is also online in my goal is to not have to call the vote in the middle of my presentation to a couple of quick enrollment slides we have updated and roman data from mckibbin associates who we've worked with in the past to prepare for a building committee work as you can see we're about at the peak of our elementary  enrollment at eight hundred seventy seven students but that does not go down at all and we're servicing those students with the need to have extra classrooms at the wynn broke in the butler and put in marginal spaces the birthday next year our middle school is a very much concern as we look at that in roman today's about thirteen hundred fifty nine in just four years it goes up by two hundred sixty two students to sixteen hundred twenty one students roman in two thousand and twenty one twenty two is an additional two hundred sixty two students that middle school that's a school that's by itself for the next four years it's almost as big as the butler school as we look at the enrollment over high school age students we see the enrollment trend continue to go up and go up even higher in just seven plus years will gain another four hundred students at our high school peaking at sixteen hundred sixty seven student if you notice that line to the right it doesn't necessarily go down and it stays at an even pitch averaging about three hundred ninety seven students in the long term for each class at milton at belmont high a substantial increase in the three hundred seventeen students that we had graduate yesterday and the two hundred eighty graduates we had just last year in summary we will average about three hundred ninety seven students at the high school moving forward three hundred eighty students at the middle school moving forward and three hundred sixty five at the elementary grades moving forward when we look into how do we fund those needs for our schools and our teachers we do look to outside metrics to decide how we're doing against some of the towns that we like to compare ourselves to and last year we begin to develop the slide so we could just show how we stood up against the state average per pupil expenditure as well as the surrounding towns per pupil expenditure jaimie of the towns that we like to compare ourselves to as we look at the chart that you have here we are doing very very well a very lean budget and we appreciate all the funds that we get allocated each year but this chart shows quickly that belmont at the bottom spends about thirteen thousand six hundred fifty six thousand dollars per student in the state average just fifteen thousand nine hundred  fifty six in the average of the cohort of towns that we compare ourselves to is eighteen thousand five hundred twenty five dollars this takes into consideration the amount of money that was deposited in the first override because it's inclusive of the f y sixteen and seventeen school year although we feel like we are behind in some of the funding aspects by the towns around us we are very confident that the funds that we have and the support that we get from the town of belmont can fit the needs of our children moving forward as long as we can keep up with the pace of enrollment and the staff allocation to support those students as we prepare for the budget for f y nineteen there are three different categories that we'd like to bring this budget to you in first the rollover amounts what does it take to roll over the amount of teachers and staff we have right now with all this our increases which by the way have been negotiated this year with all of our unions and fit between the financial taskforce model that we were given  early on with the financial taskforce committee the existing staff if we rolled them over and only had to have those staff to move forward would be a three point three percent increase which we believe is an increase appropriate in equal to the towns increase in rollover in asha plan our cost drivers in the second bucket are actually the nine positions we need to support our students in the increase in rome and we're also asking for an additional hundred thousand dollars in t supplies as we have been over relying on folks from the foundation for belmont education patrons palms p t o s and others for basic materials and we feel we need an upgrade in some of those areas of instructional practices and materials as well the last category is the external cost drivers which are the bills that we have to pay as a community we have a district in special education costs that are bills that we must pay and we also have insurance bills as we talked about earlier that are going up by eleven percent and those are bills that we must pay and that increases two point seven percent which brings us a total percent increase in the budget of seven point six percent which when you see that line alone you would think that we are actually spending a little more than we should but as we as we break the budget down we realize that category by category we're living within our means adjusting to the high rule that we have in paying the bills that we need to pay by law a quick break down of how the chapter money supports the in romans in our schools and show how we actually have come within the increase of our chapter seventy money shot to seventy money from the state is based on how many students you have the previous year on october first that money goes up by a per pupil expense and we're lucky enough to get additional revenue of one million dollars for f y nineteen because we've increased by over one hundred seven students during that time however we only asking for we're only asking for eight hundred twenty eight thousand dollars to support the ninety eight years that we have putting towards that increased and roman so again we're demonstrating tonight that our roll over of staff is commensurate with the town role over that the increase that we need is truly based on the enrollment that we're getting and we're receiving funding from the state to support that in the bills that we're paying through insurance and through special education bills that we must pay it over view we ask for this increase in each of these categories that rollover our staff support i should teach a plan and help us pay our external drivers and bills that we pay the staff that we're looking for extra to support the extra students that we were received as an elementary classroom teacher physical education teacher of a point one point six guidance counselor point six elementary special education elementary music two middle school classroom teachers  administrator two point five f t ease worth of teachers across all of the departments at the high school in a district wide english language learner teacher our general fund allocation f y nineteen is fifty fifty six million nine hundred eighty five thousand dollars rolling over the existing staff plus a nine positions eleven percent insurance the district has developed and implemented a plan for special education funding a combination of general funds federal i d e a grants special education circuit breaker and allowed credits to support the district over the next three years its who wish in line in the f y nineteen budget has been aligned with the out of district funding plan and the budget includes historical an estimated carryover balances from a circuit breaker allocation in our lab credits we will increase the tax materials and supplies by over one hundred thousand dollars we're very very supportive of our full day kindergarten work that we will do but we will also offset some of our salaries to teachers in unity aid salaries as well and we will utilize our school building revolving fund to support the facilities department  now is in real need of some support as well all of our user fees will remain the same phalange boston athletic and clubs as we move into f y nineteen in the end belmont is truly thankful for the support that we get from our taxpayers to support the schools we are asking for a general fund budget of fifty six million nine hundred eighty five thousand five hundred ninety two dollars and if you include all the federal grants are all in budget total for f y nineteen would be sixty four million six hundred sixty eight thousand and forty dollars we truly appreciate your support tammy member of precinct five i'd like to make a comment about you get to the mike microphone all right thanks mike to me i'd like to make a comment about the assumptions driving in rome and budget projections in your report and in the presentation you just made and roman growth of one hundred students is projected for the fiscal this fiscal year and the next one further in roman increases are described as quote unknown but your chart in the budget report and some of the ones you show show continued student growth through twenty twenty five twenty six even over the seven years after that the projected decline from the peak only totals ninety three students across the whole system but last month the national center for health statistics issued a vital stats report documented a us baby bust twenty seven teen was the year with the lowest number of births for thirty years since one nine hundred eighty seven this decline is several years old already it could translate into lower belmont student council even before twenty twenty five i appreciate that you've had demographic studies done but i have seen them go up and down before my kids came through the school in the one nine hundred schools in the one nine hundred ninety s when enough space could be made to close the elementary schools one by one for renovation and there was excess space in the high school hard to believe in the current environment i raised this point to urge caution other comparable towns are already experiencing flat or declining enrollment and we have experienced that in the past of about not may see a lesser decrease because of our school strong reputation the school departments planners and budgeteers should take care starting now to consider consider the baby bust in our future we need to spend now for current and near term numbers but avoid locking ourselves into such numbers more than know this the colleges that are closing the small colleges they're having trouble attracting students so when i put that together with the fact that  belmont spends five thousand dollars less per pupil than the schools we normally compare ourselves with i find it hard to believe that  enrollment is in fact going to increase anything like what it's projected to increase and that it's going to continue to grow and i really urge to to take second and third looks at these things i know this is all a guessing game and that for example we built the wellington smaller than we should have because the state disagreed with us and we were right and they were wrong i know there's some history here but still you know looking at this vast increase and then thinking about that five thousand dollars per pupil differential in what we're spending compared to i presume lexington and all the rest i'm just astounded there's one question i also want to ask and that is what about starting school later team did their own roman projection and they were pretty in line we went back and asked this demographer to do an updated study with the two thousand seven hundred numbers which gave him a little more clarity into the next five years with the speaker prior to say that five years is a pretty solid view of what the enrollment could be the next five years is a little less clear in anything past ten years it gets a little cloudier as you go out that's fully understood but with all the different metrics that they derive these numbers by this information seems pretty consistent with the metropolitan boston area and the different enrollment trends that they see across the syria as it relates to start times we have a committee together we'll be sending a survey to our high school students and rising eighth graders and going to ninth grade to get some feedback from them about potentially starting school later in the two thousand and twenty twenty one school year i'm sorry the twenty one thousand nine hundred twenty school year thank you you roberts town meeting member precinct eight and rising obviously to voice my support for this budget request i also want to to the five thousand dollars per student figure i do want to point  out that while we get wonderful results from the students in our schools that five thousand dollars gap while a measure of frugality is also something that affects the day to day experience of our kids in this district every day there are resources they do not have access to programs they don't have access to that affect the quality of their education and we're kidding ourselves if we think that that five thousand dollars doesn't translate into  that i would like to point out however that this budget does include some increase funding and for a wide range of extra curricular and enter curricular activities in the school system i was had the pleasure of working with the superintendent dan richards at the high school as well as the school committee to address that and some of the key advisory club advisor positions that have been unfunded at least since my time on school committee which is almost ten years ago now i have been funded the list of extracurricular into curricular programs has been kind of updated and refresh and positions like the high point at it are for high point advisor for the school newspaper will now be funded the debate advisor will be funded many of these clubs were basically totally student run because we were not providing stipends for faculty to advise them armenian club is now funded and i think  on but i'm really glad to see that that you michael michael mcnamara tommy member of precinct seven i just want to say sort of addressing the prior comments there is a fair point that there is sort of demographic boom and bust that always happens but i notice something that i always see in the news which is the rust belt in the sun belt the rust belt is a belt that's losing people and having more industry vince things more weight the sun belt which is where the new rising center of industry that's often in the southwest and the north sort of east more around michigan detroit area has lost people and the other in sort of trans migration of people it looks like we may be the sun belt here we are getting so many students and so many young families moving here because of the educational draw and all the colleges right next to us i mean harvard square is literally you know a bus right down the street i think that well i definitely agree that there's a demographic trend to less kids and less in smaller families we're still drawing a ton of people  like immigration versus birth rate thing and people are wanting to come to our town to experience the experience of their schooling and the wonderful people here so i think that's a big plus that we're trying to plan ahead for that i would ask one question which is i know about the lab budget and i education yes john failing school department i do feel like a special education budget is funded our work with the lab collaborative is extensive and they're a great partner and they support the school department in their students that they serve very well and we also have wonderful programs in house that we are really proud of and we're hoping that if if a new building does move forward that there is more space in the town could afford to provide more programming moving for cool and fall but that really quick is the school the new school hope would be more compliant with the a b a right with the elevators and with room for space for the students absolutely thank you yes and janssen town meeting member precinct three  little bit of follow up on this special education question and i first of all wanted to thank the warrant committee and you for putting together the nice packets of information they were very informative i found however that there were some pieces of information that would have been helpful to really assess how we're doing and i wanted to point out some of that in missing information and hope that we can get it next year or at some time in the near future and i also wanted to add a perspective on what's good and i think when we look at the war committee perspective we see numbers of her galatea we see lower numbers we think good but i think that we have real implications on programming and impact on students so i would want to point out a few of them so we have ten point four percent of our students on i e p's in that's on page fifty one of the war report it's significantly below the state average and it's you know half of a neighboring community in watertown to put that in perspective with four thousand eight hundred students that means four hundred eighty students in belmont were not on i p s compared to a neighboring community four hundred eighty students that were not perhaps getting services so i thought well ok well maybe there's some other way we're dealing with  that and i looked into some of the numbers so there's a piece of information that's missing there was a report in two thousand and fourteen called the walk report it was commissioned by the director of special education in belmont and it gave comparative assessment on special education and got some i looked into that and found that in fiscal year two thousand and three there were fifty percent of students on i p s were in a specific learning disability category  how how would be that's the single biggest category that two hundred sixty eight students down to forty are two hundred forty eight down to sixty eight students a very b decrease meanwhile other categories are going up so this specific category had a dramatic reduction probably related to no child left behind act that change in law isn't what we had to do maybe doing some more stuff in general ed versus special ed fine but we don't have any information about the increases that would say that we're staying equal in our general education particularly in respect to reading instruction and i think that when we don't have that piece of information of increasing support and i looked i looked for information about ok how does our reading instruction budget come up if we've been able to back off on our special education instructor by this dramatic amount where was the commiserate increase and what i found i couldn't find it that i actually looked at this year and i'm reading instruction is below our average increase so i'm saying i don't have enough information to know that reading instruction in either special ed combined with general ed is adequate and i think that we need to have better information i'd like to have the walker report updated not ending in fiscal year twelve but current and i'd like to know that we have outcomes for these students that is actually sufficient because it's not just that we've been frugal it's that people's lives have been affected in particular in this category that their ability to read has been affected and i think if we do one thing as a school system we need to teach our children how to read effectively and early and without with with a emphasis on budget i would say we're a great success but as an educator as an outcome of have we been effective i don't i don't think we have the information to say that and i don't see the numbers that support it so i'd ask you to really give us an update on the walk report provided to all our town meeting members and pry provides some assurance that the combination however the instruction is being delivered is effective sure thank you  john failing school to school department a couple of pieces just in if we we want to meet you can we can meet anytime and i can go over some of the stated with you were just a couple of quick responses the category from two thousand and three specific disability went down because the state mandated all the chetry view and really put students in categories that were much more closer to what the disabilities were there's more than one category they were spread out against the other categories and that's the decrease went to the other categories  that's generally what took place over that time we invest a lot of time at the elementary level starting in kindergarten with our early literacy response intervention where regular educators reading specialist and special educators work with all students on ai and since we're not an i p s to ensure that their reading is making the bar and there are tests given data reviewed quarterly to ensure that we see that progress for all students moving to the elementary school our reading special support goes all the way through sixth grade in belmont which is extraordinary you don't normally receive reading special support as a regular read student all the way through sixth grade and i would i would specific learning disabilities in our lodge but there was a change but i might change dramatically differently than other communities ok so we had a neurological increase that's now double the state average and we have the specific learning disabilities that's like half so we did something different in belmont than our neighboring communities and i really think that's important that we understand why we're so dramatically different than other communities and it's important that we  helpful and i had one common and two questions and my comments just related to some of the earlier folks related to whether or not sort of talking about enrollment in belmont schools as compared to broader national demographic trends and i just want to mention that we have a lot of actual swing space in belmont i'm not maybe you could tell us the number of modular classrooms there are but that the point is more related to whether or not we build hard capital space and we actually have a a lot of swing variable space i would call that would be the modulars so those modulars could be eliminated and maybe some of the folks who spoke earlier their kids never went to school in modulus all of my kids have gone to school modulars and those can be eliminated as enrollment maybe you know many many years from now drops i have two questions one is related to just an update on the minuteman and the  process and the committee for that and then the other one is if you have an estimate of the amount of funding for the school and the annual amount that is donations away from the budget that would be a foundation for education paul there p t o it's a massive number that's not on the taxpayers back that's supported by both residents in the community and also people in roles in the school it's a it's a very very big number that's put on the taxpayer and i don't know if you know what that number is i don't have that exact number i know that we just had our twenty fifth anniversary for the foundation for the want to educate and they were recognized here in front of this party last week and if chris cuomo has a crowd of believe that total numbers  substantial but some of that money at the p t o level in the boosters level in the patients level in the palms level doesn't actually come through the school department goes right through the programs so it's very hard to track and to put a number on  but it is justified to say that the schools benefit greatly by the donations of volunteer time and funds of taxpayers benefit to taxpayer benefit as well and then the minute man i have a minute inside after this i was into the like why don't we do to the school department was asked to put a task force together a year ago after the withdrawal from belmont from mit it meant we follow through with that request in that work tony gero our director of finance put together a team of time meeting members community members and educators to do the work of exploring what the best options were for our students moving forward as related to their vocational needs in quality programming interest in districts surrounding belmont indoor and inclusive of potentially going back to the minuteman school for support for those services the group has finalized their work over the course of this year they will be presenting at the thousand schools community meeting and i will give you this teaser like they do on the radio and t v i can't share the results of that and so you watch the show the school committee meeting on the nineteenth of june they are preparing and finishing up their draft all the numbers that are on that list behind me works very hard this year to come up with the the analytics behind what would be best for our children who attend school admitted to knowing what their options could be moving forward for belmont mr awarded two hundred twenty five thousand dollars to the belmont public schools last year it was two hundred fifty thousand over the last ten years it's been two and a half million the but the f t is the only game in town you've got the friends of hockey the friends of soccer the friends of the many many friends of the boosters so as crystal pointed out there are many people who are working very very hard to help support the the schools and  comment regarding previous speakers looking at the long term in rome and i think we should definitely think about that but i don't think we should lose sight of the recent and the projected enroll mint in next year's budget and the enrollment increase next year which is not that far in advance it's based on historic numbers is about two point three percent if i remember correctly and even with the nine additional staff the staffing increases only going up one point six percent when you look at how enroll mint has grown historically since we passed the last override staffing has not kept pace with the enrollment growth so although i think it's great to focus on the long term and gee what happens if there's a decline in an element the reality is is despite an increasing percentage of the town revenue and budget going to the school department we are still not keeping pace with our school department in terms of staffing relative to enrollment in recent years and i think that just speaks volumes about the great job that our school departments do  thank you ellen shriver town meeting member precinct eight i wanted to speak to the question about enrollment in going up and trends over the future and the cognitive dissonance perhaps between  whether whether or not it will continue to go up in trends that are being seen in trends that we're seeing i somewhat by accident found myself in the room a couple of weeks ago with a school demographer so i took the opportunity to learn a couple of things and one of the things she spoke about was the strong boston job market which is different from a lot of other places also if we remember last year senator brown's burger was here talking about the housing pressure that's putting on the entire region because of the strong market and so obviously we're seeing the results of that in rome and what i learned that i didn't expect and i didn't know is that not all of the towns are seeing this equally i knew that we had strong schools and that was part of why we were seeing it but i also learned that the towns in the inner core within one twenty eight are seeing it very very differently than the people the towns outside of one twenty eight and it's because people with younger children are looking for something different than perhaps their parents were and they want to live inside the inner core where there's good public transportation and so if you look at a town like belmont or lexington or arlington we're all saying the same thing but if you look at towns like west and wayland they're popular their school populations are decreasing and so i found that really fascinating and i just want to share it thank you thank you ms coke i'm chris coke and tell me a member precinct eight so somebody like pepper can speak about the eighty's when numbers really were going down schools have been closed but we have a phenomenon called if you build it they will come so i don't think we have to worry first of all building the high school is a once and a really a lifetime for most of us opportunity we can't do it wrong we can't undersize it because we think well maybe there will be babies down the road we need to build the school based on the best advice we have now and that would be to follow what the tomorrow was a telling us and build the right size school for our current needs thank you is there any further discussion under nineteen he say not all those article one thousand f that under minuteman regional school eight hundred forty six thousand seven hundred seventy one dollars be raised in appropriated the warrant committee vote unanimous were committee unanimously recommends favorable  comparison and they are nineteen mr gamma thank you jim gamble town meeting member precinct two and belmont representative to the minuteman school committee i just wanted to put this up there to give you some context for what you're voting on your voting on that eight hundred forty six thousand seven hundred seventy two dollar figure that's part of the minuteman budget budget for next year last last year you had voted nine hundred and ten thousand dollars so so so that has gone down about sixty three thousand dollars and these next lines show you why that has gone down first of all looking at the overall operating budget for minuteman that's gone that is going up next year three point eight percent from seventeen point eight million to eighteen point five  the that that overall budget is first funded by a combination of state and federal grants as well as tuitions payments from non member towns our budget forecast for next year  is that that will be going down slightly slightly from from seven point four million down to seven point three and so and so the members will have to pay the balance of know that minuteman has mostly high school students they also have some postgraduate students but i like to focus just on the high school portion these in the enrollment numbers that are used to allocate the cost across the member towns are based on the the oc based on the job or in roman numbers for the year prior to the budget year or so so the fiscal eight eighteen high school enro number of five eighty two was was measured as of october two thousand and six sixteen the this is the last fall of the number is five hundred and thirty eight that's a drop of forty four that is coming from four towns four towns a mostly there are there are thirty seven fewer students this year versus last year from boston medford and waltham and that really is a consequence of the state regulatory authority saying that those towns had to keep their freshman within their within their school so for instance there were thirty seven or thirty one students from those towns that they graduated last year there were zero freshman from from of those those towns towns out this this year but if you jump down that the belmont number has has gone from twenty eight last year to twenty two  this year so that thirty seven plus plus six gives you a drop of forty three forty three i'm students out of a total total told total drop of forty four when you focus just on what's going on in the ninth grade this is actually a fairly positive story the the freshman class this year is one hundred forty five students which is up twelve twelve point five percent or sixteen students from from the previous year the last two numbers are numbers that i calculate off of that eight hundred forty six thousand dollars the formula for calculating every every member towns assessment chair has about six or seven different pieces to it they're all based on whether i mean some of them look back just one year to what your enrollment is others look back over an average of four four years and you just have to take my word that i think the per n dollar cost for belmont for next year is going to be thirty four thousand eight hundred twenty three versus thirty two thousand three hundred sixty six for last last year thank you mr came mercer incorrect and i honestly and over sixty percent of those students a graduate from the minuteman school continue on a college everybody thinks that they don't go to college a good majority to many member precinct one just have a question the belmont in roman f way eighteen at twenty eight and f y nineteen at twenty two is that reflecting a reduction in the number of students that are going to  vocational students in total or is this we're sending fewer to minuteman and apart you know that the differences are going somewhere else to another vocational school and jim can you answer that question to go go to go to a minuteman keep in mind that when students in the that we're talking about eighth graders primarily and they don't act necessarily solely solely by themselves but but but it's a cohort cohort that goes in so and so when you take a look at the at the twenty eight that's two classes of four and two classes of of a ten when you take a look at the twenty two that's three classes of four and one class of of ten you know so i mean so so a bunch of eighth graders may choose to go go and it's and it's not just one single student acting acting on their own thousand dollars per student could you just expand upon the why there's a big for a while superintendent failing is there going us identify sure jim gamble precinct two while superintendent phelan was going through that slide i was thinking that that question may come up so i so i thought of several reasons one is just the class sizes and the two schools are are are you know are different i mean last last year when i was in the morning committee i think of the belmont student teacher ratio as being closer to sixteen or so at a minimum it's eight and so and so and so just the the stabbing costs are seven costs are higher that the minimum in school is not is not filled you know that we're that we've created a budget that it's going to transfer over to the new building and it's  that i'm that i'm working on but it is that the nonmember students are currently paying tuition at a rate that's below below cost and so i think if we i mean so so that's my focus is to try to make sure that we can get the nonmember students to pay to pay the their fair share i think when you take in all all of those factors that thirty five thousand dollars number could be lowered say twenty five or twenty six thousand question really get any funding for seventy minuteman is its own school district so as a member minuteman g know scully precinct two you have to remember the minutemen also has hawley academic programs which allow people to go sometimes to to and get a medical education there and the power of belmont as far as academics you put the cost of the academics first then you add all the tactical and the technical parts like bio chemistry and and the like trickle and you know are added to the academic stuff the reason why sometimes you got fifteen or thirteen thousand dollars for belmont and you might  vocational it's not really you got to get away from this vocational pot it's a technical school you've got sciences you've got go to fall for your colleges and you have the technical which allow you to go to a biotech education and most of them have been turned chips either at the second the  warrant committee let me just make a quick observation about minimum and you know we studied it quite carefully two years ago when belmont voted to withdraw from the district and even within the universe of occasional schools bill minuteman is actually one of the most expensive in the state and minuteman administration acknowledged that their costs probably were out of line and they committed to reducing their costs as part of the new building program any further discussion reopened but i know that there's been after talking with west from the health department i just wanted some reassurance as to that they have it under control just wondering j mark are public works it is open right now and right free we check it yeah so we inspect it every week we have i don't know the name of the control company but they come in every week frank sartori my parks manager as we're working closely with  the pest control company we've been taken every measure that we possibly can and working with the schools working with the carrion kerio and doing more checks we still have problems  in this week and we had a lot of activity in the park and we had some illegal dumping so it's it's going to be a community effort and we're just doing everything that we can to make sure that parks  follow up comment so i actually made a couple suggestions to people of the board of health to make it a little bit more obvious to the people visiting the park the problem that's happening there with the rats because joey's park is not just belmont people using it but it's all the people around belmont and they're not necessarily he hearing the issues that we're having and they're coming in on the weekends with birthday parties and boxes and boxes of pizzas and and i see it because i walk by joey's park multiple times a day and so i love the fact that it's drawing so many people so many kids but i think you really need to be a little bit more aggressive in just educating ears when we see slides of folks that have birthday parties there and just leave everything they're expecting the town workers to clean it up we saw our sly on the you know the broken water cooler must have been fifty two bags i mean are you kidding me so i think we own the responsibility to educate those residents are either our residents or nonresident to come to our community in the trash if developer was here he would say that's what attracts the rats that come back when we leave poop bags there another trash so i agree with you we need to be more aggressive ourselves in educating those folks that use their park and leave trash the two hundred thirty five thousand from fine balance is an abatement exemption surplus account be six hundred fifty thousand belmont mean that's the light time to offset the tax rate see one man six hundred thirteen various capital expenditures i seventeen thousand six zero two from bond premium amortization j one main thread and forty thousand three forty one from general stabilization vote from the warrant committee cost of street lighting from jobbing during the twelve month period beginning january first to eighteen be allocated be appropriated for the operating expense of the municipal light department including out of state travel all thank you all very much