hello everyone thank you for tuning into this live debate at belmont media center on friday march th two thousand and nineteen i have with me the three candidates running for the selectmen c and there's only one selectman seat in the upcoming election april  nd i'm joanna jubilees senior multimedia journalist for wicked local belmont and the belmont citizen herald i'm cole moderating this evening's live debate with roger colton roger is host of the podcast community conversations and co host of belmont journal both produced here at belmont media center thanks for being michael moderator roger thank you joanna happy st patrick's before we introduce the candidates i'm going to have roger briefly talk about what a select is go ahead thank you the board of selectmen is an elected three member board that is responsible for the oversight of belmont's town government the board of selectmen appoint both the fire chief in the police chief this like man also appoint the town administrator to run the day to day operations of the town the slackman appoint other department had such as the director of belmont's department of public works which takes care of our parks in our streets and our sidewalks the board of selectmen also sits as the statutory board for a number of different functions for example the board of selectmen sits as the board of park commissioners and in addition to overseen the government for the town of belmont the board of selectmen sits as the board of directors of the belmont or of light which is timothy flood to roger's right in the middle here we have jesse bennett another newcomer and another newcomer boy epstein to my left welcome all of you will start with opening statements you each have two minutes to give your opening statement and we're just going to start down the line again with timothy going st go ahead to the could even my name is timothy flood and i am a candidate for the board of selectmen i have lived in belmont for seven years with my th grade daughter victoria and my girlfriend casey following graduation from arlington high school i joined the marine corps i was deployed for combat operations in east timor and later deployed during both the war in afghanistan and the iraq war and in supporting operations after leaving active duty i worked in federal law enforcement i currently own and operate a small business east coast chippies i am running for selectman because i offer fresh and neutral perspective and want to provide an avenue for neighbors to share their opinions and concerns we all want belmont to thrive i want your voices to be heard the axe throughout the town it is that nothing will ever change so why bother this has promoted uncontested races we have had the same people after year and no change equals no change we can't continue to afford same old same old with numerous upcoming projects on the horizon recent increases to town salaries and one hundred and fifty million dollars pension liability we have challenging times ahead we need more collaboration more listening greater transparency in strict prior to prior tours the asian as we address these key issues i want to provide a fresh new voice to persistent problems i want to execute creative ways to reduce the tax payer burden like provide like private funding when appropriate in phase excuse me with  face construction for the town needs to continue to pursue state funding for projects where possible like the complete streets program if we plan wisely in space them out appropriately we can minimize the financial impact to taxpayers a selectman its primary responsibility is to represent the best interest of our community listen to your concerns and convictions and act on your behalf thank you tim jesse thank you julianna roger my name is jesse bennett and i'm running for select women to bring our town together to solve some big problems too many cars are speeding down our side streets and clogging up our main roads it's difficult and dangerous to walk because we were not spending money on sidewalks for years or schools are entering five years of transition while still adding one hundred dollars students a year we have climate commitments we are not meeting business owners describe nightmarish experiences trying to open their doors and belmont and housing cost burden many belmont residents particularly our seniors i'm excited that we have taken huge steps on necessary projects funding the seven to twelve school the police station and the d p w buildings these are great projects that need to happen but we need to carefully manage the disruption we will face with multiple simultaneous building projects in one square mile we can't put these problems on hold but the board needs to bring residents together to solve them that is what i will do on the board of selectmen i'm a leader of people i know that teams of smart people working together can always find better solutions than any one of us alone and i have a long history of leading teams to get the job done as select woman i will bring a combination of skills we've never had on our board before my professional background spans banking marketing and communications this means that i have the financial skills to manage the budget and the communication skills to help our residents to understand it i serve on town meeting and multiple town committees i'm a respected leader in the school community and as an advocate i've helped change how policies to grant revenue and that means that we're going to be building sidewalks again that's what i will do as your select woman make progress solve problems get things done but i won't be doing it alone we'll do it together thank you timing jessie right good evening thank you joanna and thank you roger i'm roy epstein running for selectman let me tell you my background just briefly i moved to belmont in th my wife and my two boys they went to the belmont public schools for moment and through belmont high school my own background includes a ph d in economics from yale university i teach at boston college and i work as an economic consultant in complex litigation cases i've been in town meetings since two thousand and three and been on the warrant committees and two thousand and seven and chair of the warrant committee since two thousand and sixteen my own view is that many things actually are happening in belmont and for the good and i'm proud to have been associated with some of our largest projects such as siting the electric substation on flinders road and saving some tens of millions of dollars in the process actually being the driving force behind the new police station of asians and the d p w work which is starting this month actually with taking down the two trees in front of the police station that work will be finished in eighteen months resolving problems that have faced really a logjam belmont in belmont for over twenty years setting the stage for what i hope will be a clear path to a new library and a new hockey rink so there are many positive things happening in belmont there's a lot of i think healthy new construction for example in cushing square  and in terms of sidewalks which is a very close priority to me i was the st person to speak up in town meeting urging new sidewalks and i'm proud that the override that was passed several years ago is now been able to allow two hundred thousand dollars for sidewalks in the future i think will be a lot of progress across the board in traffic mitigation housing for seniors climate action we are making rapid progress on the climate action goals and i think with experience leadership on the board we will actually move quite rapidly to achieving not many achievements in the future thank you thank you all of you so you heard that bell that bell is a signal that your time is up and we have a volunteer bell alison coulton here tonight rogers daughter thank you alison so there are lots of questions and we even have a lot of questions from our live audience i want to mention that we do have a live audience tonight which is great and we're going to ask you each the questions you each of you each answer the question you have one minute to answer and then when everyone's done answering the question if one of you wants to rebut what the other another one said you will have one minute to do that as well looking for that reuse of the old incinerator site in recent conversations about the reuse of the old incinerator say and anaerobic digester there were many people who complained that they had never heard of the possibility of an anaerobic digester before the board of selectmen was about to make a decision how would you improve or how would you propose to improve communications between the board of selectmen in the community about important decisions such as that we start to have him so the st thing i would address in it's a common complaint that i've heard as of recently in particular is the website the website needs a lot of work i think if we start with the website and then we can trickle out from there you know but i definitely start with the website so i agree with tim i've worked in web design for around twenty years now i feel that our website is designed from the inside out rather than thinking about the outside use coming in so i feel like that people who maybe work in town government probably know where to look around to find things but there aren't quick and easy ways and to figure out where to find stuff so the website is definitely deficient in that regard for as far as the digester and their incinerator site goes though i just i feel like we got really far down the road on that project without properly vetting it  before you know and knowing what we could do with the site it seemed clear that the state didn't want us to be doing anything up there that would be a public private partnership and we didn't get that answer until very late in the game so we spent an awful lot of money on the digest study which i mean you know we could have just not had not done the study at all right well regardless of the barents of the town website the issue with the digester is that the the town has a shortfall of seven hundred thousand dollars and capping the site and the investigation of the digester was a good faith effort to try to find a source of revenue to cover that short for which we still have i think a practical problem at the meeting which was extremely well attended at the board of selectmen so there was no difficulty getting the word out was that only two or three days passed between the production of the consultant's report and the consideration of the open meeting and i think that the report had been available further in advance that would have come as less of a shock but i think it was evident early on during that meeting that i just or probably wasn't going to work but it did begin as a good faith effort and that we shouldn't them side of that that in terms of the seven hundred dollars k shortfall and wanting to cover that i mean i understand the town's desire to want to cover that but i mean if you go back and consultants report that we did a few years back just to look at what we should do with the incinerator site they indicated in there that both they didn't think it was going to be appropriate for rank and that they didn't think that the state was going to be happy about the public private partnership so i feel like that we could have investigated that further before we started a process of arly last fall and neither anybody on the board or the town administrator knew exactly what that meant and the purpose of hiring the consultant which was in the end about six thousand dollars was to see whether by spending six thousand dollars on and an exploratory study we could earn seven hundred thousand dollars to cover the gap so i think that was money well spent unfortunately it the idea turned out not to be suitable for that site but we didn't know that until we did the work th concerned that i have of all this whole process was that it definitely seemed like the citizens of the town were not included in that conversation early on and had the conversation been with the community we probably wouldn't have had to spend the money on the study because it was clear through the community's reaction to this digester that it was never going to happen ok very good good point arial and we're going to move on to the next question one of the major controversies in belmont recently involve the transfer of an alcohol license from a local business to a large chain grocery store many people think the process which led to the transfer and sale of the loading docks all alcoholic a license to star market didn't work well from a process perspective what if anything would you have done differently tim so the st thing was is the language that was in the bylaw was arbitrary and it was not spelled out clearly that was probably by far the most important thing to discuss had that had the by law been written in the manner in which it was presented later wrong and how it was meant to be yours how it was supposed to be enforced there would have been a question so we have to take more caution when writing a by law to make sure we spell out exactly what we mean and then think about the possibilities of what could happen in the future i think jesse you know i mean i agree with a lot of what tim said i think that we i know that i've spoken to former selectman and one of our current selectman about the process of writing that by law and they feel that they made the you know they have spoken to having the feeling that maybe mistakes regarding the writing of that by law that they should have written it more clearly if the the desire of the town was not to transfer it but the reality is that once you get a license i mean it's not is it's not unreasonable to think that people would be able to sell it so if we wanted to restrict it then we should have restrictive point that we you know belmont was a dry town for a long time we could have thought about it rather carefully during the course of many years before we decided to open it up ok well look a license and the money is a scarce resource and it commands a high price my concern when this issue a rose was that the town should not be issuing licenses which then a private the recipient of the license quicker than i would say arbitrage thus to say resell and make a large profit if there's a large profit to be made the town should have capture that revenue so in the future if the town is offering rights to anything whether it's a liquor license to something else there should be a provision place so that the private party doesn't stand to benefit if there's any significant gain from issuing that license that you go to the town that's anybody going to rebut anyone that you know ok well move on to the next question roger in the debate at the two thousand and eighteen annual town meeting about the proper size of the board of selectmen there was opinion expressed that the job of being a member of the board of selectmen has perhaps become too big for and basically a volunteer individual and some people suggested that the board of selectmen should become more of a policy board and less of a hands on administrator how do you view the role of the being a member of the board of selectmen relative to whether it's a policy board or more of a hands on administrator well i think in the porton that where communicating with with our community so to strictly go to policy i don't think that's realistic because then i think we're going to miss a lot of the input from the community directly and i think that connection with the community to the slackman is important of it that we should look at we should have a taskforce devoted to looking out what it would look like if we spun off a light board made its own elected board that would be a step in the right direction to splitting  up two jobs that are kind of different i think also you know in terms of all of the the committees that the selectmen are you know representing the board on i mean these are vital roles and then if you look at our actual bylaws i mean the board of selectmen it's kind of this catch all it's like everything that everybody else doesn't do in town government kind of fall for the board of selectmen so you know there are there are a lot of little administrative things that come up and that's an important part of the job of the board of selectmen to have a lot of responsibility and for that there's really no substitute for good experience clearly public input is always going to be a large part of the job in the end the board of selectmen do have the responsibility if the board became a more advisory body or policy oriented body i think it has to be combined with a time administrator who has more authority than they currently do we have a very capable plan administrator and i would certainly be willing to consider restructuring where the board became more of a policy board in the town administrator had more direct authority but that would be a considerable change in the structure of our government that would require a lot of discussion any rebuttals this isn't so much a rebuttal but i would i agree with roger that you know  with roy rather sorry roger is over there i agree with roy that you know we would need a stronger town administrator and that was one of the reasons i voted against going to the five person board because i felt that we would need a stronger town administrator in order to do that so i think that you know if we we have a study on whether we should have a stronger town administrator we had a study on whether we should go to a five person board if we had presented both of those together i think that it would have gone over better both of those got defeated by town meeting and i'd say the one comment i have about that is that i think the five person board would have been the right way to go for belmont i think it gives a little more leeway with conversation amongst the board members themselves that's one thing we can't have raises insuperable problems of serial communication for a five member board to communicate with each other in that way ok we're ready for the next question ok two years ago there was a substantial thing and then turned around and did something different what if anything would you have done differently from a process perspective in redeveloping the belmont center green and well i think it was clear that tommy ting made their vote and that was changed subsequent or after that vote it happened i think that was an unfair process and i don't know all the details of what happened so it's hard for me to comment on everything but the one thing that was made clear to me thro the process as i understood it was that town meeting was very clear what they wanted and came back several times i know that there was considerable consternation regarding the board of selectmen making decisions that met many members of town meeting felt were out of the spirit of what they had voted on and i think just given how how much opposition there was to it and the fact that there was there were many actual town meeting members speaking up about it that should have been taken more seriously before the board of selectmen made a decision to change change the design of the the green i understood i understand that there were you know factors at play there but you know if they needed to pause and look at it again and bring it back to town meeting that might have been a better way of going right i think there are always judgment calls when tommy makes a decision and then the board of selectmen are charged with executing them i think this was a case where the board of selectmen did frankly make a mistake and when they deviated too far from what town meeting thought they were getting but at the same time i think the process ended up working quite well because we reconvened the process of the project was studied again and the final result center to me is fine so it's unfortunate that it became as contentious as it did but i'm glad that in the in the end the result for belmont center was very good and he we both i am concerned we feel that the result was a great result if that if it was felt as a great result the entire time we would still be talking about yeah i'm not a we're talking about a still that was some years ago on the project is finished well the project is finished but people still bring it up in my heard many citizens talk to me about it how they resented you know members of town meeting who resented basically what they thought the board of  acting out of out of line with what the wishes of town meeting were in voting for about so i think that there are still people who are upset about it and i think there are people who are very concerned that the board of selectmen not make that kind of decision again where you're you have something that's been approved by town meeting you're supposed to be acting on it and you change major aspects of it well i think that message of heard loud and clear i can't imagine that an episode like that would occur again with the board ok ready to move on to the next question roger are you using and yes and let me explain that joanna and i have both received cards with questions from our live audience here at the belmont media center and there's no way we're going to have time to get through all of the audience questions but i do want to make sure that we get to at least some of them and this question is one that has four sub parts  but they're all consistent with each other how do you see yourself changing the tenor of the board of selectmen do you see yourself as decisive do you see yourself as a consensus builder how do you see yourself is converting ideas into action well as i said before the most important thing that we need to have is communication i feel that right now there is a lot of miscommunication and non communication throughout the town and a lot of decisions being made  without full input from the community so we definitely have to start there it as far as you know the interaction it's definitely important as i said before that slotman are readily available for communication directly from the community and as well as talking to all the all the groups that we have in town we have i think we have about seventy seventy of them right now  getting their import and then town meeting and you know making sure that everyone is listened to but more and but most importantly the individual everyone individually from the community  heard i think that i it's kind of decisive consensus builder i think that one of my strengths is that i work very i'm have a strength i'm working with community groups and i think that that's part of the strength of our town we have a lot of people who are really  passionate and i think that when we see that the kind of most heated of selective meetings it's often the energy of community groups there that are passionate about a subject i believe that i can be a consensus builder because i really do if i if i feel like i really have the right idea in my head but somebody is very much disagreeing with me i want to understand what what their point of view is so i want to bring in all voices to the debate i also feel that we go through processes in town so for instance with the community path we've had this long project and we've we're getting to the point now or we have to process you know two options for the path and we need to go forward on one of those two so i would be very decisive in that situation i would try to answer the question just with an example with the police station working as long as i've been involved with belmont town government i attended meeting after meeting for years about what to do with the police station in the d p w in the library in the hockey rink and it was two years ago after hearing these it was really i would say hand wringing for a long time but i told the warren committee we really have to try to figure out a way to do this and the war committee was the genesis of a consensus recommendation as an approach for the policing d p w which then became the major capital projects working group which persuaded town meeting as a body that proceeding with the building committee was a good idea and our building committee which is also comprised of many strong minded and diverse people settled on  is it was mentioned that persuasion was was brought to the table i'm concerned with any type of person asian put upon a body in particular your town meeting your town meeting are the ones that are supposed  vetting all projects and then approving them ok you ready for another audience question for doing some audience questions financial analysis and management are important skills for selectman or select mom please describe your credentials and experience in these areas that so my primary experience is it is as a local business owner i've been running my own business for about ten years now similar to a town and we have budgets that we have to look at granted there on a smaller scale but we also have a lot of help within a town you're not doing it individually  jeffy so i spent the st years of my working life working in banks i worked started as a bank teller and i worked my way up into the commercial loan area so i was working very closely with our loan officers in our compliance officers i handled the more complex loans that we had on our books some we while we were there i helped take oh we took over a smaller bank and i helped bring very complex portfolio of loans that some of which probably should have been given on line so i understand you know from the perspective of somebody who's worked with small business owners and seen what their finances look like i understand kind of from that angle what we want to be doing to help small businesses in town which i think is an important skill but i also understand the the priorities that we want to be facing and what we want to be looking at i mean we never have enough money it doesn't you know we'll never have enough finances to cover everything we want to do right but you have to know what you need to spend money on this year thank you jesse roy was a student of economics in college i worked world bank after college i have a ph d from yale and i've worked in economics and finance questions ever since i have my own consulting work which takes me all over the world where the the cases involve very large financial matters for lawsuits up to five hundred million dollars and a one billion dollars routinely in terms of the town itself doing extensive financial analysis for the financial for the electric substation intensive analysis of the  and police station projects to make sure they could work without additional taxes and be covered the operating budget committee itself is intensely involved with managing the town budget to make sure we can  deliver the town of school services that we need this managing these large budgets is what i've been doing for the last twenty five years then you know anything else to do i think that i'll mention him regards to managing the budgets is last i checked were about sixteen million in the red and that is concerning if we're moving forward with the same individuals that made those decisions to get us there any nineteen and there's been no effort to replace or supplement or update that comprehensive plan do you have an opinion about the desirability or need to update or supplement or replace that comprehensive plan with a new one so my understanding is the town is actually looking at that currently so that is in process if it wasn't i would definitely be all for that we have a lot of groups in town a lot of committees we have the vision twenty one dollars committee which i think could be tapped in an almost kind of take the reins of that and move forward you know but the towns already looking at that so we'll definitely be interested in seeing where they go with it i mean i think we have we've done incredible work in the last few years on setting priorities for the town we have the housing production plan we we become in age friendly belmont we have the climate action plan in place and and the energy committee thundering incredible work to make sure that we're heading towards it we need to be looking as a taking all of those priorities and turning them into what are the concrete actions will be taking over the next ten years so i think it is a good idea for us to revisit that we also have the financial task force starting this year that will be dealing with the budget we have to  we've had a fine we've had a a master plan that was never actually formally adopted by town meeting and it's a good idea in principle i'm not aware that the planning document actually played a great role in influencing any of the projects that we've actually undertaken in the last few years so i'm certainly supportive of the work of the energy committee and i'm actually closely involved with the work of the financial of the new financial taskforce and i hope that will be beneficial  i'm not sure what concrete results use just his word what concrete results will emerge from a new master plan we have a planning department in town which i think would probably use some extra staff and i would like to get their views on what might be done but i don't see a new master plan exercise itself as being very high priority and the rebuttal well i do think i agree with brian that we should be moving forward on what when we make a plan we should be looking at it carefully and i think that you know in terms of the climate action plan the housing protection plan we have advocates who are working very very energetically to make sure that we are not losing sight of those goals so this could be in there are many planners in town who are eager to come forward i was at the planning board meeting last night and members of the housing you know members of the community that is supporting affordable housing in town contained several planners who are interested in you know how do we move forward on our projects with with the goals of reducing carbon with the goals of making  transportation and the like so we can move forward with something i would say with each question that comes before the board of selectmen there's enormous of this and then put it doesn't have to rise to the level of a master plan because i'm not sure even what that would look like but we do know that our service and our residents who come to these public meetings are a tremendous asset and the board of selectmen certainly depend on them for a lot of useful information and guidance but in terms of a master plan document i'm not sure how that would actually come about in a way that would be of value so any small business wouldn't go into bins as in wouldn't thriving business if they didn't have a plan the town is a business we need to have a plan to move for we need to know where we're going the master plan that was referenced it wasn't adopted if you actually read it roughly sixty percent of that plan if not a little bit more was actually completed so i might argue that that plan was actually pretty accurate and we were supposed to go so maybe we should actually look at that plan a little bit longer and actually maybe consider investing long term for that and regardless of the plan i would definitely not do a five or ten year plan go do a fifteen to twenty year plan there are her few twenty year plans that really are worth the future changes too much you can't plan twenty years in advance with any specificity we ready to by timothy i wish that was easy to answer we have a long way to go i think the reality is in today's world is that we're going to consistently have overrides of body every five years or so and i think we certainly need to start preparing for that no one wants to hear that but it needs to be on the table just because you don't want to hear it doesn't mean we should be talking about you know i mean it seems pretty clear that we are going to mee have a new financial taskforce they're going to be looking at everything that the town is spending money on in trying to make recommendations for how both well you know how much we would need an override for and also how we can economize or how we can increase revenues i think it's fantastic that we've hired an assistant an administrator who has extensive experience in recreation because the last mental task force recommended that we produce more revenue out of our town assets and so we are we are positioned now to do that with the hiring of the assistant ten administrator we you know it's great to see that we have these goals that we're meeting and that the new financial taskforce might find some more more to do that why it's hard to imagine we could get by without an override of the future but i think there are still there's still potential for significant savings in the operating budget which i would like to work on if i became selectman and i think as our backlog that remains of county capital projects there is a way to do them more economically than has been conceived before in my model for the d p w and police station guides me in that because those projects were discussed for many years as being fifty million dollars projects and we're going to do them for about nine so that's the kind of perspective i want to bring to the board of selectmen so we can maximize the value of the money that we have thank you why anyone rebuttal i think that we're i'm concerned with saying that we're going to be able to find savings anywhere in the budget everyone's already cutting certain their services are very limited as it is currently and if we're talking about cutting even more services when people are consistently asking for more i'm not i'm not sure how that adds up i think we definitely need to have a little more discussion about that because we're not cutting services there are ways of providing the same services more efficiently and that would be the goal and i would say that one thing that we can do is when we want new things when we want better pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in town then we can look to the state for gran opportunities when we are concerned that we are not meeting our climate goals and that we could be doing more in the town government to find more grants on the state level i mean we passed up an opportunity to apply for graham because we didn't feel like we had the staffing to do it so we need to look for new opportunities perhaps to have you know an independent consultant who can help us apply for grants and then be paid out of that grant budget that isn't that is another way that we can bring more money in to get the things done that  want to pay for out of our regular budget also we should be pressuring our state legislators to support increasing our education funding and you know bringing it more in line with what it actually cost to provide an education they haven't kept up with the health care cost increases and we have a tremendous expense for special ed students in our district students that they could help us cover more ready to move on to the next question is that there is a substantial population that can afford to pay higher taxes and the fact that we need the money doesn't make their ability to pay any higher in the fact that there are some people who can't afford to pay doesn't make the need for more money in the us how do you as a member of the board of selectmen deal with that that conflict or that tension again y know there is no easy answer to this communication and keep coming back to communication because it's been lacking in town for quite some time i think if if a lot of different parties sit down if the housing housing sits down with budget and  everyone actually puts their head together maybe we can find some sort of plan and you know presumably maybe we can tie that into the master plan and incorporate the whole thing so we can have some guidance moving forward  beyond that it's just a lot more communication that needs to happen well we took some steps in town meeting in the fall we voted in particular for seniors who are having difficulty meeting  you know paying the additional taxes so we lowered the interest rate on loans that seniors could take out to defer their taxes and we were at eight percent and we lowered it to four percent to be in line with our neighboring towns and we also in increase the threat increase the threshold where seniors can do volunteer work as a write off but we also need to be able to provide other forms of relief and we need to keep investigating that we also need to provide more affordable housing in town and i'm not just talking about like affordable housing but more of the mid range housing that we needed money to protect our housing stock that provides more affordable places for people to live think to some extent there are two different broad groups of seniors and one of the seniors who would like to stay in their houses and there are seniors who would like to downsize to something that's more manageable and possibly even  safer in a modern kind of building part of that will happen to mclean with the scene with the development there i think long term or longer term they'll be a large developmental self less and street and there are other places in town where age restricted housing can be built on a significant scale which could provide i believe several one hundred units of housing for seniors it should be targeted the seniors so that because the school systems are full prefer to have seniors be able to downsize so their houses reckon realise the equity equity in their houses and of course families will buy their houses because historically the people who buy houses in belmont are people with families but the seniors should have options to downsize they they didn't feel that that project was ready to move forward i do think that's an opportunity for us to reexamine that project to bring all stakeholders in and to have to have real gent you know real meaningful discussions about what are or needs in town what kind of housing do we want to see on the very little space we have less to develop and you know what will meet the needs of mclean in terms of generating revenue in the town in terms of generat revenue so if you know with this project that i've been proposed at mclean guess it would have been more money on the tax rolls but there might be other ways of getting that money on the tax rolls and also meeting our needs i agree about the  developing a pick lane that will have to strike a balance between affordability people who want to market a better quality frankly mark market rate unit and property tax revenue for the town but that's a balancing act that we have to strike i'm we are fortunate that the planning board is extremely skillful i think they properly rejected this initial offer by mclean and that will require further discussion and ready to move on to another audience question final audience question sure if you had been sitting at the selections table with mass dot and bta representatives which community path route would you have voted for and why please give a one word answer north south and then explain why to the north there's no question the north  you know my primary reason for that is the railroad crossing the river crossing it's been the most problematic part of that whole project the entire time and there's been other areas that were of concern but nothing like well i would i would have gone north but i understand why they voted the way they did they went back to the consultant to ask them to re you know read number the two options and i feel that they didn't actually get the right numbers out of that process in part because they really they weren't taking into account how much money it will cost us to take part or all of the peer code north property that is a significant expense that we have no idea how big it could get because we've never yet seen testings of the soil there so we don't know what we're dealing with in terms of environmental contamination it's a very risky route for us to take but you know neither the north nor the south side are easy routes to go to go with so i understand why the selectmen split on it and i as a specially in light of the fact that the consultant came back and recommended the southside again but i also think the consultant could have taken more into consideration regarding the cost i don't think that one word answer is a fair answer to this complicated question i think a path will have challenges on both the south and the north side i view that the current decision on the south side is really a starting point if it works on the south side that's fine there's no guarantee it will work on the south side in which case we'd have to go back to the north side which again faces its o issues so it's i think what we've done is proper is by proceeding because the main thing is to get the path done they'll be a way to cross the tracks of necessary that's not really the problem that has been made out to be but the important thing is to get started rebuttal there is no guarantee with that with the process but the one thing that never happened in the beginning was a conversation with clerical to find out what that possibility could be was it even possible to purchase property or to use part of their property how are we making decisions when conversations have been had you know i agree with tim there i think that there this process has been going on for a long time we word traffic that's right and traffic given that traffic is that our traffic problems are not caused by belmont traffic but by cut through traffic what role if any does the board of selectmen play in helping to improve the traffic situation well we have a traffic committee you know and they're the  ones and then lie the defense there a little more communication is going to help i had mentioned previously that there's new programs that app out providers will give cities and towns so you can look at how traffic is coming through and that will help you change your traffic patterns if necessary the problem with that is that we can address one specific part of the town it's a bigger process we have to address the entire process the entire town at the same time and that's going to cost money to do i serve on the transportation advisory committee it is certainly something that we are thinking about a lot and we have a traffic study that we're waiting on the complete report for we receive kind of a summary report giving us an overview but you know it is a it is a lot of cut through traffic and i think that it is a problem that all towns in the boston metro are dealing with we were just given the dubious honor of being the worst area in the country in terms of traffic we have a booming economy right now and people want to want to live in the suburbs and drive into the city so we're stuck in the middle of all  that that being said you know we need to look at the way traffic flows through town so that we can protect our neighborhoods from the cut through traffic so that people aren't trying to cut off a couple minutes here and there by like zooming down a residential street we need to also calm the traffic so we are looking at a comprehensive traffic calming policy to give drivers the cues that this is a place where people live you need to slow down we're also we have a project going on up at mill street to put into roundabouts to keep traffic flowing through  s i think there's a range of issues or range of actions shorter term and longer term i think the new tunnel that will be built under alexander avenue will go a long way to easing traffic in the media area around the high school in terms of general traffic around town we can't stop people from driving through belmont but i think we need to give the police enough resources to address meeting with us an issue and then to provide safe crossing where there's a lot of congestion that people are utilization of the fitchburg rail line to have a rail line at the commuter hour that peak is only two trains an hour is really inadequate if that was up to a more european standard like ten trains an hour we could remove thousands of c mcisaac discussing the limits of enforcement we have a very limited budget in town for you know to have officers on the street and you know in the enforcement happens when you the important happens when they're  there and people if they don't see people being pulled over they do what they want to do so you have to be taking traffic calming measures if you want to make it work and right now on a given morning during school arrival times we'll have almost all of our officers out working the crosswalks because we don't have enough crossing guards right now so that's another issue that we need to be dealing with any more before we move on to closing statements ok it's time for closing statements we'll start with timothy selectman i will thoughtfully and collaboratively represent our community i recognize that many of belmont's past successes in plans for the future are in large part because the tremendous work of town volunteer committees and boards i do not want these efforts to be minimized or lost only to build upon them i want to better integrate our shared values of community education family inclusive eighty to address our priorities with the utmost transparency and collaboration i will listen to your concerns and priorities and most importantly act on your behalf i will be the voice for all community members that has been missing for many years as a small business owner i will utilize my ten years of experience to spearhead the efforts to establish a more business friendly town policy and strengthen our tax base utilizing my law enforcement training and four years experience on the job i will work tirelessly to implement new solutions to address traffic congestion and improve safety such as adding four way stops at every intersection near our schools and utilizing my experience and professional network i will better prepare us for financially robust future thank you julian and roger this is been an important discussion so what's next i want to get serious about solving our problems with traffic pedestrian safety town and school funding climate action housing and the disruption that will begin when we break ground on three building projects we can't put these problems on hold if we don't have the budget let's find grants if we need information let's tap into this pool of experts who live here in belmont we have to get creative if we want to move forward i'm ready to step up i've served on community boards and town committees for eight years in meetings and on line door to door and on playgrounds i've spoken with thousands of belmont residents about budgets schools trash sidewalks and i've truly listened i know what we need to do and i know how to lead people to get it done i'm jesse  ask for your vote on april nd and if you want to learn more and go to w w w dot bennett for belmont dot com thank you thank you reuter thank you i feel that good government just doesn't just happen it comes from experience i've had experience in every respect in belmont since two thousand and seven doing real things like the electric substation saving millions of dollars getting the d p w done getting the police station done i'm serving on the community path project committee now i'm looking forward to getting the library underway and the hockey rink this comes rick this requires experience requires financial experience it requires  knowledge of town institutions working well with all the town departments of course working with large numbers of residents because you can't do anything in belmont without hearing from lots and lots of residents but that's what i've done the warrant committee is a public meeting all of our building committees are public meetings we work with the public every day but in the end it's having the experience to put all of this information together into into achieving tangible results is what counts and that's what i would like to offer the president's about a month thank you thank you roy jesse and timothy for being here tonight for this live debate and i think michael moderator roger colt it won it they alice allison colden for being the time keeper and thank all the volunteer camera people tonight and belmont media staff for making this all possible this was a very healthy debate it was very important for everybody to get to know these candidates you have a very important ballot to cast on april nd two thousand and nineteen the town election and you have to choose who the next selectman will be so i hope this helped and i also hope that you'll pick up a copy of the belmont citizen herald a visit with the local belmont dot com because we have questions