ok thank you for letting me share about what's going on with the c e o way our complements our budget so forth so i think we've had another great year the number of people signing in increased not the number of people but the number of sign in seven crease by two thousand five hundred compared to last year that's just one of the measures that we use so we happen to be at the end of march where we do an annual count we actually sit there in the lobby and people take turns clicking to yes that's a weeklong exercise we do in march and i never get to present that here because we're always meeting in february but even with the storm we we calculated the average attendance with this with this particular count at two hundred ninety nine on average each day this past four days so that was higher than what we get in the data system and that's why we do this exercise because that way we state's department of transportation held a very competitive grant process for new vehicles and we will warded a new passenger handicapped accessible one to replace the current one that we have that should be arriving in june and when we celebrate that in the van gogh's for its maiden voyage let you know when hopefully you can come and attend we've also enhanced our taishan services through a grant of three thousand four hundred fifty dollars from spring well to provide taxi rides to medical point mints that are beyond our service area so that's been a nice new addition and we hope that that will be we think it will be renewed in october the new fiscal year because it's federal money well excited to be awarded to tufts foundation grant of ten thousand dollars towards a study that will bring us closer to being accepted into the a p h friendly community network that study is complete and i have copies for you here  be doing a brief report at town meeting about the process of this study and in the beginning of june we're going to have a community hearing and discussion about it and hopefully that will that well we plan to have a kickstart of formalized process to address key issues and recommendations to improve the lives of seniors in the town so other things are new media specialist which is funded starting july one is working out really well that's funded through our state formula grant and it's a shared position with the belmont media center so it's meant more videotape programs for seniors more tech help individually several support groups in place so those are some of the things as been happening the level budget request for f y nineteen will increase by five point five percent it's mostly salary in health insurance increases this past year my position and was upgraded and the center coordinator position  was upgraded to assistant director so that accounts for some of the salary increase last year last year our budget request was actually down by point seven percent so if we're going to have to keep on schedule sure i really don't like to do that because i'd like to finish questions but i've read this material i trust morgan adam as well and so i think the summer you've given for the public which is really who we're talking to today has been good but we have six minutes left so if you or did you have something you wanted to add to that summary well i just wanted to mention that what our challenges are moving forward and we still are hopeful that we can some point get funding for a part time social work position for to address residents in the that's the meeting that those were the meetings i attended if you remember it we we met here and then and then yes you came to the safe and healthy planning group housing planning group right so we're still hoping to come through or didn't come to know the the coming foundation grant did not come through basically they love the they love the project and they thought it was very important but they need to focus on projects that that spread out to many many more people for example food pantry and lawrence you know projects that you know extend to you know hundreds or thousands of people not a select group that are at risk so but we're still hoping that we can find funding for that anything else well we have challenges in the building we're looking forward to new facilities team of the building i mean because if there are small problems they just become bigger like right so correct i four things that have come up and since i've heard from people and things observed one is a request to be late later open open later in the evening and i know that's probably a function of budget but a lot of people said i believe some days it closes at four if i'm right in that a lot of people wish they had more evening activities one of the more intergenerational of events i think is opportunity i know you do so many detail i here it's an opportunity because of this crowding in the schools to maybe have some more intergenerational events at the beach street center to help alleviate some of that another one would be increasing rentals i know the work committee has brought this up for years  there's a liquor license it goes through chemistry but otherwise it doesn't right and then lastly would be and this is come up a bit is the senior tax rate for the property taxes and while we have on the war the relatively small piece of  increasing the amount of work seniors can have by working for the town from what was seven hundred fifty dollars to fifteen hundred dollars relatively small there are things other towns are doing such as reducing the interest rate if they defer the real estate taxes and lowering the age at which they become eligible to start to further in their in their taxes which would allow seniors to stay in town to complain about you know overrides and debt exclusions and things they can't afford which we clearly do not want to get in a position where people are financially forced out this is an opportunity however well do the vetting for for for example the work off program we will do counseling for people we'll we'll share information with people it is a challenge to get people people to use some of these so the circuit breaker people just it that is really really a challenge but i think your department could come in handy in doing the publicity because then you are you have a captive audience that's that social work like a no no that's different  what we what we've done is we've had panels we've had publicity week last month we we we had all the tax programs as a special insert in our senior notes  he what happens is when we start to do the counseling people shy away from it because that circuit breaker because they want to be able to leave the house their assets to their kids and they  so this is clarify what was there for that require it and we spent four hundred thousand four hundred twenty one thousand dollars for how many seniors visit the center every day so we have yes we spent four hundred twenty one thousand dollars which is not nearly enough for seniors in town from my point of view so what's a part time social worker and what's the cost what does this person do right so it's about thirty two thousand dollars for one thousand it would be an n one thousand our position on benefit to position who would really walk through and take care of the myriad number of problems that say a twenty to thirty not just seniors twenty to thirty residents have who are at risk of losing their housing because either reporting mental health issues substandard housing complex issues and the reason that  that position is helpful is because it's very very tedious work you know making sure all all the loops have been closed right now what's been happening i mean we're handling these cases  trying to work out the the youth coordinator for the youth commission and it just it worked out where we couldn't really have both it just be kept having such a need we spent four hundred twenty one thousand dollars on our seniors that's why i look at it right we're all wonderful programs that are there and you heard me say license social work at the greed comes up so you're looking at can we contract for this or just if i may i i totally agree with you and i don't want to speak for seniors and i'm sure this right it has merit certainly absolutely so one of the things that happens is a decision like this then you know goes outside this group and then somebody else makes the decision that you know so i'm glad that that we funded the youth initiative which adam proposed but i'm not happy with the idea that we decided that we can't do this because of that you know that's something that should come back to us so we can figure out what to do and how we want to handle it i'm not criticizing i'm just saying we can't have those decisions made outside of the board well i think any additional position is going to come from a one time revenue source i agree with that but i want i want i want the question to come back to the board well and i think that adam and mark would agree with that because i was to decide and we haven't delegated that responsibility or authority to anybody else that that's true but to the charge to to my office was to find a way to fund the youth commission which we did and i'm and i congratulate you on that and i'm happy about it i'm not talking about that part of it what i'm talking about is making a decision not to do something because we did that because that's something i'd rather have come back here and again it's not a criticism it's just a question of how can a man we look at contract services here here's the point right i mean i don't want to get in my soapbox again and seniors are not looking for any posts from seniors but we spend a significant amount of money justifiably so for our schools millions and we spend four hundred twenty one thousand dollars a year on our seniors we can't find a ninety thousand dollars additional staffing in the summer that number uses to fill the position because right now the current social worker is only eight forty two weeks well no no we have had in the last few years some are coverage and that was basically to have basic social work coverage that we have during the the rest of the year so it least now and of the past three years we have we have social work coverage we didn't have social coverage beyond w you and i like the center but we got to move on all right and you know i think adam's questions were great for good questions were good areas of feedback sure i agree with mark that we need to think about this is that the in your budget though so we did build the building i don't know how much the building cost but you know there was a commitment there and i understand that that was a difficult decision for the town to make i support it salaries anyway the position upgrades take place outside of this kind of this board and congratulations by the way thank you and the health insurance is not controllable is john phillips told us the other night at least at the department level because it's just allocated so i understand this percentage increase face and you do as well in the trees ok small i want to say one more thing and this is for the public we publish an annual report know we we have read this ok if we work on camera we wouldn't we could just talk about the questions that we have but we're on camera so we need a brief description for the public so you can pretend you're talking to us but you're really talking to the public so tell them what they need in love just a quick summary of what the accounting department does we are the most important thing is we certify bailable to your funds based on the budget that has been adopted by the town and a town meeting and the next one would be a city of as an auditor we would be establishing internal controls monitoring revenues in expenditures of all the fac seventeen and the gaspe seventy five will be implemented this year for the town in light and so by the end of two thousand and eighteen or it we should be  you said the increase mainly were to look into the details it's everything else remained the same it's been the reasons are the ghastly in implementation and therefore we have been it will be another year or two for everything to settle because we have the sixty seven sixty eight last year and seventy four seventy five and we will be we may not have as much of a myself because i like your attention to detail and what we i would call the basic expenses we would have a running rate and what you're saying is that correct me if i'm wrong is that this fifteen percent increase into the books so the public will get a chance to read or in your report all of this is in here normally i would let adam go first and then mark but i do want to ask you a couple of questions just to clear the decks first of all accounts payable for payroll for tax simples and so that is the software that time that the general ledger that generates the financial reports the costs of the other point i want to ok i thought it was important that you mentioned your ex officials on the retirement board are you a member of the audit committee so you're a member of the audit committee and you're a member of the credit union is that a committee or a new  sending vendor an update because status changes from say so proprietorship a partnership and partnership to corp so we do we're planning on doing that update also the generally understand what you do but you know that i like craig quite a bit and you know i pay a lot of attention to financial statements in every time we had a question about something that reported on the financial statement you offered to show me the spreadsheet that you keep in your office that nails that number down and so i think the public can have great confidence that cheater and her team have the numbers under control yes if i were younger i might take the test just so i get the uniform if i get advances for you guys have to ok so we you know the time constraints we've read the report  lieutenants new fire fighters so we've had a lot of turnover which where working on getting people trained into their new positions our continued  battles is with civil service to be able to timely hire people and then get them into the fire academy so you're out on the website yes that was for the the  exam it's just a cumbersome arc kain process that we have to go through to get a list then get them hired we can't submit a name to the academy until we actually have a body hired so we hired in january  actually just the beginning of february and they aren't going to the academy till the end of july so you can't deploy the model we cannot we can we use them as supplemental power manpower but they can't be used to count as manpower in a stead because they don't have the training that's required and you can't do what the police department does with their safety officers  have nothing to do about hiring you know i understand but the auxiliary police force does do things for but the police otherwise would not be able to do i was one for like twenty years so you know i don't know the program ok so you agree with me through the process quickly if they're good quality people that we want to hire to get their office of employment out there early we've missed hiring people by eight hours they've accepted a position somewhere else and are no longer after we've months is there a way to sort of appreciate the fact that we want to get talented personnel but in fact we have people on board for six months and pretty much can use them to do the things that we hire them for we paid them at the level of salary we're paying them supposed to do what we expect them to do after they go to the academy director for seven months we can't deploy them and we've heard this cost so we're not providing that service that we need to provide is there a different way to schedule all of this out chief that doesn't make sense to me again the issue is not at the municipality the local level it's at the state level there's a backlog at the state fire academy and we collectively as fire chiefs and metro boston are looking at a way of basically hosting our own academy don't we know what the schedule is for the camp so we say i need three player i need to replace three individuals that are leaving the force is or is it just we used to be able to submit john doe names so i have i don't you know what the schedule of the can in the he does entrances we do it or what we have right now we used to be able to say ok i have somebody that's going to be retiring in july and we used to back date and say ok i'm going to stop the process in march so that they're ready to go to the academy in july and i would give this to the cademy a john doe name so here's a space holder i want those two seats or one seat in the academy in july because of some issues that happened at the cademy where people putting in names and then not getting funding and cademy classes were then scrambling trying trying to get the field they said no more john doe's you have to have a body working employed before we can put their name in for the academy so we're trying to work around that now to say ok this system doesn't work for us you know and it's where incurring costs seven months and say ok you know what just don't come in for six months and come in and say i'm paying you for six months to know the surgeon did do it and so when i could fully utilize you in my and i would say that the one thing that it has done is it shorten their field training that they do at the end so we're kind of doing that in front so we used to happen was they go to the academy they come out of the academy and then they would ride the truck not counted as manpower so they get used to the truck with the acquittal was and all that stuff so we're sure that it's not as someone out of law school graduates in may but i can and they take the bar exam in july they don't get the results become a loyal till december i've hired them for all those months only can do is basically be a glorified ira legal i can't send them to court this is there's a way to sort of try to e fire academy opened fire service opened up a new academy and springfield and we actually are looked at the opportunity of sending our two new firefighters to springfield and actually paying for their hotel room all of the nights in between so on this i think it's a real concern but it's just and if there's no way for us to sort of if you can't judge john doe's or jane doe as whatever might be to the academy they want to accept that any more you have to have someone hired and then you have to go roll the dice in terms of whether the space available then continue to put our community and other communities in a position whereby we're carrying a salary we're not delivering on the on the service associated with that salary i went to a fundraiser for dave rogers and delay i was there insurance so ok so chief the public is still yes engaged do you have other things that you'd like to tell them so we are busy continues to be a busy year with fire prevention with the wrapping up of the uplands project the start of the cushing village what's the bradford ad for so that's keeping us busy there plenty of other work going on as you heard now to mention we are involved in the healthy housing task force and making sure that our seniors and other residents are living in safe houses were also involved with the the wellness coalition that's gone that's been started to try to improve issues around substance abuse opiate use and things like that the ls program david because we had a healthy year two years ago david had increased the revenue projection so eighteen was estimated to go up you know her final numbers there a little which i know we don't get as much money right now and we don't have a mic you're looking at the call boy you know the number of percentage breakdown of the calls we actually have so since we're talking numbers we've told the public what your budget is and the change ok as it's stated right now it's six million four hundred seventy nine thousand four hundred eighty seven dollars which is about a ninety thousand dollars decrease but you have is we don't have the collective bargaining agreement that will be talking about on monday night is not included in this number but it's not a it's not a big number is that all the new personnel d it's really it's most of our permits are the bradford is a permit it will be probably a couple of permits associated with that rebuilding but it is it's remodel projects and houses it's people doing work people putting in propane tanks they didn't have gas before four pool heaters a grills and things like that so it's a smoke detector inspections we count as permits and so as sales go up you know you have been a flow that the number of inspections goes up and then the second one is to do with f t if you have a fifty five point four nine fifty s which you say is down from historical staffing of fifty seven point four nine and i guess my question is you know with where we fit with regard to comparable towns with regard to staffing levels i know this is come up in the work committee report in past years so it's everybody wants a simple answer and the answer isn't simple if you want to fire department you have to have enough people on duty  and so as we fluctuate the numbers they're actually on shift so we go from a thirteen person staff group with eleven minimum to twelve staff and eleven it means that when the contractual things that we are obligated to give our employees such as personal days indication days and sick days as those get used if we don't have the buffer it means we pay overtime so we are comparably staff comparing a whole bunch of towns a whole bunch of data ok and it's i think one of the one of the things that i struggle with is the interpret interpellation of the interpretation of the data  by people who don't understand what the data means is not always accurate but what i'm asking you to understand so so we're trying to put this together and in a form and fashion that is understandable because you could look at a bunch of numbers and i look at a bunch of numbers and they mean one thing to me and they mean something completely different to you so that we got a lot of work ahead of us are just relatively flat so maybe your could do a sidebar on that because i didn't get a good question before question in i wonder if you can tell the public about opioid safety for lack of a better term what's the official term well it's it's opioid is this is legal use in illegal use so we have situations where people who are legally prescribe opiates potentially could overdose and then we have those that because they have been either shut off from their prescription can't get it anymore then turn to opiates that are like heroin famine all things like that there is help available out there for people we are in the process of trying to determine what's the best way to reach oh we we are not immune in belmont we have suffer licenses went up twenty four thousand and two questions and then also over time is flat so just curious as to what that twenty four thousand increase is and why why is overtime ok it's an increase so as we've brought things things don't move quickly but now we've transferred those license costs because we used to host things internally some of those costs were worn by more so now we've going to the cloud so we pay more on an annual basis but we don't have to worry about the maintenance of the service so that's the increase the air and over time we're hopefully projecting not as much turnover to turnover we can manage where hoping that things are going to be relatively flat so that's our projection you know we don't have i don't nobody has told me that i'm going out to have my shoulder down and i'm going to be out for six months and things like that so if you don't you ok so that's too hard for me to multiply seven by a hundred sixteen but i think that you know the fact that we get the service we get we have the safety that we have is remarkable for less than seven percent of the budget so  so right now we do civil service exams and civil service exams have turned into a memorization test so according to polo what did he say according to williams what did he say and you have to remember it has no application to actually being a supervisor running a fire dealing with personnel and people so what in the union has agreed to this the firefighters of brea do this because of this is just a promotion level so lieutenant firefighter the lieutenant lieutenant to captain so we would hire company would be overseen by civil service it's part of their exam score so you'd have your traditional written exam and then you'd have your assessment center which would have three to five different evolutions and they would be graded on those of the school as a combined and then that determines within civil service from familiar with them and course leads to for a number of years if someone takes is there sergeant level and you know we have a fire fight a lieutenant captain and then it would be so someone takes the exam by a fire set for the weekend it's easy because there's an opening you have to take the top person i get to choose from the top  does not they have a score on their written they'll have a score on their s s i sent this service note this is all part of civil service and there in training and experience civil service puts all those schools together and experience and they require the community to incur the cost to do the assessment right so if you want to pick the good employee you pay the money there for police as well we don't have that for police either ok we'll have to talk about that was just your center you ok we're back from our break mark took longer than was you know i want to say something that is that we've read this we've had the book for a month now probably and so you're actually talking to the public what's in here is going to go into the annual report so i think the best way to think about this is what do you want the public to know about human resources and because we are under some time pressure sure so basically a quick overview our department is responsible for benefit administration which is all the insurance  and other benefits offered by the town to our employees and our retirees employee labor relations my office manages the contracts working in conjunction with the various department heads involved with the particular collective bargaining agreements we work on things like paying classification as well as recruitment and retention of our employees which includes a whole host of other things such as training and things like that there are two point nine f the easiest part of this budget are benefits court matters not part of  and you know ninety nine point nine percent of what she does is related to the health insurance and benefits piece so as you'll see from the figures i've presented it's a nominal increase in my budget this year which is really added to personnel costs my expense items have not increased at all from last year so there is no change there and that's basically kind of the overview of who we are and what we do and i'm certainly welcome to any questions the board might have for themselves or the july first twenty seventeen to june thirtieth two thousand and twenty cycle so we have settled all but two of those at this point we worked through the affordable care act reporting which again is a significant challenge for our department relative to the file a requirement for the forms ten ninety five c but we got through that this is our journalists first year without actually our prior h r generals to done at the two years prior new generalist had a great job getting through that  and then still just working on you know trying to become a little more modern terms of going paperless in our office we did add an additional dental plan this past fiscal year which was a no cost to employees but gave them a second option for what they might want to use for dental insurance and we also implemented an additional deferred compensation plan for employees to share as well again at no cost to the town so that's the highlights of point on the share you know i want to thank you also stepping up at the moment like general manager search this year which the h r hasn't always gotten involved in but i really appreciate there's been a great experience a question about the continued update to implement numerous employment policies that were either outdated or  nonexistent can you just sort of briefly tell us what you did yes we haven't done a whole lot with that one this year but we are you know looking at various things on our handbook is very outdated suv marking on trying to get some changes made to that which will need to come to the board eventually a lot of things were you know implementing you know as they come up various situations but that is something that really needs to be beefed up a little more in the coming year which i hope we can accomplish once the union contracts are behind us that will free up some time for us to work on some of those other projects and how many of the union contracts are left there is to laugh now we still have open agreements with the dispatch union and the patrol union technically fire is still open as well but that's on your agenda for monday night as ch result just indicated so that in theory will hopefully be settled as of as of seven it's down to basically two yes ok and lastly i have give the chart of the number of employees were tyreese eligible for health dental life insurance and looks like estimated for hundred fifteen hundred in the budget for one hundred sixteen forty which was down from the budget for eighteen of sixteen eighteen but way up from seventeen fourteen thirty eight what was going on with the jumping it's still a high number i honestly don't think it's going to end up being that high it's  tough because it's kind of a moving target as people you know were tired take insurance dependent changes things like that so that's probably still on the high side it's probably going to be more around fourteen fifteen hundred figure that's been provided out so you're not exactly so i'm not involved with the school contracts i don't have the seven at once plus you know assisting belmont light with i b e w contract i mean there to be the lead on that but this time around i did step in and assist them with that but that is a goal to get those staggered i am intending to propose it again with their leaders next year for out i said maybe i'm just not thinking about this clearly enough when you think about every three years so you i know what your cost is for every three years but if you stagger then you can play a more effectively the financial impact you know if i will be putting that forth again i think this time around it was my first time from start to finish with every union when i came to belmont almost three years ago now some of the contracts are already done this is my first time at the table at them others teacher you get a lot of stuff done with not very many people you have less than three people including yourself there's four of us total one is thirty two point five hours is again as i indicated earlier the fourth person is the person is my benefits  but still but i think the point is still valid and that is that you get a lot done with for people to so congratulations and we shouldn't take that for granted the second thing is that this increase percent for we're managing the town so that it isn't four percent because at the town level that would be four million dollars which we should be looking for so you know thank you for coming in at this number but we don't want that at the group at the global level the other thing is that you mentioned that you don't have a seat at the school union negotiations but i think patrice we found out that you do yes and you're you're going to be doing that in the next  eligible for insurance whether they are good or not you know get one of these forms and there's a whole other report that then has to get uploaded so you know i remember very thin paper varied and that's not too bad it's more just getting the information to pull correctly from unionists and getting their ports done and you know i a more regular basis than you probably want to meet with us but we see you quite a bit during ok will we see you quite a bit during the years so you're really talking to the public letting the public know what you want to tell them about you know your y and your challenges and then mark's going to ask you the question about supplemental and then also to report to the public on the budget in so with that in mind you have to introduce yourself sorry to say that i know who you are asli we all know that we have a great resource in our school resource officer down at the high school she continues to do a great job and doing a lot of preventative stuff for us as well i don't think  i truly believe everybody is aware of the opioid crisis that we have wrestling with as well as many other communities around the country and the crime while we continue to be we continue to have  it's a very controlled process and once the that day is completed then we have an agreement with the da the drug enforcement agency and they we bring it to a site and then they destroy it so it's taken over by the feds yes so we do that that we do the outreach is in many different ways plus the year we get that word out as well again we've gotten a great response from the community and it's something that outreach in an effort to work with our community members with this pope crisis as well we have had a number of community meetings where people are coming in if they need resources and just to be able to direct them to those resources if they're interested in receiving item available to respond in the event that we need it on in the field his career that's yes that would lead to asic but that's a great initiative and i thank you for doing that because i know whose deaths that came from thank you we continued our regional partnership with the a police departments inside the greater boston area we belong to the suburban drug task force again what eight other communities to work collectively and collaboratively if there's an issue within that could be the communities we have one of added fact of the signs of the fast force that works in collaboration with the other departments in towns if there is an issue within obviously we know that there is investigations going on and things like that about drug activity began along with another patna ship with cambridge and i think it's grown now to eight other communities with children critical incident stress management team so that as we know that the offices a lot of our offices response of very chaotic and very critical situations that happen emotional impact on them as well so this is one of those things that we looked at and we said you know what this is if we can't take care of our own people how can we help our community so i completely agree with i've been a big proponent of it and we finally got it again in place and you know and that has worked out very well very well for all our people and for other communities we can share our resources again to help somebody if they're having a situation in their own communities any of them partners that we are with that way that we can send the resource of sell them through the process  and i don't mean to interrupt but i do want to relate to that comment that you just made to opioid abuse because people would say well gee belmont doesn't have a problem but we've had in our in our you know we've had over the last several years if  go and another point about that is it's not just belmont residence is it it can be people visiting people in belmont and it can be people traveling to bellevue cindy and so you know when you're talking about sharing resources you know it's a two way street but i but i think it's important for the public to understand that drug abuse is is not doesn't respect geographical boundaries they do not write ok thank you do not and that's one of those things you've got to look at it from a from a global perspective ok and that's what we try and do and that's a big part of why we involved as far as all the regional efforts because i truly believe that makes us a better department but also we can bring the beer if we need cambridge belmont and i linked in far high risk domestic violence situations that has been in play and then very now we have i believe not only the three police departments but we have twenty four private and public agencies that work collectively with us they meet once a month and that is to focus on any high risk domestic violence situations within your community and again giving the people involved in the victims of domestic violence resources available outside of just here in belmont so again through free and we all know as far as the mental health issues that we're all dealing with a lot of our options of trained and critical incident stress management so that when we go out in the field and they're out and you know we've had many situations that we've had to manage and but they have that extra training that we've been able to provide and like i said it helps minute tape and cities and towns on the two sheriff's we just brought on board three other communities so we're going to sixty one cities and towns and that gives us a pretty large area again it's resources that we can bring to bear if we need them members of the regional response team which meant is about one hundred fifty five presently and then we have a forty man swat team that they the swat team meets they frame twice a month the regional and things like that and helping with the plan we have members on that we also i hope you have heard about the stars programs school threat assessment and resources program and it's a national new status team so in that light if she has a situation that one of the schools with had to bring them in a number of times when we've had bomb threats if we've had situations number a couple of years ago we had one of our students get killed by the train we brought them in to help us get through that process they bring in grief counselors and help us through that along with the students and staff a lot of times if there's a death of a student  the local threat and or get a regional threat yes well if it's the chief his designee that would be the person that would make the call and we can bring resources to bear here and what this is it keeps within local control now i know years ago that there was situations when you brought in outside outside resources that sort of sometimes they were pushed to local federal resources versus local but this here is the concept as everybody sticks with the local control the resources that come in would ask would he have they we do an assessment collectively and then they'd say what do you want to do i don't lose any control of that situation it's all they're working they're just an extension of our department we work on our m o you and it's it's a great organization and again for a community like are you getting any help from the state financially yeah it's a start as far as funding for the economic no no no this is all we pay we pay member dues and buy pot of pot of to keep this whole process evolving is part of the commitment we got to dedicate ten percent of our resources a shopper a showcase and that's how it keeps on moving you know when we have you know ten percent of our resources is four point something people and then you collectively put that you know is an equation and it all works out but where we have a lot of people that are involved well where where very well into our commitment did you see the email i sent you this yes i did you see that because apparently there's going to be some federal funding available for school resource officer yes i saw that and we applying as well and i'm not sure our i mean what we you know we've applied many times my saw the source of the article so we're not going to mention it but i do think i do think it's a i don't want to say anything political but i do think it's will do it and i personally don't think we should depend on it for our public safety discussion that we've had for meetings i don't think we should depend on it for that but certainly if we can achieve we will ok thank  you again we want to mention the social media outreach to our community it's keeps on growing and growing and we believe it's a great opportunity for us to get information out as i truly believe all of you you know believe that as well  and again you can see from the numbers you know from you know that it has increased you know our facebook and twitter account i'm sure everyone receives the  the automated voice mail around the snowstorm stuff that comes from your office no yes it does it does so it sort of belmont mr dan mccauley exactly suited to retire so what we try and the what was interesting is that dan called on fortunately don't want to be disturbed but you know all they need to do is contact us this week since to me it doesn't make sense to me either but yeah i think you know she's really it's use for any type of b s e as well since we're talking to the public here i would you know just added jim but i do i encourage everybody you know to that you know ok you know that you know if you if you want to get the alerts and we do not overuse it i'm a big believer in that i agree agree how we use it for what it's supposed to be seat installation and i got to tell you as the fire chief said earlier the phone calls we get and banks on that i mean from parents grandparents and you know to be able to i know trained and they're very busy doing it all but i don't know if the public's aware of that but if if you have a question about your car seat you can give the police a call and we have we have the officers trained then the answer it and take a look at it and we do that like i said we do that for our residents and residents beyond you know if you could help me talk my seventeen year old out of the one thousand or two thousand and six boats wag many of you know we have a lot of great employees doing a lot of great things but one of the ones that sometimes that is below the radar is our exile every unit now these people volunteer their time and like i said you know the number of hours that they give collectively to our community you know as it's said in that and i report almost eight hundred hours i mean that's a lot of  and they do it because they enjoy what they're doing they're good group of people and you know obviously we we train you know they train with us and we get it but this is one of those things that you know like i said they don't get paid for it they do it because they enjoy working in our community so i do but would like i said our communications division you know we have i'm a big believer and service providing to our community and again that goes under the whole umbrella of the police department and you know we're here to provide service and i can honestly say would be the people that we have been doing a great job and i appreciate it and i know the community appreciates it because and i think that's gone to answer a lot of questions i often want to i just want to make the point that you know this is not just a belmont issue it's a regional issue you know one new think about it where are but cambridge and we're less than seven miles from boston six seven miles from boston you know i mean this is the hub of of the state and unfortunately we're we're big cut through community but i'm not sure how to get around it i mean you we are here and proximate to those two communities and it is what it is i don't know if there's a way to manage it better  i i mean we drive around a lot and we see it and you know as far as looking at how we can do it a little better i mean when you think about it we only have three ways to get over there are either over or under the directions and coming through a community but it's not it's not i mean unless we put golden gates up and block which will you know i don't think we can do it but how do you do it and how do you manage it better i really intersection here i mean there's been a lot of thought put into it as far as how you can manage it better so your point the traffic lights the signal light i think it comes down to people being impatient and it works i mean when you think we when we look at the numbers and the numbers of accidents it's one of our lowest lowest areas in town you know so the thing is it works it's just the configuration the way the roadway is configured now i also from use the analogy it's just like you can see kitchen sink you turn the faucets on that pipe can only carry so much water and that's what's going to happen you know eventually it's all going go down but in the same thing with the traffic once rush hour is a lemonade we pass by that time the traffic flows fine it's just that congested time and you know i've gone to meetings up and woman and gone up you know so it's not just here and it's a that's why i say it's a regional issue and the same way is coming through to problem i mean a lot of people know and the advent of the the you know ways and google maps and all the stuff you know just helps what's your fastest way to get to cambridge with your fastest way to get to boston most likely it's going to be through belmont either either a long route through la donna and  though on that topic is that the school building committee project they don't with their traffic to the point street right so they have everybody turning left on know if you go straight you you end up at the chain or if you make a left you go to perth so that then triggered a discussion with the traffic advisory committee and then patrice they've hired  normal traffic people to work with the people from the school building committee to to think about how to better better manage their site but i take your point i have someone in spalding rehab now with you know where that is  boston and sunday nights are my night so nine o'clock i got home and fourteen minutes it's astonishing i was astonished you know i get my car pulled out of the parking lot and i parked in my driveway fourteen minutes later so that you know it's like the streets are there but yes but it's the demand is exactly right it's a fifteen minute ride from downtown boston and when i'm leaving work at nine versus clock you know in this hour you know is in is only miles away  exactly and that's why i said because you know a lot of people have looked at it hopefully the tropic engineering group will come up with some ideas to help manage it better but i i think you know i wish i wish i had that answer and i wish we had more time and there's something else you want to say i just wanted to request what is we're putting on the supplemental request to share i know we and we've talked about it before i've mentioned it t mentioned it at the capital group we're looking for efficiencies within our program and how can we attain that and i know that we had put forth between the fine apartment and the police department if there was a way that we could have a dedicated ip person to help us you know dig deep down into our programs in our ip needs and i've talked with de petro about this as well you know and maybe people may not realize but the police department is on its own network along with being on the town and so we have a lot of very separate issues that we have to keep but i think it would be very beneficial for both departments if we had that availability of one person that could look at the programs that we have presently and help us make sure where utilizing them as best we can and of the i think there is developing the development going on within the town and i'm a big believer in the providing of service to walk community and i think at some point we've got to really look at the number of one members we have presently because i think it's going to have to be increased i mean it's i but i'm a big believer in the level of service that we provide presently and if we're going to maintain that i think that that's something we're going have to look at what your did you have fifty the exhilaration ok so it's all it's all those folks i just wanted to know because you spoke about the auxilary we know about the crossing guards it's so important there is plenty glynn road and bright street would work without it yes and many locations wan whether your percentage change is only zero point two one percent you've made your point about the supplemental resources and i think we all agree that let's start looking at that but you're overall budget is eight million out of one hundred sixteen so that's i'd say that's good value for the town and i think so as well and i you know since we represent the voters i want to thank you congratulate you and your team on your work and everything that you guys do because otherwise belmont wouldn't be as safe as it is i say this and i mean it sincerely as i've said earlier we have a lot of good people doing a lot of good things each and every day and they're doing it not because they're looking for recognition but it's just proud of them and what they do so i thank them and i'm glad to hear that you tell them to stay safe chief i will and the same thing great to see you guys we see you quite often this year which is fine the so the purpose that we've all read all the material we understand the budget so the purpose of this really is inform the public of what's going on in they'll get to see all of this in the annual report of course but still this is an opportunity to you know to check in we're going to try to do this in about ten minutes i know you have a lot to talk about but while we're waiting but you know there's laughing off camera about my ten minute comment but while we're waiting could you tell the public what's going on at joey's part you know in twenty five words or less because i noticed on the website that it's still closed and i'm not complaining or anything i just you know saying ok well you know what's going on there know and it's the problem is rats that right correct but then we can also say that the problem is that somehow trash is getting into the park so back in february we had those really nice seventy  that the parks or very well used and the trash containers were overflowing several different days and the doggy bags put in places that they shouldn't have been and shortly thereafter probably week after that the rats we had the issues with the rats so the real solution to this problem is for people who enjoy the park is to stop leaving things in the park i mean that that is the real solution and so it doesn't do any good for us to spend money to exterminate people if the users of the park are going to come in and leave food there because the rats  not you know we know that the rats are going to come if there's food there so we've talked in the past and you know i don't want to get too far off because mark here right now but we've talked in the past about having a carrying carrier carry and carry  out in we might have to do that for joey's park because we can't we can't get cooperation to not bring food and leave it in the park i mean when you think about that or it's on the agenda for monday works we are pretty dynamic i guess department we have fifteen different services that we provide throughout town and that's including administration do street mean instead to the seventy seven point seven six miles of road that we have we have eight point two eight miles of private ways or private roads excuse me and ninety seven miles of sidewalks we do as a service for our residents we do storm water maintenance working with community development they do more of the policy and the reporting and we are more of the maintenance and upkeep of the storm our system in town we do the central fleet we have over four hundred pieces of equipment in town kooning police fire you know our public works health and we're constantly doing maintenance upkeep on all the equipment in town that crudes mowers and trailers and lots of forestry service this is been kind of a hot topic the last few years the the trees in town  are getting older we had a drought two years ago which is been identified as a reason for a lot of the tree damage that we've been encountered and the last three nor'easters haven't been friendly to us as far as tree damage goes i mean how many trees we have like we lost in the last three nor'easters sixty to trounce trees is what we actually lost town trees down trees that we lost that's not putting profit over them with private we lost seventy five but we have a service that cuts them down a regular basis to keep the town safe aspirins and the trees that your disk you're talking about like are ones that were knocked out of the storm right or those more the weaker trees that they would have been cut anyway so not necessarily but we can say that the tree service reduced the number of tree gets hurt because otherwise you know we're we're just treading water but we really have a proactive program we did a missile into that and those were nasty storms no yes yes so but we do have one concern from the tree warden is that the older trees that we have the hundred year old trees that you see around especially like the one that we lost on myrtle street coming to their useful life and we're going to have to address those that they're going to have to come down and he's actually said that yeah that that and that's a balance between the fact that it's one hundred years old not wanting to lose something that is that old right verses or the how it becomes and say visit ages correct and that in a storm like that are myrtle street in particular there were a number of trees that came down that one can go to the wires one came out on a house  me you know fortunately what these sixty two trees thankful with that with our staff we were able to handle it with our staff with the help of minas a polite and ask one tree service we were we were fortunate to be able to take care of the every week or trash every week recycling every other week and yard waste service  guess it was a standard practice to go five percent every year on utilities and when we looked at our overall what we paid every year for the last three years that makes sense to increase it five percent so thank you very much  for that that's that's what we're here for cemetery maintenance we take care of the two cemeteries in town recreation how many programs we have june a lot hundred three very since the strategic recreation strategic plan we've implemented several of the identified items that we needed to basically tackle first and we have had increased success and it's an exciting time to be in recreation the there's a lot of excited in new energy and things are going well parks facilities oversight of the water distribution and maintenance dealing with m w ira sewer maintenance and the mike double the budget that's just the way it is i'd like to thank you for keeping the streets in such good shape during these storms i say it every time he wants and anytime he wants to listen to me when belmont is blasted with the crew that we have in the i have a department ok great thank you i believe it was the the storm we had nine and a half inches of snow i think was the thirteenth march thirteenth or sudden way asked us to tally all of our numbers for that storm because we might i mean i guess we have another question they doesn't have any money the probably have another twenty days or so perhaps to be concerned about this another storm probably got another thirty you think it's going to snow again solid waste contractor we are going into for july one advertizing it right now that we are having a community one of the first one a community conversation on april tenth at seven o'clock here in the borders or excuse me in the town hattori i'm a conversation on trash community conversation on trash any and all questions where you will be there to answer ok april tenth mark yeah a couple things a good job on the trash in the us always contract work by the way was a lot i know it was a lot of work for you this year two years three years  to the point on the budget the recycling number is up significantly and what is that related to it so there's two things that factor into that our current recycling cost it's just for the collection and the our vendor gets that gets them was getting the recycling and they were getting the marketing so they were getting a value for that they were getting dollars for that and that lowered the price for collection recycling now or into a new contract and a new world of paying for recycling the processing fee it's called so now we're paying the true cost to collect recycling so we're having an increase in collection which goes from four hundred thousand to about seven hundred thousand and then we have a processing fee which we have never had before that we and again it's a volatile market and it ranges monthly and we are budgeting four hundred five thousand on something that we're kind of going to feel our way through and see how it goes but we think there were  budgeted for that because it so obviously seventy eight percent increase the two to three hundred twenty five thousand dollars increase so it's not small i understand the situation but it's not small enough i guess the question is in the numbers that we have the new traffic contract is not in those numbers or is it it is ok good i want to ask about recreation you're into lot of my other questions that was a really really good summary of a lot that you're doing no i just want to find out where we are in the steps and i know you mention in the narrative a little bit more detail but your steps in coming by june hello recreation department i think we're making great strides right now in the past maybe the past there's august well last fiscal year we have new staff we have a full time staff and a twenty five hour which has just been filled again was filled briefly and has just been filled again but having the ability to have staff cover the day to day tasks think when you asked about the one of the things that the recreation should teach a plan addressed to was with the two people that we had in the recreation department they said it was virtually impossible to have any growth or any expansion of the department until you get adequate staff to do to be able to attend to the resources and attend to what was needed and tend to like scheduling to reaching out to other communities or other coaches or trainers or whatever to do more programming so we restructured the department we had three part time directors expansion and then doing better programming or to better find learned just fine tuning the department and it is like i said before this is an exciting time in recreation there they're going into new territory and it with a lot of energy and a lot of excitement mixing to be great and i do get complaints from people about the of the programming being kind of stale in the same over the over and not the only new sports and new things that kids are going to come in but we're not doing it so they go and other towns and how we aren't charging enough for the field to some you know i sit there and watch you know people drive in from all other towns and use harris field to play ultimate frisbee and then leave i assume they're not paying member harris  now we have taken our focus off of small baseball program for two weeks in the summer there's tons of baseball programs of that we're focusing on the kids program that we offer activities at the pool where our resources can really be used best so we do know that it's we are taking it into consideration every single day and i think you're going to see some good changes i'm going to hear democrats think you're well the only you know supplement request that you have any we originally had the trees and we pulled up with it ok thank you and well we also had part time we would love to see at some point especially for the highway division is to get the seasonal help back that we've lost works reports to patrice yes correct and it's a big part of your responsibility because it's a budget of twenty four million euros which is second largest to three times the size of police and fire not that their job their jobs are different so you know i think what's interesting about your department is that you have all these different duties you know in i believe that the recreation proposal came out of floyd's revenue opportunity fund the financial task force yes yes that's where they came from and that was four years ago so congratulations i mean to everybody because it came from you know the dedication of that committee there was one person on that group who really wanted to do that in got that started and i think you can feel it in the community discussion i want to mention you had a conversation with one of the advocates that went very well at the end yes can can i say his name yes doug  for working in a very positive way with jay in the department to minimize disruption and get to the get to the solution because i think that's what it really takes we don't need complaints we need feedback and and we don't need angry people are very and that the game we need we need people who you know can understand the background provide us their analysis and then and then you can get into consideration right that's how it should work and that's how it worked doug and so doug thank you very much and he's an expert in the field which helps so you know i really appreciate that your budget has come in three tenths of one percent you talked about the five percent and i think hopefully we don't have any other automatic increases or allocations in the budget but it's always something to pay attention to go ahead we just had some changes in staff so we had lower salaries and  lower insurance and it's a because this has the health and certainty because you have a lot of employees you have sixty seven employees but it's not auxilary people it's not you know temporary people these are real people right you so much for all of your work and i'd like to thank you for being a top gun and being a top department you know amongst in the state and i think mark and adam lot of work it you get to understand obviously the people that are on the communities you get to meet the people in the communities and then you can kind of understand what they're struggling with what they're dealing with their issues and kind of how it all works and the bigger picture and it's vit al for moving forward with any type of plan or proposal i've also reached out to i'm starting to reach out more to the business community just two days ago i met with the cushion grammar chance to kind of hear where where their issues and concerns are i've met with the center on center people so i'm starting to kind of branch out that way when my goals for the business community is to really foster a working relationship between the town and those businesses i feel that economic development starts with really fostering the the businesses that are already in belmont so that's been going really well i'm also looking at revenue opportunities in the future we're working on the board knows the collins center that started that's starting to move the snow has kind of delayed some of that and you know getting a lot of different people to meetings it's been challenging but we're starting to work on the a lot of information has been shared with the concent or so i think the boards and have a really good product once the end of that  we are obviously looking at a lot of capital major capital building projects i've been involved in getting my arms around that we've also talked about capital expenditures i know that's a that's a committee that's also has been struggling to meet due to the snow but i do have some plans for next year's capital budget that i am going to start working on once the one thousand budget is wrapped up we are currently searching for a facilities manager that is been the struggle there are three big and cs in that department right now phyllis and cindy really have just been carrying that load so as soon as we can get a manager on we can get the other two filled and get that to the food pantry location i think i have a good lead on how to solve that problem which will really this is wonderful thank you yeah that's that's something that i think it's going to work so those are the things that i've been focusing here i felt we did increase resources within the t s a office that it's the hub it's the sort of central nervous system if you will for the entire community you know some extent schools so if there's a need for additional resources there on the financial side or other you know if you work through this please let us know and so for the public this budget is one million dollars and it's going down by two point seven three percent there's five people and why is the budget going why is it going town i mean probably the new time giving you the opportunity  marshall we started this budget process in accordance with our schedule that began in august and it got ramped up when feature it came on board but the departments all submitted their budget request and and their personal services and in the normal schedule which was september october november well i would like to thank you for your work  and you have a map we're in position on the building committee for the new school building to so and you also have an important position managing the facilities in you know given the situation there so we appreciate that you're working with john failing on that though reports to them and so then that you and cindy right at this point right and i think throughout since i've been here i've been on both sides of it now on the board side and on the  budget is is good evidence of that that fine work because i don't think it always works out that way in that space so thanks again patrice how can we say welcome you've been here months and it seems like two years so congratulations on your thing getting the job and congratulations on what you've been able to do since you've been here so i know you are looking forward to a  good year going forward and thank you for everything all right no we don't have anyone else i'm half an hour over my heart stopped but i did change my appointment i hope you know so  we understand the public safety issue we understand the we understand the i t and we understand the part time what i don't understand around the us or is do the schools pay for the high discuss their budget with some but you know i guess that's the way it goes but i'm i'm i don't think that health care is a controllable item by this by the school committee or  and so you know what roy i asked john that question johnson well gee you know it just is what it is so i think when we're when we're thinking about the school budget and when john in the school committee are explaining that to the public that the public needs to understand that that's centrally managed right and so eleven percent increase that you know people should really focus on that they should come who's in charge of health care for the town in the school days what could be in the in your report there could be  we are in charge of the health care for the town and and so you know for somebody we don't want to focus on that when we think about the school i mean we're we're in charge of it but some of that we you know plus our funding we can't manage it in terms from the plans and the re doesn't increases don't i understand it's a understand though that what i'm what the point i'm trying to make and obviously i'm not doing a very good job of it is that by distributing it to the department level which i think we need to do just understand department expenses you know it doesn't help out in terms of you know no one at the department level can do right so it's on our desks and it's our responsibility to figure out what's going on what's the best thing for the town and how we can best manage that that's all  want the public to know that it's our responsibility the second thing is i've talked to patrice about this but i i don't stand why minute man's budget is on the town's budget why it's not in the school budget and because i'm thinking fundamentally you know those kids can either go to belmont high school or they can go to minot and i'm not saying that we should cut the school budget and you know put minuteman in there to to make the school budget worse i'm not talking about reducing services or funding i'm just talking about how do you understand it if if that budget is sitting where is that budget sitting in the  obvious for me the most important thing is that the service it provides is education and if you want to understand the school budget you have to add minuteman to the school minimum it's always been like a separate thing you know they like for instance the work committee deals with it in the education subcommittee but as a separate topic right but i'm i'm i'm questioning you know the way we think about it we shouldn't think about it isn't fixed expense we should think about it as part of the school budget and it's not really manageable by the school because we you know we just go there now and kids have the right at their at the children at the at their level and that their parents love to choose to go there so you just multiply the number by whatever it is but if i want to know what total education cost of belmont school system is i think that number should be included if nothing else as a footnote to the school numbers i mean whatever that's fine ok i mean certainly i think after we get out there we go back in it because it was more of a school budget item let's talk about these all right so my suggestion for this and you guys can jump on me if you want the the t otal budget is one hundred sixteen million and we obviously have to have money if we're going to funding of this we have to know where the money's coming from right yes of course so if we had the the sixty the ninety the sixty in the thirty five that's one fifty  a no no that was an important one because notice that we only did i think for one year only one year out it was in the atmosphere the extended hour at the library and we just do it last year as a one time thing no we it was a permanent i did but i don't remember but is dealt with these issues we dealt with a member of the high school before town meetings we waited til we got the final numbers from the state because we and the other thing is we need to stretch the overrides we need to make sure we're not using one time stabilization of free national voting on this now just trying to understand i'm just trying to  we should focus on part time social work i absolutely think this is necessary that's about thirty grand we talked about that one last time we didn't fund the veterans service offices what is or need this is a n amount of money we just i think you could probably find it through like you said if the state numbers change by just a small amount you probably find it ok so if you add all that all the things that came by point zero zero four tenths of one percent in the fund all of these things that's what well that if you're going to be doing is you're taking away to give in from my point of view i don't want to take away to give i want to give you know but that's not what i'm suggesting what i'm suggesting is if you run one hundred six sixteen million dollar corporation and you you run your excellent budget program and you're restrained by your don't want to fund supplemental with one time money nor do i want to cut what we have was a lot of it's level surface already right and cut into that to fund these things which weren't enough of a right priority for the department to put them in the budget request in the first place and be nice if we if we get the extra state aid then we can consider them we don't we don't all our money more on monday i would say a public safety issue is the trees that's a public safety and number two i feel strongly about the very strong about the trees could be considered a one time expense because you're not going to do it every year i'm just giving you know this trusted to my colleagues third part time social worker and for extended veterans services those four item for me would take priority say that again please you know it would be access we're looking at we think we might be close to a solution for the ira so so part time social worker for the council meeting which we spend four hundred twenty one thousand dollars in this community for all of our seniors while we spend and then extend the veteran service hours that's how i would look at this not withstanding of course what we're getting our own money from the library but for me you know some of the other things that have been a question assessment center full time and i see the need but those are my top four and i don't think we can do more than that have a lot of pressure on the foundation budget review commission recommendations to look at that i don't know is that if we get additional chapter seven money we look at that more fungible or is that just directed to the schools well it goes to the you know a million bucks but four thousand dollars and you know as well as i do that the revenues are under arrest in the expenses are overestimated which is how we get that's how we get free cash but we you know that as well as i do agree with your priority but i can i can easily find four hundred thousand dollars to fix all of this in this budget you think using a different management approach there were five hundred thousand dollars over in the snow  cash budget you have to have cash to pay for but you know as well as i do since you've been in the work committee and you guys are the micromanagement of the budget that revenues are underestimated and expenses are over estimated and it's not by you know point zero zero four percent because this this these are not exact numbers this is not how the school nineteen as we know that so i think if we have something  absolutely need to do we just ask everybody to cooperate and then if you know like four for ten administration we'd have to look for four thousand dollars big deal we can do that you know and so can everybody but if they can't then you know then then you have to manage it that well i mean that's why you have me we can talk further about this but i mean these are some of the requests so you could take away from them to give them the supplemental and they'd say you know what don't take away from me i need what i have well it's now and i'll agree not to except to say may not you may not take it away from everybody but it's the idea of management is the idea to gether ok so that's what i would do you know i know again  when does it in my opinion this budget belongs to the board of selectmen it doesn't belong to anybody else and belongs to us because we have to approve it to put it on the war is in that  that means that the warrant committee can disagree with it the capital budget committee can decide with it citizens petitions you know there can be all kinds of stuff that can happen but we are responsible well i rather say it differently you know because we well let me just say it this way right we worked really hard a last eight years to approach it from one budget one belmont and i believe that this budget is a representation of both the board of selectmen and the school committee and the one and the work committee and administration after the school  works is we propose the budget now if you want to say ok we coordinate with the warrant committee or we coordinate with the school committee the school committee is elected the work committees not elected capital budget committees not elected we are elected not to do all of them or the even the four that i mentioned the only thing i caution the board on is you're taking one point five million dollars out of state which is sitting at one time money you know some a fiscal conservative way to do that would be any additional money you don't have to spend less you have to take out of that stabilization fund that would be the only thing i understand the point also for adding f t is that with the with the supplemental like also see whatever the it would be on  propose you know perhaps you know some point is the need for financial taskforce to to look at these issues in conjunction with the work that the consulate was doing major  was there was a significant debate you may have heard some of it in terms of the major couple building projects we look at it overrides and i believe so jim to your point which i'm an agreement with i believe that the board of selectmen through whatever you know body and we did it through the task force one needs to organize around all these issues because you can't have points of view coming out of the couple budget committee major cup project working group the war committee school committee and is somewhat of a decentralized way and i respect for all of them but he should be a centralized approach gathering in all of those stakeholders to look at where we go in as a community both in the five year plan and well as our operating issues in our capital issues because there are daunting and there are competing priorities and competing interests and i think it's up to this board to organize around that not unilaterally but if you junction with members of the school as well as we do in the future task force one the school committee school department assignment of to build on what was done there because there are a number of recommendations we haven't yet executed but but more broadly jim as a look at major capital building projects and a significant deficit in the in the near term future what are we going to do but it's a good idea y all of the issues rather than this committee that committee this committee that i mean i thought i mean you know i was on which committee you know there was a great committee because we looked at fifteen communities and fifteen thousand pieces of information  study it because that's how the town works and i think i think that's been true and certainly in my experience the last three years that you know if you have a question that comes up you you appoint a committee the committee studies it and i think we need to look at it early on in april and i'm going to know you will be with us at that point jim but i think it's something that's so important for the next several months because if not then we'll be rolling out debt exclusions and operating overrides and not have the kind of responses on those that we want when the collins report comes out whatever that a great day for me but i don't think it lines around i don't think it's important you know whether i'm here or not doesn't that's not important what's important i'm informed by the five year budget forecas to take charge of this you know really and i've done and i know some people don't like it when when i do stuff but i've done the projections the way which we're going to look at on monday night right your you know bring that with you we have the five year projection and then since we're making commitments for thirty years which we do do i've done what i call and what is known in my industry as a steady state forecast and if you do that for thirty years which is how long our commitments are for because we have pension obligations in unfunded pension obligations and unfunded oath  obligations the the net deficit is eighty two million dollars now you know don't and don't argue with me about the projection because i understand the projection and who knows who in the absence of knowledge of the future you don't know but we have the actuarial studies that are showing us what our expenses are so if you take our our forecast which municipal people are used to using for five years  so it's going to go up another two million dollars so where is this town going to get ten million dollars from to run run the town it's just not going to work that way so what we're going to have to i agree with the financial task force i agree that the column center has to be involved but i think that that the board of selectmen have to have to be the leader leadership that has to come from because we're the ones who are accounting for great and we and we've been doing that i mean you did it with the financial times force we got the opeth committee that cut the liability by one hundred eight million bucks we restructured the pension fund and we have to keep doing that because to have twenty three hundred or thirty people involved in this decision making doesn't work you know if it works when you bubble it up from the bottom but then when you get to the top you we have to decide what to do ok i need to rock n roll but thank you any further