i'm joanna dualists editor of the belmont citizen herald and wicked local belmont dot com and with me tonight as my cold moderator is freelance reporter jack kelley welcome jack welcome do it live and welcome to our t yes in just a few minutes each of you will have the opportunity given two minute introduction about yourselves after that jack and i'm going to take turns asking questions to each of you some of them will be specific to you mark some will be specific  some will be for both and we will specify many of the questions tonight were submitted by dedicated belmont to the senhor old leaders so i want to thank the readers of the belmont to somehow for submitting your questions we also if time steven and my daughter's currently a senior six years ago when i ran and i said that we can do better and i think the record shows that we have through hard work and commitment to doing what's best for belmont we've accomplished a lot together first and foremost what i'm most proud of years and was so necessary as a four point five million dollars all right was so necessary because of the operating budgets have become so strained over the years i also established in my six years on the board a collaborative budget process one belmont one actually letting me have this opportunity to talk and have a discussion and answer some questions from your readers i my name is alexander rubin and i'm running for select woman  moved to belmont in two thousand and thirteen with my family my husband and two kids i have a three and a half year old son and a twelve year old daughter and we moved to belmont because we really fell in love with the town and the great schools the  boston and the small town feel i think you can get it any better than that prior to moving to belmont we spent almost twenty years in the neighboring city somerville where i actually  was able to see firsthand the transformation from that canonically strain to actually a pretty livable and exciting city right now and they've done quite a lot in a relatively short time through sort of focused on the unified vision in implementation which i think we might want to look at and see if we can use for belmont i think one of the issues why and the reason why i'm running is because i think belmont is great and i love delmon but i think we can do better and i think there are some things that we can change in terms of transparency processes and how decisions are made and how the citizens learn about them and can participate i bring to the table business broad ground i have an m b a from babson as well as about fifteen to twenty years of business experience i've worked in small companies medium what large corporations in the in profits and right now i have a part time consulting business where i consult small businesses on optimizing their processes and figuring out how to grow so i believe that i might be able to bring a new fresh perspective to the table and offer something different well thank you thank you alexandra and i wish both buy buy but you know let's keep it simple if we can talk about anybody's hands or anything like that we will allow rebuttals of up to two minutes now  ask the first question ok i'm going to direct this toward you xandra and you talked about a focused vision and your introduction well there are several capital investment needs to make what do you think are the highest priority projects in the next ten years and how would you prioritize them in order i personally think that the highest priority would be belmont high school right now i think for the first time in several years on our proposal has been accepted by massachusetts called building authority and so i think that right now is our chance to actually build the high school and use the thirty percent finance assistance that they can provide to us so i think because of that this is a priority it's also a priority because of all the overcrowding that we are hearing about and schools so we know that this has to happen and it's much better if it happens with the help of additional funding we do we have other capitol building problems you know there is d p w there is the library there is the police station quite frankly i think it's kind of hard to figure out what the priorities are for the town because i think there's also the additional funding from the additional tax that we put on the property right  y the name the capital tax c p s c b a c b thank you that we might be able to use right for some of those buildings and so that might change the priorities so i think their number one priority is the belmont high school really were looking at in terms of what was shovel ready at the time we had said to the d p w facility because we hadn't yet heard from the state the middle school building authority want to prove or over statement of interest we had applied for over ten years and now that we have approval we absolutely have to move forward with this project we have two hundred seventy days of eligibility period we have to identify feasibility funds the building committee will be announced on monday at the board of selectmen mean it as i understand it and we have to do everything we can to support that process  and at some point in time we have to consider a debt exclusion vote you know probably earliest the fall of seventeen likely in the spring of eighteen but beyond that we do have other facilities are in desperate need of of upkeep the library doing their feasibility stud project and so i'm hopeful that with organizations like the belmont youth hockey association and others that we can do privatization there and i think the capital budget committee has been asked to look at these projects and we have to absolutely focus on the high school we have to develop a to mention unfinished business what would those four projects what you would consider unfinished business well i mean i think the major couple so from my point of view jack the unfinished business is not getting them all done you know because that's the next twenty or twenty five years they likely will be serving on the board of selectmen i think the unfinished business aspect of that out of the financial taskforce was really developing a plea in and a path forward for doing all of those buildings can we consider any kind of cross utilization i'm not certain about that so unfinished business for now for me at least if i am reelected is to finish the high school project to move that forward to get to a successful debt exclusions during my next term if i'm reelected and to hopefully work within the capital budget committee as a member of the board of selectmen as well necessary some point it will point all right i will ask the next question mark we'll start with you belmont is full of many senior residents are living on fixed income wonderful contributions to the community but with taxes set skyrocket in coming years from pension obligations the new high school and surging role in just to name a few what can be done to make sure we don't drive these residents out of their homes due to high taxes i mean i think that's a that's an important question really years and certainly understand the concern of many seniors in this community my mom is a senior she lives on a fixed income and you know at some point in time you know they really can't afford the increase in taxes that we've put forth you're right it was necessary we didn't do that lightly it was necessary we needed to move forward so we are for use your obligation to ensure that those override funds are stretched out as much as possible we also have an obligation to try to manage our cost going forward as well i mentioned the debt exclusion for the high school well clearly that add from additional taxes at some point in time the other thing i think seniors are aware of this and i actually sponsored a program last fall there are a number of programs through the assessor's office and through the state in terms of deferral or property taxes or exemptions that they can take advantage of and the other thing we need to do is continue to support the programs that the council of aging put forth because it's a lot of educational programs things of that nature that we need to support as a board of selectmen in funding i understand the concern i think the board of selectmen has  income that make wonderful contributions to the community but with taxes set to skyrocket coming years from pension obligations and new high school the surging enroll meant just to name a few what can be done to make sure we don't drive these residents out of their home due to high taxes i believe we should start by saying property taxes are aggressive by nature and i think they often hit the fixed income residents the hardest as mark pointed out we do have some programs right abatement program and i think that we as a town might want to look at it in towns and see the best practices and see if there are any other options that we might look at and maybe work into what we can offer seniors some that i can think of would be one that the default program that mark already mentioned where you get to defer your taxes until the property is sold or the owner is deceased in then you get taxes in the income in the interest on it dollar homestead exemption when a certain amount of dollar amount of the value of the house is not taxed at all across the board and then there's another one is freezing taxes i know that's done in the couple of neighboring communities where you freeze taxes for low income residents because of heart so for at least let's say the previous year or the year before so there's a freeze in the tax paid so there are options out there and i know that we probably not the only community struggling with this because of all the property values that go up so i think we can look outside and see if we can come up with a combination of one or two well maybe all four of them  seniors if i might just comment there is a hardship but opportunity as well to our assessor's office i think that we get that information out there we need to do more to educate the community i mean this is a good question for seniors jonah but there are some folks in this community that are not seniors that are struggling so we understand that we need to understand that as a board we represent all these kids that you and we need to do we need to provide that information the assessor's office does a good job of that we need to get that information out there from here on hardship exemptions as well th that are possible for those individuals in this community for the increase in taxes i have a question for you alexandra i know in your introduction and in the interview that you did with the belmont  of herald you talked about transparency many residents complain apparently that they didn't know about a public hearing especially when it's an issue that affects them how can the term better communicate with residents to make sure they know about your shoes that are most important to them and how can the toe be more transparent in general i think this isn't quite question and that's partly the reason why i am running in the first place  is important because it allows the citizen to participate in the government and they has to be a way that the citizen can easily find information and understand how and why the decisions were made and i have that information and the format that is easily and readily available so if we look at public notices oftentimes it's a legal notice that has to be provided to the citizen affected to give them the opportunity to have a response and to be aware of the think of the title of that would be you know reducing green space in front of the belmont bank more people might react to that so i think there's definitely a need for it but i also think that we in the twenty first you know  first century we should be using technology so one of their options might be to create a database where the citizens point interested can provide contact information for such notices and i know that was quite successful in the city of somerville possible and i think frankly the six years i've been on the board that is improved dramatically we've updated our website we from database perspective we now have all of our documents on our website were as before they made up all have been there so we've substantially and hence we put an consider that as well i agree i think social media the advent of social media is very important in terms of notification we do have procedures in town that so any board of appeals the planning board the board selectman at times as well when we know that there's an issue that will impact certain residents certain communities we send out notices to all of the above so we have done that so i think we've made great strides as relates to transparency and if i could because i think this issue has sort of interest in with this whole trash  funding to the public notice or to the rough will respond to what you would like ok because i think we got a little bit off track but if we are talking about there with cycling i think that something bad in my interview i said one of the reasons why i got in and i think to set the record straight it's very important that there is an opportunity to ask a question and get an answer and the question was simply did we do a bidding process this along with david kill understood that we're at a crossroads in the trash or recycling industry recyclables are down china's economies is that we think oil prices are down so the restartable market is it is as it once was and we understood that if we went out for bid that the cost may be higher in addition we're at a crossroads within the industry we have unlimited trash pickup we have dual streams and the decision was and i think this is prudent is to reach out into the community over the next week extend the contract for two years we have never ever if it will pricing most contracts had to be renewed or double digit percentage ours is less than that we wanted to reach out in the spirit of full transparency one of the reach out to the community to tap into the expertise of the salt wast recycling committee so the residents have pre set means do surveys to understand what could a trash pickup to they want in the future they want unlimited trash where they consider unlimited automatic trash pickup that watertown want to do they want dual stream recycling or participation of twenty percent i think it would be higher which would signal street but then you increase the contamination so the board of selectmen thought about that advice they were given we had three separate public meetings on this that were posted and we said no let's understand from the moved in two thousand and thirteen deaths exactly what i heard that we are talking to the community and we are trying to figure out what the community is interested in and i actually gave my email to be one of the participant in that and so that's why i went in two thousand sixteen when i actually talked to g on the phone and he he's very knowledgeable and he goes he can go into a market and and he went to great detail explaining all the pros and the cons you know that's his expertise and the question is not really on my end as to whether we're going to single stream or dual stream was something else to me the question is in three years we know that the contract expires in june but during that time we did not we decided for some reason not to go through the bidding process and it might be very valid reason  might be very good explanation out there but i couldn't find it and so my that's why i talked to jay that's why i was looking around that's why i was trying to find the meeting still in the fall i think it wasn't  when the discussion of what happened in some of them were not available so that's where the issue of transparency came about it's not as much the recycling per se is the recycling sort of emblematic of what that transparency is you can sort of seed from the citizen point of deal so i'm sure that we extend the contract and will do the facility study and i'm hoping that we will do you know another bidding process and then make a decision you have every opportunity to have input  opposition to many neighbors to one particular to be the major roadblock what specific way do you propose to break the impasse on the community path to allow it to move forward i completely agree it's really important you know of all the means we complicated and i think what's important here is to meet with all of the stakeholders not only the cherry road residents which i met with on saturday but also if we are to consider a southside path to meet with the school committee and school department so that's the east these route the equally complicated i've walked that path there to pitch points along the real bed that if we can't get through there we need to go down clark twenty and then honestly we need to meet with those stakeholders as well when the housing authority so i'd like to look at it from this point of view i'm not in the gym anything through i think it's and i think the board has a responsibility to meet with all the stakeholders and try to find a consensus on this we had a really productive meeting on saturday and i'm hopeful and in fact i commit that as we move through the feasibility study that path that works for the entire community that's just the trump out there when you tributaries i'm absolutely committed to an underpass at alexander i think it's terrible you don't say look i cut all the trucks when i was in high school it's unsafe for the kids and so i think in order to be able to do the path really needs to be aligned with the real bad in some capacity and so i don't look at someone as being stopping the process i think we moved it forward i think what's important is that everyone has an opportunity be heard and work out some asking to look at several routes and i think there's a lot of work that's being put in by committees and as mark pointed out and i think that i'm very hopeful that we'll get to see the path come to fruition much faster than the twenty years it's been out there in the neighboring communities while firm and wayland that they all vying for the same money the federal money in order to pay for the path we paid ten percent in eighty percent is paid by the federal and ten by the state so there is a limited pool of money available out there and the longer we wait the harder it is to get that money in for any project there is a time frame when it can be the most successful and i am worried that we might cut to talk about issues raised but there butters from my understanding of that at some point in that there was a trust broken between the two sides and it's very difficult to negotiate with there's no trust involved at the end of the day we want to sit around the table and come to a win win situation that each side feels that they got what they wanted and there is a way to do that and i believe part of that are of actually they are trying to reach that i think in stanton actually reach out directly to their boat owners in some of the issues like noise on the crying invisibility they are trying to address right now so the earth mount is for the noise the fence and then the greenery should address most of it for the key component of this path and as in state has told me a number of times this is significant amount of money that's available to us we were able to get one hundred thousand dollars from the state to support the feasibility study the c p a also put it a hundred thousand dollars as well and  think we're moving forward since i got on the board i try to move this process for i agree with you it's been around since eighty two i remember i was chair of the traffic advisory committee don becker coming to me and me would be talking about a path and then once i got on the board he said this is something the community really wants and you know what there's so much traffic in our community we need to get people using their bikes more we need to get people to walk more that's why we try to develop more pedestrian friendly centers and i think the community path hopefully remove some of the traffic on the streets i'm confident as we continue on this course of action and meet with the stakeholders and work out differences and move forward with the feasibility study and work closely with the c p a i see we shall continue to do that we'll reach a decision on this community path early part of next to move forward with it i'm excited about the possibility you want to move on to the next question we have a little less than thirty minutes left but did you want to say something i just want to yeah as part of the discussion you've been on the board for the last six years doing that six here is what we could have done maybe differently to get to the community pass faster that's the question that i also will looking for and i couldn't really find the answers was it do really doing the work that was necessary to understand the paths that were available to us and frankly there are still complications i have i have confidence that we can get this done i'm hopeful that on the west side those pinch points can e with you and you mentioned this in your introduction you've had some experienced business woman but you haven't heard any government the experience me awhile to evaluate to see if i can do it if i have the time to commit the desire to do that and also the support of my family and that takes time and conversations around the kitchen table so i think births why we just made the deadline we made the deadline with a hundred and fifty signatures so we have enough and also once i put my name into the ring i've had a lot of people knocking at my door that i've never met  or smi to run in have some issues and concerns which was again something that i didn't expect to see before i even submitted the signatures so i think that sort of answers why it was the very last minute and you know it's a serious decision and i think it's a serious position and i don't want to take it lightly so that's the first part of the question and the second one was why i feel that i could be qualified i think that it is very important that around the table you have different points of view and mean not having a political background is not necessarily a minus i think part of the beauty of the democracy is that you don't have to be part of the political machine to come to the table if you have ideas and you think that you have the skill to implement them and i think that's sort of where i am coming in i will a different voice on the selection board i think i bring a different perspective and i think that i bring a different skill set that that might be very valuable to the town and that's why i think i decided to run i think the fact that i am running that's why we having this debate which is also a very important part i think it's important for democracy to have opportunities to have these discussions and to answer those questions and the only possible if you have oppone meetings in the morning to you can say i'm lucky that way you know i understand that so it's great that you have a film that supportive that's why i agree with that i mean in terms of the experience i mean i agree that different points of view are important but i also want to state that having experience and knowledge especially my time of the war committee and time of the board is really critical we're facing significant issues there's a lot at stake in the future and i think having the expertise to know she's going to be critical for some things that we're going to face in the future ok the next question is f mark green space plan approved by select men caused a lot of controversy in the town can you tell us about the process of that decision which led to a special town meeting leading to the revised plan in which resulted in us having to revisit you know sort of that option and decide that perhaps what made sense is to put some kind of a roadway here well unfortunately resulted in significant amount of division and i think that what the board could have done differently and what i stated one of the means that we had that we actually reached a better answer for the town in terms of what's there now it's more of a pedestrian walkway it's going to have brick layer to look beautiful although it does allow for some drive through to drop off for the seniors and will be closed off at different points in time during the year so it's unfortunate occurred some things these things do occur in government so great that the vice of this doing it differently we should have gotten folks together early on prior to tommy and i was unable to do it at the time because of personal matters but i think after later on we were able to do that signature that they were clapping that it felt like it was an opera or from the town and what i wanted to know is do we have any processes or procedures in place to not to have this repeat again when have something similar because it seemed like we it took all that time to get to plan a and so everybody was on board with that and then in a very relatively short period of time it changed drastically and it did require a lot to sort of you know for lack of a better word sort of an uprising right for this to happen and so my question is did we either do we have some processes that just we didn't follow or  input so in fact we didn't just make a unilateral decision to change it to most of the plant is still in place we just what we did is just put up a road in front of the green space i understand it costs it up for it so i think the process is this i think next time we go to tommy with a project we have to ensure that it's finalized you know i'm not certain we had a lot of input months and months and months and months but we heard on time before that perhaps there was something cern's so next time that we go we have to make sure that we've gotten at the very last with our all of the input necessary we thought we did perhaps we didn't and so i think that process needs to be fully vetted and i think in the future the board of selectmen when there is a disagreement like this in a significant one up to the board because selected to be the collaborative leaders in town to bring people together we're not always going to agree with one another and that's ok so long as people have an opportunity to have their say so i think that's part of the process as well alexander in the again the belmont citizen harold you were quoted as saying because you were a part time worker and that you would be able to devote more time to your duties select woman if you were elected do you feel that that position requires someone who was in part time work or don't i think mark works full time to can you say more about  personally think that it does require a lot of work there's a lot of information that you have to go through and prepare before coming to meetings and i'm sure that mark would agree with me that you know if you have an extra two hours to go through it it would be very helpful so i think that if if there is an opportunity for someone who can afford not to work full time that would be beneficial to the town and i believe that right now at least one of the selectmen jim williams is retired as far as i understand so i think we have a combination right we have people on the selectmen board that work full time as well as people who have retired and so i think that that was partially the reason why i decided to run because i feel that i have the time right now and the commitment to be able to do that and also if i am coming in you know in the beginning it takes a while to build consensus and it takes a while to get up to speed in order to be able to build consensus and get to the wind when you know getting below food and for that you need to have time and i think that i wouldn't want to run for this position if i had a full time job because i wouldn't feel that i could dedicate that time for the learning curve as well as building the consensus and mark table there have been folks on the board that have been very effective selecting that have been retired that's ok as well and you know i think it does take a significant commitment and one of the things that that when i ran on six years ago and what i still support is the board really needs to be a policy board i think we strayed a little bit from that at times but need to be a possible not absentee board but a policy board we made it we elevated their mistress position to be a chief administrative officer to run the day to day operations to do and i'll continue to commit myself to it you just have to spend a lot of time doing it and you want to try to make a difference and you're sitting in that seat and you want to make a difference so you don't want to sit in the seat not try to make a difference so i do spend for a month time balancing that  still raising a family have a daughter in high school and working as well well we have a little less than fifteen minutes left and quite a few more questions from the audience i want to get to dress this one to mark the override passed last year as a result of the long term planning by the financial force yet one year later it seems none of the recommendations of the task force have been implemented what the response to fix things what you guarantee will be done and the next twelve months to implement the task forces recommendation  fact they could do it for that question fact we have been working on some of the other recommendations here i think the only visible aspect that people see is that we had a successful override but there were many wonderful recommendations in the financial task force report so first and foremost the modeling that we did we spent hundreds of hours on we're using that now to project out on this budget process so we are working on that as well group c was to work the working capital group with the major building projects capital group i just mentioned what we're doing there we can work it on that in the capital budget committee so we are moving forward on that b was the one that i think we need to spend a little more time on in group d group b is the revenue opportunities group one of their primary recommendations with maximizing non tax revenues from our recreational assets well the fact we have gone out and hired a consultant one hundred  ten percent and the consulting conducted i think thirteen fourteen forms on the what you're able to go to them but on recreational needs in this community that's going to set the framework in terms of how we image we are recruiting recreational assets and move forward to try to generate some additional revenue as relates to that group thing is that is that is the government working group and i think we need to do more work there we have asked all of our department heads so the more innovative lean creatively in terms of saving costs we've done some of that this year but i think the larger opportunity extra task force recommendations validated that in fact we needed to do that especially long term services in particular how can we deliver services differently at a lower cost and that's a lot of work it's going to take some effort and we need to sort of focus on that over the next but there are a couple of things that they did mention that i think would be a low hanging fruit that we could easily do so one of what marc said of consolidation so we can consolidate some of the departments for example id department can probably service  so i believe that there is a way to reach out to other communities and see how that could be used and it shouldn't probably take that long to see in the van by communities what they do about it and then also we have some capital buildings we have building sitting there maybe we should sell it or repurpose it in order to bring sort of the net neutral revenue which i believe the building has been sitting there for a commissioned yet because we're still using it and the ones for the ones that substation comes online we have instructed tim palmer that is one building want to consider recommissioning decommissioning so that perhaps we can commercialize it as well so so that's something we absolutely have to think about to great word i've been spending my whole career on regionalization i've read all of the reports it's a difficult thing to do but we shouldn't give up on that you know we could reach allies around the purchase of major capital assets for example we buy a lot of truck across a million dollars on ten beisel that try to cost them  stay in effect he has done some consolidation he saved up upwards of i think ninety five one hundred thousand dollars on reducing some of the applications that some of the other departments were using to consolidate the use of that that's the point i made to you with you about innovation so we don't department has an account side to really look at ways to consolidate how we deliver services and i think that's one example let's let's move onto another question yes i think we should move on maybe to a couple of the questions at the example i can do is voluntary as we might have been i would do a lot of travelling in normally when we travel we tried to commit at least some time to all and hearing so when we were in guatemala  volunteered for a french hospital that dealt with kids that had cerebral palsy and so we volunteered and we also donated money in the way it worked is everybody wanted the money in then what happened is they actually said well the money would go for cleanup and they had several custodians that would clean out the houses maybe three or four times a day and there was a huge tree in the middle of the  interactions with the kids and so one of the things that we were able to do we actually talked to the head of that hospital and the church in and we were able to negotiate and get the money that was donated by us and some other people to actually get the it type of contraption that allows the kid to be taken out of that cage and actually sort of move around and we i think will when that twice and so the second time we actually had a soccer tournament to do that you know and i think about took a lot of negotiation in a foreign land without a foreign understanding we had to i do a lot of volunteer in a volunteer at my church i've served on the church trustees and other committees and church i do a lot of bryan does a lot of volunteer in the community and generally it's been successful in me to use this question as you know what my biggest disappointment but really yes we are volunteers as members have them negotiate with the developer we through intermediaries or try to negotiate with the developer there was a huge disappointment it's unfortunate i know a lot of residents were very upset about the force that is one of my biggest disappointments they worked really hard on we were just developer that really didn't want to work with us that's moving forward so i think in a volunteer way i reflect upon the last six years that's a big disappointment for us although i've been told that we might be able to turn that somewhat of a positive by roger cold propose some kind of a solar array there which i think is a wonderful idea that's great we have to wrap this up so it's time for your closing statement since mark went first  be able to have this discussion that we having today and i feel that the fact that i am running will ready accomplish this much so i'm happy about that i think that tone of belmont is a great place to live and i love it and you know we're here to stay and i really wanted to be as great as it could possibly be but i also feel that belmont is facing a challenge and the biggest one is really the structural financial imbalance the town has and there's not a lot of room to maneuver to get the money because you know ninety percent of the tax revenues that we get from properties and you know there's only this much you can raise taxes so i think that  this is something that we have to solve it's not something that we can sort of kick down the road you know i think that the only way to solve this is to start to look at the larger picture have a vision and actually prioritize have a priorities for the town so that every citizen knows these are our priorities this is what we're trying to do and then have a timely implementation oftentimes it feels that we have a problem and we try to plug that  hole we have another problem or try to plug that hole instead of looking at it sort of holistically and i think that that's really what's needed whether it's the use of technology whether it is original ization or maybe implementing what was recommended in two thousand and ten vision committee there are very specific recommendation that we could have if we implemented is in two thousand and eleven we could have gotten a lot of that revenue and i think i bring  be up eight hundred students and that will continue to put pressure on our school department in the district will also continue to result in additional demand for services from town residents so we need to manage your overright funds we need to stretch them out we also need to manage some or other costs as well we need to complete the work the financial taskforce we talked about that it went and implement many of its recommendations we need to address major building projects the high school the to work closely with the building committee through the feasibility study process and ensure that we have a design that it's right sized in meets the needs educational needs of the students other building projects we talked about the lab playstation skating rink the community path issue we need to solve that problem once and for all we complete the feasibility study identify the optimal continue to support solar rise in belmont i love don't want as well it's been a great town for my family to live in for my extended family it's given us a lot it's a town where people really care for one another they're active they care about helping one another and what takes place in this community we have a break group of volunteers on committees we couldn't govern without their support it has been a privilege and i wanted to serve you as a selector for the past six years ask for the opportunity to continue to serve there's a lot at stake challenges ahead and i believe i have the knowledge everyone to mark their calendars for the league of women voters candidates night on march thirtieth seven pm at the chandlery middle school i also forgot to thank my cold water reader john kelly who volunteered his time this evening thank you thank you very much what