the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of v m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments  candidate this recanted it's our jessie bennett roy epstein in tim flood the audio version of these podcasts will be available on the belmont media center website belmont media dot org and a television version will be available not only on the website but will also be broadcast multiple times on the belmont media centers television stations you can review the weekly programming schedule for belmont media at belmont media dot org or you can look at the belmont media television stations to find the day and time of the broadcast most convenient to you jesse welcome to community conversations and thank you for being willing to be with me on today's show i know you're very busy so i prefer you taking the time off thank you so much roger i appreciate being even finding us to talk about the us like men's campaign before we really begin the meat of our conversations can you give me an introduction to who you are who is just about well i grew up in eastern connecticut my dad was a welder my mom worked her way up through pink collar jobs to become the comptroller of a company and so she's kind of my role model for how hard work can get you just about anywhere i went to u conn and then finished up at the university of minnesota i've worked in a variety of different jobs over the course of my life i've worked in a bank in a bank a credit union another bank for six years altogether i've been in marketing and communications for several years now a most recently worked at beacon press in boston and areas today the the budget capital expenditures the environment and town governments we have a lock to cover so i would ask you to keep your answers brief into the point i will try and i'll do my best you're in town ask you specifically is this just a couple of years ago doma voters approved an operating override that allowed for a property tax increase when you expect and there was a feeling that th would be as early as next year we'd be looking at a shortfall so we are operating override was of course kind of right sized at the time the financial taskforce said that we would need about seven million dollars and then over it to really cover expenses and instead we did one for four point five million dollars and they used part of that as a stabilization fund to keep us from having to do another override just a few years later so  they did manage to stretch it out for five years what should have really been three years you know in terms of the operating budget you know it's tough we have a lot of expenses to keep up with that rise and you know beyond our control like health health insurance expenses and health insurance expenses and then one hundred dollars students a year being added to the school district these add cost so it's we knew that this was happening and we knew that it was coming and that's passed a couple of years ago or when the debate was going on over the right a couple years ago there were a number of people who opposed the override and said that there was a substantial potential for savings for financial savings budget do you agree with that i think that we were pretty close to the bone before that other override which is why it worked on the campaign to make sure that it passed i had seen the case for and for the override laid out in this is what it will look like if we do it and this is what it will look like if we don't do it and it was going to require significant cuts in a school system that was already dealing with crime you know overcrowded classes and it was going to result in cuts to town services so i think that you know when we're talking about raising taxes we always have to be very cautious about that because i know that it affects many people in town very dramatically if they're on a fixed income but we've really needed to infuse more we hadn't had no right at that point i think it was twelve years right and that was you know we had been really feeling the effects every department had cut everything they could at that point so we have to take the same tack where the financial task force looks at if there are any efficiencies you know if anything over the last five years has gotten a little bit maybe you know maybe there we've made some choices that we can and that we can look at more carefully but you know this is a town that does a lot with not not very much like in terms of the revenue in every department and particularly in the schools they've they've done what they can to keep up the last override really helped and with putting more teachers in front of students and keeping the class sizes down but there's you know one hundred students a year makes a big makes a big difference in terms of class sizes so ok you know two thousand and fifteen report the counts weren't committee reported that fire suppression constitutes nearly ninety percent of the town's fire department budget in contrast out of the four thousand seven hundred dollars incidents which the fire department responded to last year only two  percent actually involved fires another rd involved emergency responses by ambulance and another twenty percent involved life support given that data what is your opinion if any about the need for benefits of moving to a combined public safety department rather than having separate fire and police departments well i think that's something that you know we should always be looking at ways that we can gain efficiencies in town and we should and we should always be ready to to examine those things but you know in terms of how we are how we utilize those services well both the fire department and the police department are doing far beyond what you think of as like you know the regular job it's like not out arresting criminals not out you know it's taking speed speeders i know that both departments do a lot in terms of taking care of the elderly in town taking care of vulnerable populations so they're both doing very important work and i think that we need to at the very least make sure that they're collaborating well and that if there are places that we can overlap in terms of services that that's a good that's a good way to go let's talk about the capitol but for just a couple minutes the library building committee recently hired an architect you can actually begin the design of a new library in the proposal is to have a new library be on the same site is the existing library do you agree with the recommendation for much to move forward with a new librarian and if so when should that happen given that we just passed the debt exclusion for a new seven through twelve school we've had a lot of capital projects necessary in a very short span of time and so unfortunately because the library didn't get built a few years ago when we had some options to do so that didn't work out because of the transfer of land from the school department it you know we we really need a better library than we have and we need a library that's for the st century we need a library that it's this one has turned into a money pit and i think that we're going to end up with a lot of expenses down the road if we don't deal with that so i think we're taking the right we're taking the right approach right now in terms of fund raising for it to reduce the impact on tax payers but you know this is the th highest circulating library in the state it is a very popular space it has served our community well but there are structural issues with it that can't be addressed in a mirror model so i'm glad that we are moving forward with the building project how we pay for that remains to be seen relating to capital expenditures it also relates this question also relates to the operating budget but primarily to capital expenditures on the one hand we do have buildings that need to be replaced we have to have a new school we need a library we need a new d v d our view building and those cost money on the other hand we have county residents who are oftentimes ageing who have lived here their entire lives who simply can't afford to pay the increased tax though as a member of the board of selectmen you would be smack in the middle oh yeah balancing those two seemingly irreconcilable observations the need for the buildings doesn't improve the ability to pay but you know bill a to pay doesn't say that we don't need the building right what do you do well i think that for one thing we need to make sure that we're getting all the money from the state that we can to pay for our expenses so if we have opportunities for grants doing that there are bills before the state right now to there's ability for the state right now to fix the the reem the amount of money that's coming to towns from the state for education because it hasn't kept up with the rate of health care inflation so you know i know that  our state representatives need to be working hard for that you know i think that a lot of them in terms of the d p w yard we have a fix right now but we know that ten years down the road we might need to do we're going to need to do more this this is kind of going to hold it together for that long it is a very hard thing to balance and i think that the best thing that we can do at this point is to make sure that we are economizing where we can make sure that we are getting and getting everything we can in terms of grants from the state and that we are providing relief for seniors who need it so i you know in terms of in town meeting we lower the interest rate on the tax  loans that you can get through the town that are much easier than going to a bank and taking out a mortgage on your home so that you can pay your expenses that it gives it gives some relief and we made it easier for seniors  to do some writing off their taxes in terms of volunteering but we need to make sure that you know we're doing everything we can to help seniors in those situations ok let's move to the environment where a few minutes not too long ago the horrible shape one of the primary sources of the offending pollution the e p a said is uncontrolled urban storm water runoff now nearly all state and federal programs that provide money to local governments to access those state and federal grants in the us must fund its stormwater programs entirely through rates given this would you support the creation of a storm water utility oh you mean like a specific  yes i would i think that you know we can have a modest impact on repair bills and pay for what has become a very expensive project to fix our aging infrastructure there are many places where you know probably not even through you know deliberate malice people have done you know the wrong kinds of connections where something that should be going into the sewer lines is going into the storm water there are sewer lines that are cracking and we've been doing a lot of work in terms of lining that but there's a lot more left to be done so in terms of maximizing our dollars as a town we should be looking into every way possible to  lower the cost of this project and if there is money available and we can do it through a modest stormwater fee we should definitely do it in them in may of two thousand and sixteen the state's supreme judicial court ruled in the case came the massachusetts department of environment environmental protection that the state has not done enough to meet the mandates of the state's two thousand and eight global warming solutions act which requires massachusetts to cut its greenhouse gases twenty five percent below think that is a fantastic goal i think that you know as a municipal utility we faced a lot of the same issues that many other muni's faced in terms of we don't have the scale that the larger utilities have been and it takes more effort for us to move the needle on this but we've done tremendous work in the last few years i think that we need to commit ourselves to we've committed ourselves to eighty percent carbon reduction town why it is well you know with our climate action plan by tw think that we should be moving towards a model where we are getting our energy from clean sources i think that every utilities should be moving towards a model where we get our energy from clean from clean sources as soon as we possibly can ok let's talk about ten governments for a couple of minutes there's been a substantial concern over the past few years now that the job of being a member of the board of selectmen has simply become too big for an individual  virtually i'm parried to your position one aspect that seems to receive short shrift at times is being a member of the light board the board that governs light would you support or not support separating the board from the board of selectmen into being a separate by and if you support it how would you do well i think that we'd have to have a study group much like we had the commission to study the number of selectmen last year and they commissioned a study having a stronger town administrator a few years back you know when we want to make a change like this we have to look at it and look at what other communities have done how other communities with meanies are handling their l duties were usually not out in front in terms of change in philmont so i'm sure that there are many examples we can look out for that but you know i do agree that it is a very big job and it's a lot to expect of incoming selectman to both be governing the town and governing the light department which is you know a whole company so i think that it would be good if we looked at that and i think we have a study group and bring it before tell meeting director given that we now have a budget director in addition to account administrator how do you view your role or it's not personalized how do you view the role of the board of selectmen relative to staff and preparing and presenting the town budget meeting each year well i think it was always a very big job for the town administrator to present the budget and i think it it did create an extra strain on the board of selectmen so having this person in place is a huge help in terms of putting it together another portis lekman though is setting the the priorities for the town so the administrator can tell us what's happening in the individual offices but the board of selectmen is still looking at how we're spending our money and making sure it matches the values of the town so there are always going to be hard choices for instance and in terms of you know i don't know that there is a department in town that couldn't use like an extra person on staff so you know every year there's going to be those choices were like so do we hire a traffic engineer or do we hire somebody new in the planning and you know in the planning area of the office of community development there are always needs you know and so the board of  has to figure out which of those needs we can cover in different ways and finally former new york governor mario cuomo once stated a quote that i love almost that you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose do you agree have you ever heard that i have heard that quote and i'm and i'm married to a poet so i'm i'm i'm i'm in poetry all the time so i will govern in poetry as well  but but no i think that i think that it is true when we're campaigning you have to speak to your vision for the town and of course everybody's vision is going to head up against a hard wall of reality once you get elected and i think you know especially in this race  we've got three people have never done this job before i'm fighting for an open seat and if any one of us gets elected we're going to be a new newbie to the job and we will have to go acclimate ourselves to the job  and there is there are a lot of things i've heard every former selectman and current selectman in town one thing that they have said in common to me is you cannot prepare yourself for this job you'll have no idea what is going to be like until you're actually going to give you can either or choices and what i'd like to ask you to do is to simply give me your answer without an explanation in most cases your answer should be one word and if we do this right we should be able to do this in about a minute ok ok winter vacation or summer vacation summer poker or chess chess the beatles or the start the beatles baseball or football i would say basketball but you didn't mean that's that choice so baseball the beach or the mountains the mountains red wine or white white white wine you know better and jelly or ham and cheese p coke or pepsi coke pancakes or waffles pancakes makar p c mac all the way i'm a design person so i have been e the clock has run out on us as it is to do it's been fun you know i think talking with you thank you so much roger this has been great i know that it's a busy time you've got your day job in addition to the campaigns and we really do appreciate having you come over to the studios to talk to me and through me to to the community well thank you so much for offering this service to the community roger it is so great that the media center to keep funding for public public media around the country and we definitely need this resource here in town so support it thank you very much and obviously i agree with you one hundred and ten percent  i've been speaking today with jesse bennett one of the three candidates for belmont's board of selectmen in a special edition of community conversation i should note that jesse's opponents are also appearing on identical  taped today as well you can access the conversations with all three candidates through the belmont media centers website belmont media dot org a video of our podcast session will also be rebroadcast any number of times on the media centers television stations you can find the broadcast time by looking up community conversations in the t v listings on the b m c website you can find the audio of community conversations by searching flood is a special edition of community conversations i will be back with you for our regular community conversations podcast next week i'm your community conversations host roger coulton thank you for listening i'll talk with you again next time