away suddenly at age fifty five father to an elected member of the belmont school committee in belmont town meeting and tireless advocate for the belmont public schools the dan scharf memorial runs a fun morning of running that includes both the five k race and the companion two k run the proceeds from the races fund the dan sharpen education innovative fund and the foundation for belmont education innovative teaching institute which combines two dance passions professional development for teachers and school technology so the race schedule is going to be sunday september thirtieth two thousand and eighteen e b m to nine am did pick up on race day registration nine thirty am dan schorr for moral five k ten fifteen am five k race awards ceremony ten forty five dan sharp memorial two k eleven fifteen award ceremony in celebration cardboard container drop off a saturday september twenty ninth from nine till noon at the town yard if you have lots of corrugated extra cardboard flat keep it dry drop it off at town town yard on c street with old trash barrel drop off also at that time if you have old trash barrels or recycling bins you're not going to be reusing for your yard waste i am i highly encourage is working out well but if you're not you want to get rid of them you can bring them to the town yard to get rid of them i should also note the cushing fall festival is this coming saturday on september twenty second eleven till four league of women voters are having in  night to discuss the marijuana ballot question that is coming up in that league night will be a september twentieth which is this week seven pm it generally followed by the marijuana vote on september twenty fifth by urge everyone in town to please turn out and vote  we have a special town meeting coming up starting a member thirteenth state election of course is november sixth please go out and vote on that as well and we're going to be having as promised a second public forum on the post closure use of the incinerator site october eighteenth seven pm at town hall in the auditorium we have been as you know if you've been following this we had the last blast meeting for the public where we had created a universe of post closure uses for the incinerator site we've since will that down by almost half we may would live down a little more based upon some of the work we've been doing and then the remaining items will then be discussed on that october eighteenth meeting with a goal by the end of the year picking yeah i mean it was obviously it wasn't that we don't want to explain is that there were some legal restrictions on what an elected body like ours can and can't say about the ballot question so it's not that we don't know what's out there we don't want to people to understand we want everyone to understand just hard to we're bound by the law enforcement but that doesn't bind other people and we did vote to put in the in the light bills which you should have received i know i got mine she got the information we were permitted to state but i think the league night will probably flesh this out a lot more i urge people to nce they're with they get the questions answered so any other communalism and no comments from town residents on items that are not later on our agenda i had douglas john from the belmont religious council here to request that the board of selectmen to consider once again co sponsoring the belmont service event which will be happening on october eighth on columbus day morning you've done it for forest before and we we greatly  not worthy it's a question it's just i don't want to vote put something as a vote on that was not violate the open meeting of the knesset we have just to sort of report out briefly through to the number of participants and some of the activities that will take that's a really good marketing explain the event to the public we generally get somewhere between three hundred fifty and four hundred volunteers for the morning in columbus day the biggest part of the event is usually the food drive which is great for families with young kids we will be doing that again this year we will have some conservation projects lone tree hill possibly some work with the conservation commission and some of the schools are some  seeing not close that portion of tonight's meeting the first item on the agenda as i stated before we started here executive session to consider the purchase exchange lease or value of real property if the chair declares that nope and meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the well i just asked he said he wasn't sure he's necessary but if you want to share just push the button there good evening glenn clancy director of community development traffic advisory chair james were guys a consistent police chief ok so we all attended the traffic advisory committee last week but i guess for chair the traffic advisory committee voted to recommend that the board of selectmen direct myself the director of community development to engage a consulting engineer to evaluate the intersection of lexington and sycamore street to determine whether or not  warrants for a full traffic signals ation there is there is a document called the manual uniform traffic control devices which lays out the requirements that an intersection or any location must meet in order for it to qualify for signal ization so the purpose of hiring the consultant would be for them to do that evaluation i'm also going to ask them to evaluate the existing conditions of the section to see whether or not there is anything obvious that can be done in the short term to improve conditions at the intersection in look this was this was a suggestion that was e mailed to me by one i thought it was a great suggestion the orange sign that's depicted in the picture this is an intersection in watertown where they've put that informational sign in so i have already contacted public works they're going to work with their sign manufacturer to fabricate those to sign so we would place them underneath the stop signs on either approach on sycamore street to let the traffic on sycamore street know that the traffic on lexington street does not have a stop one of the things that we've heard about the way the intersection functions is that when the vehicles are slowing down on lexington street because of the raised intersection unfortunately many of them are not taking that opportunity to actually stop and let the sycamore traffic o't they're slowing down enough to get onto the intersection and they're continuing their way through motor vehicles on lexington on sycamore street are watching this slowing down behavior and misinterpreting it sometimes as the car was stopping to let them come out so this is an added safeguard that will put under the stop signs to give them the heads up the other recommendation that was made by such a male hot was to install a speed limit feedback sign there is a portion of lexington street is currently captured by a special speed regulation which is a speed zone that was established by the town of belmont with the approval of mass d o t the guidelines say that when you have special speed zones you can argue argument that signage with these flashing feedback signs and so where there is a twenty mile and twenty twenty five june recalls twenty where there's a twenty mile an hour special speed zone  speed limit sign that's posted on lexington street we're going to take the opportunity to put a feedback sign in addition to that so as motorists are going to be permanent i haven't figured out yet whether it would be solar powered or whether we would wire it it's going to depend on what  exists in the area for wiring what was proposed was the traffic that's coming down lexington heading into waverly square would have the feet the speed limit feedback signs the work the one school street front of the that's correct that's correct schools and the other item that's really going forward the lack of sidewalks and some of the schools and i think that's something that we really need to take a look at your new sidewalk is going to prioritize areas of public right gathering like schools and churches and town buildings things like that so you know we're we definitely have done that it's just unfortunate we can't do everything all at one time  advisory committee to and maybe changing their charge to make it not just about traffic a moving car but also add pedestrian and other things which had me thinking about you know because we've been recharging various committees like we've done with the business we  we terminated the business committee and we created a new one with a different charge we're terminating c p s and we created a new community pass committee with a different charge we just did the charge for all back earlier this evening to redo their charge and to sort of update because some of these charges are quite old said you had fourteen recommendations i need to section so i don't lose sight of that as well because i thought there was a lot of valuable input during the meeting and you were you know hugely focused on this intersection in wanting to do something whalen has a traffic calming policy that was actually really interesting about it it was a relatively thoughtful approach to you know not only how they implement traffic calming but what the process was to solicit community input to prioritize community input and as long and we actually have it's like that think of a document and maybe there's a lighter weight version of it but as i read through it there are a lot of elements that seem like it made sense to help us prioritize what you said was at least fourteen and i suppose if we put it out to be already back we would probably have dozens more people saying you know my local intersection need to work as well i think this goes into something that patrice is going to bring up on earth ministers report again we may actually bring it up now because people are here on this topic  through the complete streets application which glen submitted last week for the technical assistance with b h p the consultant engineer we're going to be setting up a website that will allow the residents and belmont to kind of list some of their issues in the current to what areas in town they think need to be looked at and then from there we can take those list and those projects and meet internally to start to try and per ties them as we go into a public meeting so that the idea that i have just to have as always coming up and i know you've been getting the emails i've been getting which was to to have some sort of a process in place whereby we could get feedback from everybody about not just those  showed up at a meeting would feed us to where the problem areas are then internally you know have staff prioritize them and then have a public forum like we did with the incinerator site to have people talk about it again and then advocate for whatever they want to advocate for and then we could what you're going suggesting something we have to do something in the intersection now and people i think are screaming for that and they're absolutely right right the the long term fix though i think is obviously a longer term  that's correct it's a five year window to minimum of fifteen projects which is fine but the yeah minimum which is great but the problem is you don't want to end up pushing the problem somewhere else and that's the problem is you could fix one intersection and then two intersections over that becomes the problem and then it becomes the problem so it's you've got to look at this holistically get all the streets interconnect with all the other streets and the cars are going to windowing the western intervention why i think part of the review process has to include folks that have some level of expertise yes i mean this is well right that's you know we benefit from from classes perspective but we need to make sure that that process includes folks that really understand the complexities of this and i think we get this website up and running that people can input their complaints and you can all out there put in your intersection and put in the issues that we can to see what their program that allows communities to engage with them both in terms of trying to specify routes that we would like them to take out of recommendation to do they also have data available we can do that because for us we can try  right they've got quite literally millions of people driving around with g p s is recording all of this and my understanding is they will also give you data on various different traffic has to be so i mean you should you think we could ask them to request a certain streets we believe could we get from a safety perspective to remove from your cut through because i think the single use there you can get both i think i think i don't know that much about it i think we should investigate there may be mechanisms to ask to have certain things removed but you also if i understand correctly can get certain data from them based upon what they've collected so i don't know the limits of it but it seemed to me like one of the things we could do is do an outreach you know anybody know but i know you're more in the world and i don't know anybody offhand but we can probably network our way and i suspect i may be as simple as reaching out to up joyce i was going to bring that up because quite often up at the middle school during the day doesn't happen as much now as it used to but people coming the wrong way down oakley road and i speak to them street no pun intended they want information from you and for giving that information from a stand you can access information so the certain ways uses that if we had in belmont would come in type that that's a one way street in that ways knows and that's all that gets on in the information and i know you got a call from google not too long ago when they asked if we had become a twenty five mile per hour community which he said if you views ways the speed limit donuts light turns red and then i step out and cross the kids where it's more safer but i can't get the kids across when it's heavy traffic and i know tom was looking at the end a section at one time which i was appreciative that he came down will write something done about it and stuff i know it's a shame that the lady got hit there and she died the next day and stuff and i will add it to seize we all safety thing to do with the kids there and and everything is very bad for the children they have for the butler school kids do you think you you have a unique perspective watching that every morning appreciate your work there too it's a tough intersection must be a crossing guard or is it your life in your own hands i guess  anybody else wishing to speak on this matter scene that will close that portion of it i think what he was referencing about the light up sign is that actually this picture that you gave us glenn shows the like the little lights around the border and stop sign that flash that's not that came up to me you know i think that there's a lot of maybe a demographic or meant or psychiatric shift in town where think a lot of people are really done with it and they were at the traffic situation and i think a lot of people would support increased enforcement of traffic and no no no but i think that's right i think that came on loud and clear that the scotian for students so just look for lots of recommendations from the police department terms of what we're going to do just for the i think i'm deaf i think we i think you if you're if you're concerned about people complaining i think you would find on a visual concept of the crosswalks some carry me communities i notice paint their cross watch some a green some a blue and some a wreck and i just wonder do you have any information on his pet peeves larry was that this was big talk from the top of him was it it those are international crosswalks with the white lines and that they all should be that way they shouldn't be the bricks they should be read that way people you know it's more familiar to people that they see it that way so there's again the heightened sense of if it's green or something it doesn't give more visibility to the cross walk basically you conditioned you know you see that international crosswalk in the way drivers should be trained to when they see that spot cross walk they scan well there's a concern that sometimes if you if you for your trip someone hits or a truck hits it it becomes a dangerous you know could be a pro projectile would we have thoughts on that i mean would you thoughts on that i think the all the signs that was the case back in like two thousand two thousand and one we had think that's part of the question is where does that funding come from i've started to reach out to other departments to see whether or not anyone has a line item for such a thing no one has come back in the affirmative we have to go to a special tommy november to get funding for the course think about well one thing that you should be aware to draw down ten or fifteen or twenty grand from our reserve fund for that way and i would support that you know and i think if you thought it would be helpful because i'm sure some intersections maybe it creates too narrow where to now are i think mark's exact their own point i think that the public needs to i hope they understand at this point that we take this matter very seriously and and public safety and the safety of all of the inhabitants of bomb on is that there's a there's a it's not a dollar here issue it's a matter of what what can we do th can be and does what they do and let you let everybody get to speak their pet i think i probably no one got cut off everyone we took as long one it took as long as it took and i think under the circumstances and that's important we need to hear from everybody in this i die would do i want to revisit that recharge of tack on our reconfiguration reworking i think if we could patrice and maybe come up with you and glen come up with a and larry haven't come up with a charge that was sort of you get what we're going with this right now something that we can come back with us and we can determine whether or not we just recharge tack as it is or we do it we did with the community path in the business committee where we just create a new committee with a brand new charge it i will think about i haven't got a display i haven't i haven't thought it through that far but i think definitely recharging tack at a minimum just to show the pain of even renaming a transportation advisory committee was great to keep michel so but i thought that was fantastic i mean when i first went on it we were just talking about traffic  recommendation so it sounds like the process to if in fact we turns out that single izing intersection more icing to make sense that will take he said almost a year or more yes one could you explain a why it takes so long in the second question is can we shorten that at all is there any way to accelerate that process well once we determine that the signals are warranted the they have to be designed and then there's the process of generating you know the final documents for bidding and then there's the construction work to get them installed i think you know the beginning to end from design to installation an operation i think is at least a year would be my guess just knowing how this process works the unknown  the funding of that i don't i don't know what that final number looks like my guess is it's going to be somewhere north of one hundred seventy five thousand anyway i don't know how we fund that i mean it's so that's that's an unknown as well that people people working on that's part of what we're voting on tomorrow so one of the one of the things that i'll ask the b s c group when they evaluate the intersection is once they make that determination can they give us an estimate of what it's going to cost to construct signals in that location  least that will give us an idea that'll that'll give us an idea of what the design budget should be and then we can begin to talk about how we're going to fund these different faces to ultimately get signals in that location if they wanted you know very well look at that vehicle it sounds good and i  also you know that the whole sort of moving part aspect of having the veterans memorial involved in incorporated into the intergenerational path has been a lot of work we really feel strongly that mary should talk on it because she should get the recognition she deserves i just want to point out to you that we all know mary is heavily involved and i always want to point out that there is a typo in the memo that i prepared the the additional funding that was provided by the veterans that i indicated was sixty four thousand for fifty is actually there for the record my name is mary trudeau and i'm the conservation commission agent i work in the community development office with that two years ago we went before the town meeting with the c p a requests to fund intergenerational walking path up at clay pit pond since that time we have become partners with the veterans group also desired to make some changes t did both projects together because we felt that there really wasn't any way of separating them at this point that we have paths that service both the walking path aspect of the park and we have some of the same paths the service the veterans memorial and the certain design elements that i had contemplated were either enhanced or modified slightly by the veterans group so we went out to bid with both jobs on the same contract for our p and we received three bids we accepted the lowest bid which was for about three hundred eighty eight thousand dollars and there were two other bids that were forty or fifty thousand dollars higher than we disregard it so our contractor has actually begun doing some of the work out there if you've been out to clip it pond you may have noticed that some of the paths are being cut they've done a little bit of engineering it's very important that the symmetry of the veterans sure that visually that looks good we've had a few modifications with the contract or already he's found a couple ways to save us some money in the veterans had originally proposed to redo the stone work up at con ave and the masons that we had look at it felt that it was structurally sound and that with a little power washing and pointing we could save the original feature which made historic districts commission very happy and still end up with a really good looking entrance ceremony there the rest of the park i think he's shooting for november thirtieth that he'd like to see to this fall so that would be in the past being done maybe november fifteenth or twenty second and then have the hider see applied black granite monuments that have been ordered from china think they're going to be ready in time right but the footings will be set the path will be built around the monuments and the wall will be reconstructed they're still fundraising right i mean you can still add names to that right training room a training room will move into the room next to the gallery on the third floor of the home or building so the following steps have been taken to ensure the food pantry in town hall the food franchise representatives visited the town hall and have approved  town hall which is scheduled for january two thousand and nineteen so this director will be changing the building access to correspond with the opening of food pantry the board of health is working with the food pantry to make sure they will be ready to open in favor of nineteen i pod touch their e mail and inspection report sort of trash bins will be distributed to the food pantry and finally be each c c met tuesday september eleventh and discussed a temporary sign that would not be needed that would be needed for the food pantry once there i guess you guys gave to patrice to find a space that worked understanding the importance of making this be a real community engagement rather than kind of look it's up to a bunch of big big for space we're also hugely appreciative to mount hope church though that gave us a space that spent a lot of time and effort getting it so that was someplace that worked for us but as we have found we have now in our twenty fifth anniversary  we have two hundred people that we serve a month and coming through five times a month it's a lot of that space in terms of where they are in a basement where there are so having their program so again this is nothing families you know more in belmont and the families can be from one person to six or eight so it's a lot to ask about church it's a tight neighborhood you know just talking about the t priorities their lack of for lack of partying we've heard from some neighbors over there that when you're open it's been problematic right so this we thought makes it a space where the town understands and can see that we're helping people thing where excuse me we're one laurie walk me around when they were in operation and it's just it's tight and and tough and it's a dank basement with pillars it's just not i mean it's better than no place but it's not a great place and we're bringing you into town hall i think would be it's great for the food pantry it's great for the families and also i think it sends a good message for belmont that you know we're welcoming everybody into our town hall absolutely and i am just so going through this i went through the what you gave given us patrice so i guess do you even need to vote on this i think you have the make sure everybody gets together i do us just also want to make sure that we think rebecca solomin a livia bible who are two seniors last year for their their project they for their end of the year graduation project they took this on and they developed i know they spoke with us that's kind of i would say are those they came to my office hours and they gave a whole presentation of these to high school students that got us to them about moving the pantry and how and how the location is and things to go around the members of the board the volunteers patti which of course i think the other thing having it here the trees for solution is such an effective way the other thing i think is it would be great to get some of the employees involved as well really had been only been very fortunate and the he has really come together and helped us when we need it it's just nice for us to be able to look forward to at least having a little bit of time in one permanent space without having to be constantly couple of cleanup items one has got to do with the housing trust which we were going to vote last time but we put it forward because donna mercer the shown up here tonight and said they put in an application we didn't have it in front of us so we've we put off the vote so now we have not put it on the board but he saw he's the one who saw us on t v saying that we had a vacancy and we needed more applicants and he applied and i give him credit for that he was a younger guy but looking from his resume i've never met him but looking at his resume but is from the town of health and health department and all the things that he's done vironment on planning department to town in mansfield i mean i think he's got some really good skills in a lot of municipal areas and of course mr mercier we know well feel my feeling on it was that we that we bring in this whole process of trying to bring new people in that since don's already on two committees that rather than put down no offense to don but not rather put them on a third was in mr rahman has been trying to get on the committee now for two years knock on dom but thing is don's already on two committees we can't have if people want to get involved i don't want someone taking up seats on the bunch of committees is really we've got other people would like to bring in but don't you want to say if you could just identify yourself and if you don't want me on to new committees i will give up one of the committees but there's housing trust if you look at the qualifications and for the record i'm going to read you my qualifications for which over fifty  housing real estate construction i've actually done some of the work and if you look at the qualifications of the people that are prevalent on the committee there's not very many of them got a qualification that i have you know if you don't want me on the committee fine but i i really think that in a lot of these committees you're not looking at the qualifications as relates to the thing not know i could go through some history of what happened on b street and i to tell you what happened to be straight for the rock and on be street on town own land there was two units built at the cost of three hundred fifty thousand dollars each they also spent about twenty six thousand dollars to advertise and educate people how to operate those buildings after they get into him now as far as the operating the billing we probably have plenty of volunteers it could help anybody show them how to run their hosts that ran fifty thousand dollars i will sit down with you any day of the week and show you why i could have personally made money and sold those units and put you want to send their betters i want to look at the construction better than was there for about one hundred eighty five thousand dollars and i could have made money on the deal the other thing that happened in this housing trust over in brighton history i don't know if you know that they worked very hard to get housing for habitat to build that house  well they got to have a hand to build a house that the house does not qualify for part of a ten percent i don't know what the technical reason but i've been told it does not qualify for the ten percent that house has a mortgage on it at the house there is there was another twenty five thousand dollars spent for an architect to build there and i could have placed one the basilica cost because i could have had a built in a factory better than what's there i have built i've had houses and i've designed the ground work was donated there was a lot of donated labor i would be surprised if there's more than fifty sixty thousand nos of cash that was spent on that building and the and in the design is very questionable and i'll give you one of the questionable things about the design itself to put a famous porch on a building of that size they could have put that money into getting a better floor areaway oh no none of these people on this housing trust have anything of the qualifications as a look at this i mean i think on all your committees you should look at the qualifications not how many committees are on there are some of these committees that you can put on people who don't need a high level of qualifications some common sense and wanted to get involved but i don't think there's one area that they want to do one thing i've heard about the there they want to redo the public housing you know extensively now the public housing should be taken care of to make sure that they have that they passed for narcan is implemented raising that above that level increases their comfort index but that taken money that we could spend to give more affordable housing to get more people off the street rather than increasing the sandals of living of the people that are they are so that a lot of this conversation i've had with these people and i don't think they're not not too happy to hear about it but i think  should have looked at the qualification of all the people on that committee and i think and if you don't want to vote for me fine i don't need to work thank you i mean i can i want to spy not having a back and forth on it but  tonight we're only only thing on the agenda about about the committees or this and the house and the human rights commission are only dealing with the appointments to the belmont housing trust right now if you want to resign another committee that that's perfectly your prerogative that's got nothing to do with this appointment i'm  not asking you to resign i'm not ask you to resign anything i'm just saying that it's got nothing whether you resign or don't another committee in my mind doesn't have anything to do with this it's got your qual i agree but you'd still be on to at that point if you resigned one of the others you're still on the attack right but then you would be on to if you were on the housing trust but the germy rahman would then be a nun and it doesn't seem fair so i mean again i'm not sad about your qualifications it's not a qualification that i'm also i want to make it clear to the public that we do very carefully look at the qualifications of the people who apply and we've been  definitely do look through the qualifications very carefully and if you watched us make the appointments and hear us do these debates are washed us in if you play more candidates i think you know that we think about you sure you served in the housing trust for a period time  make sure make sure she would have time to do this and she said so i move to a point chris foster incurably haley jackson to the human rights commission i'll second that on favre so that fills up all of our committees again unless a people keep belmont gallery of art one thousand more street for our opening reception on saturday september twenty second two thousand and eighteen from seven pm to nine pm so moved anybody here on this back and make it ok that's what you said second on favor hall is scheduled to be open until seven pm under the current plan we post sending notices to the elementary schools so that they can in turn forward information out to parents about this event he office and town hall and home a building would pass out candy to children between four and six over seven yeah you know i'm going to hope people are using you know we can if people are using it i think extending the trial would be great i can say that in the last couple weeks we've been able to say we're open till seven and it's actually people many able to get here and do business that's always a in town i guess jamie you're still here is there anything you want if you want to come up i went through this there's a lot of data yeah you know i noticed some of the intersections go up and down in terms of whether they're worst or best for citations in particular year and are you know i haven't gone through this don't map it out not trending i'm assuming you have the ability to what trends are you pulling out of this so we're pulling out basically officer activity from our record management system which is citations motor vehicle stops calls for service that each individual officer goes on in the flipside of that we're getting geographical locations of where complaints are coming from where we're having motor vehicle crashes and what it's all done in attempt to you know direct up the troll division more efficiently and put them in the hopefully in the right spot with you know make a difference and so part of it is you area sort of be interesting to see going forward you know what those changes have to produce in terms of gesture and safety another interesting thing comes out i mentioned in some of the meeting the other night we had four people hit in the sto a parking lot in the last ten years dangerous locations someplace to think about when you when you you know you're walking around in the parking lot there so it's just it helps us you know better direct of patrol forces and our resources in as given a ticket out if you don't wish people over the visibility being out there you can see you know it from the comments that you know what i read from the comments the other night was that we're probably not visible enough in certain areas when we should be can be more problematic than helpful if you think of you know is it different times we try to force me different areas of the school and just kind of can add to the mix but we certainly should be there and be in the area  and they leave on direct which is why i went because i was just trying to check in and all that and i said well you know we haven't had the record share come to do our usual chair check in thing so i was thinking that would be a good opportunity for them to come at our meeting in october or probably october and they said that they war committee as it was posted their first meeting of the fall that's unfortunately on the twenty six to september the night we're having the cost of service study big meeting with al back in the consultant so it's unfortunate that i don't know if they're going to be able to go into it but that's you know  or this was a morning really quick meeting this is our our organization meeting and this is this is the quality of the approach so you favor august twentieth two thousand and eighteen now we're getting into present day so this  application was for that kind of thing other than i mean the content of them are great assault don't chris don't take any of this is criticism i think these the minutes are great we were i'm glad that we're just a couple of periods well i picked up some records actually going to get it right he didn't louis now it's me john if you want to bring it up i think it's right there in the corner i had given them your presentation i might want to have a get on camera  school building committee in my name is john feal to consider the public schools ok john you want to start you starting your show i mean first of all the the work of the belmont high school building committee could be more rigorous over the last two and a half years i want to so i have a presentation introduces a little bit of will we i would school this year and then it moves into the building project and then it goes into you know what is the alternative challenge if in fact a vote does not go the districts way or the communities way in you're important for us to thank the town of belmont for all the support we receive in the schools and then the building committee work and the alternative plan that we have worked our way through our main goals in them in the belmont schools our social motional learning english even gap in taking care of our class size our space and our capacity challenges that have short term remedies and long term goals that will present tonight the highlights that we have from watching moving into this year what the thank the board select with the war committee the school committee over time and dielman you know two years ago we forty percent of our classrooms at the elementary level were above the school committee recommended class size required it's we started the year with the modules in place at the at the burbank and also  at the middle school we were able to cut in half the amount of students who are in study halls which is something that would like to make zero high school some of them a budget neutral and some of them were a couple of the f t s that we had in high school were adding courses like robotics and coding and great math actually year to year more expensive than it is to buy a textbook adoption and have those books for some twenty five years we've made great strides in lowering class size of we've mentioned we added a team of teachers to our grade five which brought our class size down from twenty eight per class in grade five to about twenty five per grade per classroom which we're really excited about the four modular classrooms the burbank of a huge help and i have to say that when we introduced that concept then we were getting that in motion prior to patrice as a rival we had the town meeting vote it was a real small window of time to get that bit out get those modulus constructed purchased and put on site and steve do into that you know obviously securing final approval for the high school so the short term work is recreating space within our buildings adding modular classrooms and putting all of our time into the to the new project which we have done we've received approval from this party the school committee and also from the m s p a back in august so a unanimous vote from the m s p so that's takes us to where we are with the short term and long term work that we're doing the long term goal is to try to create a  project that would alleviate the pressure of the k to twelve problem in rome and give us adequate space and and also remedy the facilities that are in dire shape the s b a process we've been showing the same slide for two years now bill and we just keep adding the text on top of me to walk back in two thousand and sixteen believe it or not is actually in two thousand and fifteen we applied in two thousand and sixteen we got accepted summer seventeen we form the team in the fall of seventeen we did the feasibility study over the summer of eighteen uthorize signatures right as well we'll see what town council has to say ok thank you sergeant that's important because i actually brought a summary of that we're funding the project in here is the budget in that scenario as i saw that is the budget right ok and it is a fairly detailed and it outlines what's you cut it and what's excluded i've seen it all so it is as it has gone out to not not all the document the budget has been presented to the successful vote in november construction will start so as to build militarily meaning there are we still what we're doing is planning mark and tom you know this we are planning because we're not sitting on our hands we have a very aggressive we've got we're planning because we're johnson explained that you know we need to move students into new classroom space and that's all sort of back to work we're planning right now for construction to sequence the false start of school year so that we're not moving in between are having four months of transparent with all the details of this information you can get the whole budget you can get everything online wrong now write a whole spreadsheets there what the reimbursement rate is what's reimbursable what's not what the total cost is it's a pretty detailed spreadsheet but every am who had come into this work the same time we are one full or two full stages ahead of them the work to build this team did over the last twelve to eighteen months has really propelled this this project a little faster  his department putting together the education plan that is the backbone of the project you must be forms the project around the educational plan the plan and that that is in the documents about is available on the website it talks about vis we we went to them with some information and we presented and we were we obviously were still working on it and they could see that and they said once you come back next cycle and and we did that two months with what you see now and they were just directors voted unanimously supported this project with a maximum price maximum grant of eight point six million dollars and obviously that goes and parallel to the maximum of the budget of two hundred ninety five million which is not something the building committee is targeting to spend we're still as john saying looking for ways to get down without clues contingencies and an unforseen condition so it's it's a percentage that's not equal to what i had set a town meeting but i continue say i must be a is reversing us forty point six six percent of eligible costs and people do the math eighty divided by two hundred ninety five that's twenty seven percent women you just said forty how to get twenty seven eligible costs and in that spreadsheet that i said is on our website that talks with gives a total project budget they identify what components are eligible and it's just based on the the laws that they have to follow for the spending through treasur breaking that down so that people understand the difference between eligible and funny cost and with that i think it's important to note that the only reimbursed are eligible so we are having three more public meetings besides our next committee meeting on october fourth the public meetings  the saturday at the high school to a before but also they could ask questions about what you just said you know what how come they're excluding this or you know why aren't we going to pay for this wise across this much that sort of bank and that's from one to three and people ask the questions as you say just this is the same presentation we're doing but i think we're trying to reach as many people as we can so the three main areas that we wanted to focus on were the the shape of the facilities the conditions of the the the need regarding our role it increases and also the kind of educational space that we did students and teachers need to be successful in the future so our facilities are currently not eighty eight compliance out of these systems plumbing leaks contain some hazardous materials that we need to continually work on to make sure it's safe to attend school and work there in the mine security measures just on place at the high school and john people so if you have a job people say why why aren't you keeping your buildings up and you know why or why is it almost getting two percent the full two percent two points we've never seen that before so our program that we have to submit of through a facility department of meat operation and maintenance of the building and not to the fact that the building has public problems demonstrate to them that belmont is fully invested in maintaining the buildings and that allowed us to get those two percentage points and that is what isn't ok four million dollars of capital work to the town put into the schools over time constant maintenance continued trend up with about one hundred seven students on average coming since two thousand and twelve this is continuing through what we are projected told by our experts both at the m s p a and by the kid associates to go to at least two thousand learning happens it will be a tool for the learning he has to cite not that we how from an aerial view what we have here is this is your field house in the pool in the high school currently would go like this so what we're go see right now is after that after we started in the summer of two thousand and nineteen we will do some work right here and we'll let the students stay in the existing high school and this will all be built over the course of two years  the high school side three on the seventy seventh or eighth or completion two years after that or as correct summer two thousand twenty three so once the students occupy from nine twelve to one trouble then we deconstruct that and build the we're adding fields in supporting all the extracurriculars that we have throughout the throughout the site one of the problem areas that we should sail out is the pool pools at the nexus of where we have to separate utilities and create that cut off where we can support a safe continued educational presence of the students who are in the current high school and how they have to work that into with the new building will be built starting in september so the pool come off the line at this point in certainly doing this with an extreme amount of thought in eric's expertise in the room by engineers structural engineers all all different types of construction folks to find out the best way to time this but we have looking for a two phase job where the students can stand the building safely and with the new with their new pottstown they can leave and go in so this hopefully minimal moving around and then that all these deconstructed book that will be built in the middle school students will come over after so it really feels like a safe plan john and i went to different groups of different one at a time and talked about the same thing over and over again now we have representatives from all those groups here meeting at once it's a great way to get the final consensus for  right for the supply this campus so you people keep seeing the same images but that's may not be the outcome the working group will come up with that solution and more as building committee get executed when the current one just to tell underscore that the current site design does eighty million from the it was p a in state funding that's two hundred fifteen million at a cost to the town of belmont to millions already been allocated for the work of the building committee up to this point so it's another two hundred thirteen million if you look at the bottom of that screen some planning and all of the sort of interior design needs there it's a new build different than if it was rubbish was on there so we control that i want to get out of the ground it's all new and the ground work is being laid to start in the summer of two thousand and eighteen but you do have a good degree of confidence in the timeline right we already we've we've had several meetings on this we have a construction manager on board already so this is not just building committee or design professionals we have as  john said a continued discussion with the entire team of i'd say thirty people in a room working on this as we have our second meeting coming up will probably be a third before november making sure we know what comes next this is a very large project we hired a very capable design team with the horse partners and we have a very capable construction manager we've worked with before they can pull this off and they're telling us when things don't work as we discuss them we have to figure out how things move but the what happens next with the successful vote on november sixth that's what we really need the next part of this is the ball is on the five yard line we need to put the ball in the end zone on the sixth of november and we think that that would be  a very much a big success for the time the community moving forward we are seeking educated feedback we promise folks who talk about our k three and four six lower school environment we want to do that will more time and we've put  out a list serve to all of our educators to serve on committees that will start to shape some of the questions and answers related to what this new configuration looks like and we have about two years to do that work but we're going to start on november seventh and we're ready far there's a lot of work that we have to do with our staff and then eventually with our community to prepare for the move so we're very excited about it questions everything from you know how the schedules going to work what's the best bell schedule what the start times will be what does a four through six school look like impact me as an individual how to enjoy nature in the next two years and we're really excited to let the teacher of voice in the community voice really be heard i don't want just changing the grade configuration of the middle school correct we're really excited about the four to six school really excited about every aspect of this configuration this is going to be a district that will have a great articulation of great experiences for students k to three will be a primary experience at the elementary level the four to six school be such a unique building that will really feel young will get a sixth grade is to feel young again because they won't feel like they have to keep up with the seventh and eighth grade folks seventh and eighth graders will be transitioning into a building would be a middle school model that will be next to  in the same building on the nine to twelve but they don't have to transfer any when they go from eight to nine there are in the same building that used to in the building that transition will be smooth out and we really believe in this configuration for the town of the long term of the district from an  rspective we're really excited about a lot of work and you know the alternative if there is not a successful vote we have a capacity challenge that we have to plan for in the town should know that there the work that we've done for the last two years has been zeroed in on the building project as a long term solution to the long term challenge that we have if that vote is not successful we would enter into this belmont capacity to challenge planning work and we've done some legwork on that already over the summer to be able to show some initial phases that we do the first phase that we do if the vote didn't go in our way in november we would automatically go into this mode where we need modular classrooms we know that chinnery school is overcrowded right now and we know the high school is overcrowded right now our elementary set this point harboring because we're going to preserve a crowded middle school sold out and high schools overcrowded correct and the l of the elementary is a are only doing well because we have three extra classrooms reallocated in the buildings  we have the modules in place right so those are all temporary measures we believe that that work of adding marginal classrooms to the high school and the middle school and possibly the elementary if we have to could run the district twenty one to twenty four million dollars to temporary school space over time so that's the first phase we have to get modulus in we have students that we don't have enough room for at both especially at the middle school and high school the next phase would be to plan we believe the that should come first because that school has the most intense need at this point in time but given the design of the construction in the process that would have to go through we probably wouldn't start that until two thousand and twenty one and not be done until two thousand and twenty move into the high school and utilize the work that we've already been doing and do a renovation in a major addition to the high school we would really seek support through the current team that we had to get some came up with the cost of about two hundred three million you already know that having attended some of the means when you were delivering it that was one of the options that was considered right it wasn't this option it was an option renovate to renovate and put the program of seven through twelve at the school this option and it's the more impactful to students because you have to relocate them in chunks of the building to get through those renovation can't do it of summer so you're moving them out doing the work moving into phases it was a five year construction impact a school you would have students through their entire wanted kids you know years and and this this john's got the price right but it's it's it's a fair it's a pretty high price but you have to escalate that price for ten years now because we were where we are going up to about ten years from now so he continues to climb a cross a contraction and what you see in red at the bottom of each one of those three phases is the fact that they are individual plans they're going to have to go in for the town meeting go for award committee get votes  direct which is a substandard educational experience at that scale well if you had already have six of the high school six at the middle school for the at the elementary would probably add twelve and sixteen at the middle and high it have up to somewhere  size of the elementary somewhere around twenty two to twenty four which is great that used to be twenty four twenty six twenty seven at the middle school i'd say fifth grade is around twenty five twenty six would like to bring that down to twenty three the high school is different but depending on  course level and the program so when we look at this breakdown we see that there's to three phases over here the dates of which the time when i would be done the type of work that we do so you have the initial phase modulus which would be up to twelve years for the middle school up to sixteen for the high school up to four if needed at the elementary level that would total somewhere between twenty one of twenty four million dollars then you get to the middle school twenty million dollars for the reason construction projected in two hundred forty seven million dollars to the taxpayer if we go back a couple of slides will see that that is a lot different than the slide for the two hundred thirteen that we were going to be asking for right i mean i see that  that you know so here we are just wired to have up to forty classrooms and you say i am here and i think the students are hardy right but but from my point of view much of classrooms and put him on tennis courts and put him over town to me is not the way the educator kids sorry i kids it's sort of like in fact some of the modern classrooms at the high school are nice and it's cool it's circumstance so to say that but that is in fact the case and but you know i don't think that we're what it's about i mean we don't want to educate our kids  forty seven we'll look at a five year completion accounting the year that we're in right now versus about ten years quality of education we actually designed the school from scratch with community support vision days with trying to member students and staff we what we're getting into great so we've been doing this for years i mean the reason i've sat on the board we've continued to sort of apply for grants and been denied i mean if the vote is not successful we can't go back to the well i miss p a were we ten fifteen twenty years o to pull themselves out of grad program because they didn't have the support they needed from the taxpayers and they were very close votes by the way i remember one was just fourteen votes and it's very sad for them you know the new leader but it's not the norm there must be their projects typically get funded and they have well you know i think it's kind of thing where if you spends are committing a lot of time and effort as a community which we have and which they make sure when you educate the residents of the community terms of the need more that you find most residents will support so one project here with the seven to twelve with the vote of the over six versus potentially up to three different projects with three different for this group that's not who just lost on i think residence john and that is we can't just do nothing and so we have to do something and in doing something we can sit here and debate you know whether it's the cost is more clearly i think you've done your work on that but this was still going to have to go to the residence and ask for money that's correct we can't find the we can't fund the renovations and additions that we would need to the children middle school that's completely sold out and we can't fund and renovate this heist this aging high school with all of the issues that you just explained without having to go to voters for that exclusion money we don't have in our budget so ultimately over time you know the cost is more and we still have to go for three votes to the community versus one going during that period you'll deliver i would say to the students that don't know probably a less effective educational experience in the impact on people in the alternatives were more telling modulars you'll have significant disruption over that ten year period and ultimately although it's a little bit to be determined you probably have a physical infrastructure in the schools that will not be as great an asset as i think this project could be able to create so one of the questions john that i had heard of that ten year period there's no eligibility to  so they're balancing a cash flow and they're looking at what they can take in the pipeline and what the project because eventually get across what they have the way out to be able to keep this funding going but there's nothing guaranteed there's no line you can't predict right there are communities out there that have are state funds we would assume that the ultra pleading would not have any support from the s b a and then we look at the need to get community support if we get community support once and oversexed we feel that one vote one project will will be good for the town several votes will be hard to pull off over time because we know we're facing challenging times fiscal and that will become more challenging as the climate shift on what the impact of the ministration impact to the entire because in winter is phasing it but the alternative plan or just significant disruption to the town over the next twenty years i think there's a tangible and we're talking about tangible things intangible would be what message as a son to our community  that we retain the good teachers i mean our teaching has done it's phenomenal across the district it's done with with excellent staff right and you know that if we can't support that with what we need to do what is the i don't know that's not what he had to keep it all thankful to the town to support the building committee we're very very thankful to all the community members who have come out to all these visioning sessions all the community meetings feedback has been given this been hard to to navigate feedback that's been good it's all good to hear it helps us navigate a project that we think is good for the town and again i want to thank bill and have proof for their work in leading this bill's been out one hundred nights in the last eighty eight nights i don't know how does one hundred eighty eight but he did supporting nine additional teachers was huge so we appreciate that which is thank you well john thank you for your continued leadership and bill of course i've said this before the building committee thing phenomenal work thank you for your leadership and pats and the rest of the members  double duty you're going to meet is well so you know what i am not doing a fraction of what these guys are doing on believable the amount of work that you can put into getting to this point and huge thanks from the community to john for all of your hard work and shepherding the project and bill and pat for plus years i would remind the selectmen that the pool is primarily a community resource not a school resource it is used by residents of all ages from children two hundred plus children swimming in the dolphin swim team seventy plus children swimming in the belmont aquatic steam adult swimming and free swims including many seniors and programs rec department programs for disabled residents and for others so unlike other facilities there is no alternative facility available in town or in neighboring towns to for these activities many or most of these programs will end unless i'm in town alternative is developed and i believe it's up to the town and it's an important sponsibility for them to consider alternatives to the higginbottom pool while it's closed i understand that it is it's not feasible to keep it open it's technically does not community cards the pool and i just want to say that as john is committed to finding space for the high school team the town and recreation community which is sort of take some of the programs yeah we're committed to finding a calling pools in a thirty mile radius it's extremely difficult very tight extremely difficult to find and very expensive to find a pool time for kids and those are probably not viable options for seniors in this