welcome to the belmont journal your source for hyper local news and community updates i'm mike crowley your host this week well spring has finally sprong and when spring rolls around it's time for a town meeting we have many others have spent hours upon hours making sure that the wording of the motion picture in the sequence makes sense  are well john and they can be done within the time allotted it's a lot of work it's a real team effort but it's worth it the most challenging aspect of it is to make sure in preparation that town meeting members receive the information you know ordered to understandable make the issues which are often complicated understandable to them so they have an informed vote and that's it very much a team effort that's not the moderator alone and then add town meeting there are always  to plan and those can be challenging where somebody gets up just angry at some ruling or angry at some other speaker so forth for sometimes raising an issue that i hadn't thought discussion focused on issues and to be fair to both of these debates welcome to this week in the belmont tourney and and welcome back franklin tucker editor hi how are you all right so so we're going to be talking about some of the things happening at town meeting that yes if you're a political junkie and i know there's a few out there  so so there i take it that there's this is provoking some controversy but i think that belmont is not in isolation in terms of you know some of the sentiment happening across massachusetts a lot of towns to opt out that's right i think what you see like intel like winchester bay people said well i'm so i support marijuana being the legalized but don't sell it in my community and that's what the the group that is promoting this opt out is saying let's give the belmont people a chance an opportunity to vote on it and then that's where you're going to have a bit of that's where real dispute is going to happen and that is with board of selectmen who overwhelmingly i believe it's now is you know there are people saying you know we've already voted on this why should we vote again and then you have people on the other hand who are saying you know yes we absolutely knew what we were voting on but we also understood that there'd be an opportunity to opt out at a later date and so we're we're we're exercising the lever so and that's why it's going to be such an interesting night and wednesday it's basically everybody's going to have to fold the rules of the we'll skip over the board of selectmen we won't need their permission we won't need their ok so it's interesting politics that will happen or whatever happen whatever happens on we'd wednesday it won't necessarily be over that's correct we're going to be talking projects and that's from a clean farm buildings so technically it's a recommendation to the town meeting that this not be funded this time and i think the rationale i can only speak for myself but i will also attempt to divine what the rest of the word committee is basically saying in this vote and that's that's that you know we think that we should identify some potential uses of this town as before we start thinking money into it and i think that really is something that we've seen in the past you know the macleay with the whole house the town meeting really wanted to find out how many hours it was going to be open how many who how town can benefit from from giving money to basically a nonprofit but it was again it was more of a entity outside of government so i think from the perspective of the warren committee it's not the end of the story for the mclean bar you can always come back in the press there are there have been times when people have come back with a with more detailed list of what they want to do with the project and that's probably what will happen here ok well so these are just some of the issues that will be before town meeting and we'll have to talk to you again next time to we're going to lead off with there's a citizen's petition to expand the board of selectmen so want to say a little bit about them sure so this is a citizens petition to expand the number of selectmen from three to five it's for a home rule petition right that so if this passes meaning it would then go to the legislator it would have to become a bill and it would have to get approved and this all originated from former selectman jim williams and last year's town meeting when they voted in favor of a committee to study the number of selectmen right so this committee did the work from like august to january and then they came out with this report and what they did is they did a lot of research they compared name a few they also gathered in put through a public meeting and they surveyed committee chairs and department heads and then they voted nine to four in favor of increasing the number of selectmen from three to five and they have arguments about why you should increase the number and why you should keep it the same like each side had there are that's where all of this is in the report which were really worth reading and that's what's going to gender in general lot of debate at this town meeting which is study the number of select men isn't putting forward the petition this is actually a citizen's petition that's right it's based on that findings south committee the committee actually is yes and i mean i can tell you some of the arguments to say this thing and you maybe you want to tell tell our viewers about some of the arguments to increase the number but the people who want to keep it the same three say that i'm on the reasonable length and there's more authority there's a level of authority and accountability and salary and benefit costs would not increase right and that's a big one because you know there is a stipend for each selectman and then they do have the option for health insurance so if they decide to go for health insurance that would bring up you know costs and the town administrator actually spoke at a warm briefing on was april twenty third and she said they asked her with this with this make more work for you and she said yes it would it would be more hours definitely because i would be communicating with more selectman so that would mean potentially you know needing to pay her more and make her a town manager would mean you know going from town administrators to town manager ok so so i think some of the arguments for expanding the board what you know one of the important ones was that you know there's a perception that  so on the one hand i think a great a great number of people do feel that that you know what why tamper with something that works well enough you know that the town is well served by the board why why tamper with that so so one of the  arguments to change is that you know we have a board it doesn't have doesn't have a great deal of gender or ethnic diversity if we enlarge the board that's something that would permit more opportunity for other citizens to becom involved in the board of selectmen yes i think there's also a perception that when you look at how other towns on the handle the same kinds of issues that we're handling they seem to be favorably advantaged by having more people on this board that are working these it means a greater opportunity to have subcommittees to write speak with each other without violating open meeting law that's a big one so with a five member board one board member could meet outside of a meeting with another board member they just couldn't talk about what they talked about like they couldn't reveal what they talked about with another member and that's that's why though the people who are against it say that you know it right yes so this is this is a pretty straightforward one a lot of surrounding communities are banning plastic bags used by retailers these are the single use thin film checkout plastic bags they have handle so yes i think sixty force surrounding communities are doing that that's about i mean about thirty one percent of massachusetts residents are already doing this and it would not be unlike laundry bags are very dry cleaning bags and newspaper bags  but just the ones with the handles a single film so businesses like foodies in strong market will be affected this will be enforced by our public works recycling coordinator you know there's going to be if someone violates there's like fees yes i am too all right well thank you so much joanna and we'll talk with you again next time thank you mike ok next up please stay tuned for our community calendar with jane peters of things happening in belmont this week hi i'm jane and this is your community calendar for this week belmont books brings another lineup of authors this week on tuesday marianne leon author of ma speaks up will be in from seventy nine to discuss her moving them or about her immigrant italian mother on wednesday to read from her debut novel lady killers about history's deadliest women and on thursday meet dale patterson revealing for the first time the full story of the day to day life in jane goodall's wilderness camp in his novel the ghosts of  as he is interviewed by karen miller meds and of n p r all author events will take place from seven to nine pm on tuesday on of the foundation for belmont education's two thousand and eighteen outstanding teachers at their award ceremony at six sweet treats belmont food collaborative puff pastry workshop is sure to please this class taking place on thursday will teach you several different recipes using puff pastry you can register on the belmont food collaborative website take a stroll down memory lane with belmont firefighters on friday at one fifteen at the beech tree center technology has evolved from horse drawn fire engine and ladder companies journey through the history of the fire department of today through photos find this and many more events going on t beach trade center on their website the first church in belmont is hosting its seventy fifth annual rummage sale on saturday from one to two proceeds from sales go to various church projects and committees and unsold items post sale will be donated to other deserving charities you can drop off your donations for the sale beginning on sunday the twenty ninth habitats sixteenth annual herb sale offers a variety of locally grown herbs and vegetables featuring plants that pollinators in the afternoon check out the sixth annual gala learn how habitats heard of nigerian dwarf goats help habitat and how you can help the goats the boston there are companies team touring troupe will be performing love labour's lost at the library on saturday at two pm this shakespearean comedy is performed by committed actors in grade seven and twelve who have been sharpening their skills with help of boston area professionals child marriage affects the lives of millions across the world every year the lebanese american university alumni new england chapter presents a hard hitting film by director and l a u alumnus koila dreyfus the hour on the topic this screening takes place at three pm at studio cinema and is followed by a q and a with the director purchased their tickets through that break and finally we have another belmont world film premiere coming up on monday may seventh at seven thirty at studio cinema under the tree is a darkly humorous film that begins as a typical spat between neighbors that spirals out of control as each couple believes the worst in the other this film is iceland submission of the academy awards best foreign language film purchase tickets on belmont world films website haley brown was the lab photography teacher at school she was also a belmont high school senior she talks with us about the students work on display at the belmont media center just for fun and i love it so much and i thought that if i could give the students who aren't necessarily verbal a new way to express what they like their interests in who they are like oh that be so fun and i loved working with them and i could see that they really had a good time using the camera so this was made by a student eighth grade that i taught he was incredible because he doesn't have much text area one of his hands and so i asked if he needed help taking pictures and i can  want and he said no he wanted to do it all by himself and so he wrapped his arm around the camera and shot with one hand and he looked through the frame all the same time and i mean look at the picture it was so cool to see him really want to take it by himself i started by i taught them the basics of photography and a little bit of history and then i worked one on one with the students using the camera what the technical aspects of it but i told them i just want you to go and photograph what you find interesting and the results were so much better than i even imagined this is another student who's in eighth grade and her name is anna she saw something i did and that was really cool for me to witness here she went above a sewer grate and she put the lens near the opening in the grate and you can see her reflection of her taking a picture and you can see that the outside is out of focus in the center with the water even the traction the sticks are in so this and you can see her and i thought this well i thought it was an incredible photograph it's really amazing to display some of the students have down's syndrome and some of the students have autism and it's really a range and some of the students have trouble speaking and this was really cool for me to see how much they loved using the camera going out and taking pictures of whatever they found interesting a a great experience for all the students it's easier to show them visually how to use the camera and maybe you have to do it all those more often in my opinion they don't need to know all the mechanisms better care i think it's really interesting but for them i think the most important part was expression now we have our sports segment focusing on rugby this week we have commentators donovan hudson and peter rosen m this is a great opportunity to put you to right here five meters from you get the put in control of the ball and i wouldn't be too surprised to see them set up some forward runs here and see if they can push this so what you call peter number eight going to pick it up i think so here we just short of the line this is where belmont need to be careful not to lose the ball and feed it back and it's taken around for you to fully fit it back from the rock and picked it up and went on the blind side which is the short side c high netting great awareness by belmont of where the where the gaps were all the way on the end our show with a programming update for your belmont media center channel's please be sure to watch also the belmont journal depends on your help if you would like to get involved or have news or updates please contact our producer frederick regal zero at fred at belmont media dot org well