know that royal sign this is the april twenty fifth two thousand eight hundred meeting of the warren committee or agenda tonight is to hear an update from the high school building committee on the status of the high school building project we will have a discussion of the research right now in ice we will vote on remaining part of a town meeting articles that we choose to vote on we will discuss a free cash forecasting model that i've developed and circulated to the group a short discussion of the current draft of the war media report and we'll have updates from the former selectman that adam dash is able to make it plus and to talk a little bit about how that what the intended capacity of the project is and how that relates to current and romans to understand how much headroom there of the there will be in the system of the projects w and the deadline for our schematics in july eleventh this year at that time we will have the project fully defined in its cost schedule phasing logistics and we will start preparing ourselves for an approval from the m s p at their board meeting on august twenty ninth and at that time we will have in hand the approval that allows us to then talk with the selectmen about a vote on november sixth at the general election for funding this project with a successful vote we will then move into design which will take us about a year and we will be looking to send out early packages and get construction started sometime late two thousand and nineteen and we expect shovels in the ground sometime in two thousand and twenty with a construction completion sometime around two thousand and twenty three and we'll have those do two thousand three i don't want to model that and we'll have a better handle on that schedule as we move towards the completion of schematic design in a few months here i'll tell you that we have design team of perkins that will national team they're doing very well they have the horsepower for a project of this size and we have an orders project manager dateless projects who's very friendly we've got what they've worked with us actually on this building and in other projects in town and we're nearing completion of hiring our construction management firm and they are the folks that would manage the contracting of the project if they're not bidding the project that is a professional firm that we can do this through it chapter one forty nine so rather than hard bit with general contractor brutal construction manager on board we're doing that now you say why we don't have drawing stuff doesn't matter to not getting the drawings but they're providing professional services and those services will include another eye on estimating which is going to go to our next  our slides here and another set of eyes and add expertise on facing logistics and site management which is a lot of discussion we're going to have with the community as we move through this so with that everyone has a of the first page it will be very quick this is something i stole superintended phailin gave this to me and it's just a summary where we are today you asked where we are with the in rome and we're seven through twelve school i won't go through that sure you know that by now  design the design of the current enrollment of seven through twelve if you take the half of the middle school and the nine through twelve is two thousand and twenty and our design in the roman is two thousand two hundred fifteen that is an executed agreement with the m s b a that's now really year old it's one of the first things they require the district to do through a very exhaustive study and negotiation we actually brought around demographer on this to really peer review that their classrooms but there are many other spaces that are used for teaching so the you could use a factor of about thirty percent will have that number better defined above this numbers up that would define total capacity because students are not just in core classrooms in the high school unlike in elementary school they're in all sorts of other classes p e they've they've got robotics are all that sort of stuff that they're also populating in a school that are not just science and mathematics and foreign start to push these totals up and if you do the math you'll find that it's slightly above the design and the projected design aroma and that's not surprising because the curve show that they were peaking in that were coming down to a plateau so that's nothing to be surprised about it's all part of what's anticipated and is just how the square footage of the new school compares to existing i'll tell you that this school is the design of the high school as  any school the m s p is driven principally and actually entirely by the educational program and that is that is something that's authored and and continually updated as the process goes on by the school department in concert with the m s p a talking about what the plan is for teaching and learning in the new school and at the dictates the classrooms and the types of classrooms that are used that gets populated into the m s p spreadsheets the appropriate size of classrooms that are allowed and it footage i'm not going to go through this i'll let you do that but what it what it does is it at the very bottom it gives us a total square footage of the project that has been really vetted hard i think there's maybe one more around but every time we squeeze this you know we're getting less and less out so the last round was a few thousand and i think we're lucky probably to get another thousand out of this and how do we ski pole square footage out it's super tony his staff looking at ways to to better populate  forty five thousand one hundred square feet is the design square footage of the project total square footage the s b a guidelines and i'll say this very briefly our guidelines they suggest based on the population of two thousand two hundred fifteen three hundred sixty seven thousand square feet we so why you so much higher there are a lot of factors here but the biggest factor is that we're keeping the field house and the pool the pool doesn't even factor into the m s p a they will not subs they will pool they're allowing belmont to keep the pool as that was one of our very strong desires reaching out through the community and so forth and the pool the pool equipment room and  pool locker room is all of the m s b allows for square footage the field houses and other asset that we really truly enjoy having we're lucky to have it we would not be able to have even with the size of the school the the gymnasium would be about sixty percent allowed compared to what we have so all that square footage that we're keeping is above the square footage that the m s p a guidelines allow we have a tremendous  given you the existing high school area down the bottom is two hundred fifty six thousand square feet the existing generally school area all in with the modulars is one hundred eighty eight thousand square feet let's take half of that because we're taking two grades out at a two to fifty six and so and equivalent today would be about three hundred fifty thousand square feet of existing teaching space that we will be replacing with four hundred forty five thousand square feet so that's like two by the way if you have any questions you that's that's a great comment we this is something we've been working on roy asked to pull this up there is another column that's not done yet that we're trying to pull out for each one of these lines that says what the existing square footage that is currently in the district it's not that easy because we have to over and the two points to make here is that we are building this if the m s b a wasn't our partner here would be paying more i get it but we would also based on that educational program say still say that we we need to square foot it's not the a must be a driving up the square footage is the educational program and the fact that the m s p is this this guideline they don't have guidelines for middle high schools it's just high schools so when you take a middle high school you start to see some inefficien in how some of these things have to be carefully separated and then other areas where you thoughtfully join so the square footage does increase above theirs and they recognise that when we talk about nurses suites and we talk about locker rooms and we talk about other things that will have separations because you need it for the seventh and eighth verses nine through twelve and that starts to increase and i i also will say really quickly that the m s b in this state i'm asked we're not we're not like a beta version here they have eight through twelve high schools they've done seven through twelve schools and i guess i'll call this a middle high school a six through twelve they have those in the state so they just don't have a guideline that speaks to that but they are working with communities and have done to build these types of schools like michael speaking in the direction of marketing have you thought about what this school is if it's not exactly a high school is it essentially some combination of two schools and as you said kind of a middle high school calling it a high school is almost a misnomer relative to what it actually is and have you thought about what what we should call it because i'm not sure it and i say that because we talk about it even talking about it as a high school  that aside it is very much a it we're building two schools so it's a lot it's a we're going to get the cost while a lot of cost this is half of the school district essentially that's being replaced in a new project so it's two schools it's a middle school high school  tomorrow night to the wellington cafeteria you see where we are and you'll see that there's there's two entrances or two identities but they meet in middle of a common and private spaces where these common types of learning could happen where it whether it's  things and even in the music and even in the p e there are there ways that are separated but there are also ways to that people that children that want to join other opportunities with others kids can do that together as a shorthand i've been just talking to people about it is that element seven to twelve school it's not a high school we don't have an official name you can't walk around talking about two schools to talk about something so we've been saying the upper and lower school and that's another term that's being used as far as how we describe it we had a great meeting today with a seven through twelve teaching group that's been collaborating with the superintendent to give their input so it's a group of about one thousand teachers of both grades coming to get both schools the the numbers in the columns all told down to the four forty five or the three that is just added the third of the total of four forty five is this i can sized gross floor area and that's almost half of the what is that area and that's exactly how does that differ from the square footage sort of all the others so when you program a room or program spaces in the atmosphere world and actually in design what you're going to program a space like this is a classroom which you don't program is everything outside of the space so that would be the corridor echoes the bathrooms the mechanical rooms they allow a certain what they call grossing factor pattern i kind of have fun with this is really not gross gross to me it's everything's ready for grossing factor exactly that maximum is fifty percent so one point five would be the gross in factor we're just slightly under that they've they don't allow anything beyond that but you need that you need to make that kind of growth and bring it into updating so that's that's just the history so let's go right to the column that's on the left hand side where it says presented to the committee on for eleven the so this is pretty fresh we have another estimate that we ran and what you see here is that the construction cost estimate right now is two hundred thirty seven million the projected the total project cost and you know all about this on the explain what those are it is two hundred ninety five million the per square foot cost on construction has approximate five hundred thirty three and the estimated belmont contribution is two hundred b c two hundred nineteen million we're going to get to that point because that was of the one that i wanted to talk about but just quickly there's been a lot of talk about well how does this compare to other communities how does this compare to other schools i said a while ago it's very dangerous to try to compare one school to another there are so many factors that make it different it's not like buying a car in your car to go from one dealer to another and it's the same type of car there are many factors but i can tell you that we start with the school rooms in the corridors and those are all the same and then there are slight factors and there are projects trains that the cost one way or the other so for belmont we have some premiums in the cost for instance we have a fairly large side impact and we will have to remove a building that's fairly common in most schools but not at all so that's the have and that's an estimated cost right out of our estimate of twenty seven million you can see the dollars per square foot i'm not going to go through the detail on this other than to say that removing hazardous material from the building the there it you know there's stuff in that building we have to take out before we demolish it doesn't matter if you demolish it or renovate it you've got to take it out the same way before you take it down to the ground that cost is nine point five million side no really quick if you look at the cost for the school when it was built in one thousand six hundred sixty eight that total project cost not construction cost was less than this number of total project cost but that's not a surprise right go up we have to built so the building is on a dump we know that from discussions it's also not great  for support of a building that area the existing building is on piles the new building will be on piles right now we're exploring whether we can take portions of it off piles because of where it's it's being cited but right now the hundred percent of the cost for the pile foundation is eleven point three million that's a premium above another school out in kansas on a cornfield p v very quickly if you haven't heard we are studying the opportunity to look at a building that's net energy highly efficient building with there's some capital costs that go in upfront but the operating costs are significantly reduced and so the geothermal well system that is being explored and photovoltaics has a premium and  that's point one million and then phasing right now we don't think we could do this in one phase we have to build one portion of the building called the heist the upper school side and then we have to move all the students into that then we have to demolish the other the school that we're  saying goodbye to and then we have to build a lower school and then it will make one product phasing a project has a premium to mobilizations for every single trade so that's a premium so you can see that there's premiums that that increase the cost of  project bill is that your expectation that the total project will be complete twenty twenty three or twenty twenty three is just the first point where there is within the new that's a good question both phases so that's a good point we may have the nine through twelve students and a new school before that but we haven't relieved the district of the of the impact of the growth in rome until it's one hundred percent done and we could unload the generators tenor is the one that's really having that strain right now all the kids ok so there are a lot of constraints one is just how the site is impacted by the pond and access to and from and that we're keeping the fieldhouse in the  pool that are already cited here so now we have to design around it we told our design team that we wanted to look at a solution that does not move the students in temporary modulars and all this sort of phasing however  and so they came up with a scheme which is very very thoughtful response to that and the line that was drawn right the middle school works very well with not have an impact and then cut the existing school however we did ask them well what if we change our mind we could do that what if we say maybe we're going to we're going to build it in one phase and that means that we have to take a portion of building out all of it down and we have to put that program somewhere else to modulars could it be more cost effective to pay for the modules you have to pay to build them if the paid or move them but now only have one face so we're testing that out and with our construction team coming on board construction manager they will really be able to dig into that and we're going to we're going to make sure that we've made the right assumption upfront maybe we didn't maybe the single phase is better the key is can we be done sooner it'll help generally it'll help the cost with the phasing and we want to test that out and by the way i think pat and i worked on the wellington school and we had the module was at the high school and i think most of the parents were were pretty concerned but i furniture fixtures and equipment this so so everything is in the price that's in front of you right now we keep testing don't know how much of this is contingency things i guess there's a state of the world where everything works out well he didn't he didn't use the contingency how much would you get back that's a good question so there are a lot of factors right now a lot of this is based on dollars per square foot we're just starting to get it filled with the bricks in the mortar and the windows and all that sort of stuff and if we look at just overall percentages that are put on contingent for escalation it's twelve percent escalation this is the fact that you price in today's dollars and things go up and so that cost is twenty one million dollars just in isolation twelve percent three years from now at the that would be sort of the mid when you're getting design in pricing contingency that's ten percent so that's sixteen million dollars built into there and that that covers two things that covers the fact that there could be some changes in pricing and that we're just not captured here and also the fact that the drawings aren't complete so there could be things missed and then finally there's the cme and g o p contingency on the bottom that's much smaller that's what we work with at the very end and that's four million dollars and so if we do a really really good job we like to drive around and give most of that back to the bottom up but that's in the budget just a snapshot out of the i know it's hard to read but this is from yesterday the m s b a website snapshot on construction costs they have a lot of information on there and what it's just demonstrates is that as a lever he notes the construction costs for schools is climbing and i plodded the belmont high school costs there and it's it's not quite that the highest and it's the only high school that's projected out now that that that phase or other ones that are coming on as a matter of fact the other ones around are elementary schools which should have a lower cost when you compare what goes into an elementary school versus what goes into a high school but i did do a little more digging and i could say that  about that one that's two hundred million dollars construction costs that's going on right now waltham that they're stalled right now because they're looking for a site that was at two hundred twenty five million i suspect that will probably go up when it does reconvene but the most direct apples to apples comparison would be pre schooler put not and that's a good point so when you look at those we're talking about numbers that are somewhere in the five hundred forty two for a while family dollars per square foot some of it was four hundred fifty six and it's all those are those are a couple square foot cost that we have and again it's very very challenging to go out and start to compare these on dollars with square foot unless you know what's in there last thing you asked for is what's the a must be a reimbursement yes ok so the m s p a has made an agreement with belmont to get into the feasibility phase where we are and they said we will reimburse dolma at thirty six point nine percent of eligible costs for this phase we're not building anything so that's really just the design costs that it works by that we're spending right now we have a budget of one point seven five million dollars that we're using physically study face that takes us through schematic design and through this semantic design process when we submit we will be getting into a negotiation on a project funding agreement at that time that the m s p a will be talking to us about what the final reimbursement will be but i use the term eligible cost because that's the key word for m s p a they want to treat as as equitably as they can the three hundred fifty one cities and towns of mastery is the same so they set one price is their ceiling for what they're going to consider reimbursement against for all construction costs and that number right now is three hundred twenty six dollars a square foot now that's probably going to be a lot different for the western side as they are than the eastern  they are we are but it doesn't matter to you that's the way they work they also exclude several things they put a cap on construction site costs in other words site improvements we have a large site we're going to be moving a lot of fields around and roads and so forth to do this jigsaw puzzle keeping the campus active we will easily get that percent it's eight percent of construction the building construction costs so the building construction cost is say two hundred million dollars then sixteen million dollars is all you can get for the site work and we're going to go over that and i just have a number was quite a bit higher than that so anything above that they won't be contributing on their their percent of reimbursement they also have restrictions on an abatement they don't consider abatement under floor tiles so the exclude that spaces that are not part of the high school education or middle school educationally excluded for instance our i school today includes all the all the district directors there that's where their offices are for good reason but they say that's a district cost not a high school cost and therefore those square footage will be subtracted from the total square footage is that they want to contribute and then the biggest one is the pool and the field house anything that we do with the pool is not good is going to be completely excluded and the fieldhouse will be proportion to what they would allow versus what we have when we talk about our proven so in those areas so yes  essentially where we are but it will they just i think i'm told it's just a twice a year looking at a lot of things so i take it that five thirty three is the expected square footage cost two or three years in the future when escalated yes but they look at it when we signed the agreement now but i guess of the three to twenty six is also an expectation of costs in the future for current projects they will not yes they will then escalate to escalate is the number they say it's already ability and their commitment of thirty six point eight nine percent the state has reevaluated the metrics where they come up with this for all the cities and towns and belmont is actually dropped so our so our number right now is will be thirty five point four two percent however we have incentive points that we can add and we are taking as many as we can so we're allotted up to two percent instead of points for good maintenance and care of our buildings we submitted a big report about a year ago on how we take care of our buildings and they they liked what we did and they do and they said we'll give you all that two percent because obviously they're going to contribute to people that take care of their for their assets right another is incentive the construction manager at risk there's an extra point for that so sorry just so we get two percent for energy percent on the first project cost something like six million dollars two percentage points on their country their percentage of allocation so we were at thirty six point eight nine take to add to that if you do it so what i'm getting at is we're expecting somewhere around forty percent forty percent of eligible costs will be the number and that's that's the number that was actually used for about project manager that it's forty percent of eligible cost it's always forty percent of sales or because you can't knock it down they don't like that so i'll tell you what what's belmont's contribution going to be is going to be more than sixty percent ok and so we went through a quick analysis a s best we could with the policeman or a numbers and with our team and we estimate that hour but all my contribution will be about seventy four percent of the total costs and that's because it's a forty percent reimbursement other dispute on the basis or not of this but there's definitional issues about what's eligible that's correct and that's very so if you go back to this chart with the blue that you just run the numbers on that and that is the that's that's how we came up with a project quickly how do how do they get the rate of thirty six percent or thirty five percent i'm not going to go into a lot of detail those say that this is something that the state treasurers i think it's off a state treasurer puts out every year they evaluate the cities and towns and they look at a baseline rate everybody starts at thirty one percent and then there are three factors that are associated with that community income factors community poverty wealth factor and community poverty  of and so i can tell you that for two out of the three belmont gets no additional points and then another one they get four point so that's on top of the base thirty one so there are some communities comparable don't want that get zero is all the way across  d there's their carriages that thirty one and then there are others that are getting seventy to eighty percent reimbursement when you look at the chart so it has a lot to do with the you know just of local impacts these numbers we can't change we had a great meeting with our representative rogers brown berger and we talked about this they helped us they excel explain it to me and i'm happy to say at least i know that there's nothing i could do about it so that was a battle that to pick up till it might be helpful to have a chart at some point that shows the largest elements that do not qualify for the reimbursement because it sounds like the work associated with the field house and the pool administrative is the biggest one so we're for a project funding agreement there's a there's a there's a very large two page chart out of the small numbers that go into that to calculate that that's going to be too complicated i think right for the for the general public so we're going to we're going to still that we're going to bring of the site improve matters and so so right now we have a rather small amount of money allowance in there for soil disposal offsite soil disposal because we're not building a basement as a matter of fact the school will be it we may be bringing soil in just to bring it up to a level that's appropriate we've looked at resiliency we've looked at flooding we're not raising the building tremendously but it might be a foot or so above where the existing one is today and so we're not going to be calling out a lot of soil we will have some from utilities and so forth and not all of the site is underlined with the dop is a matter of fact if you look at the entrance of the school today the manager it's about their location east well and then there's an environmental part of this i'll just finish up because there's a second part to that you know what is it what is in the ground and is that a concern for building upon the ground in you know what does that do to our students and other people that use the building and so we're waiting for that report  it doesn't sound like it's going to be of something that we're going to be very concerned about it's sounds like the material that's down there is is fine if we're not touching it which it's clearly kept it's could stay there but as soon as you get the  says if you pick it out with a shovel you can't bury it back in the ground you've got to dispose of it and that's why we have a small contingency for that what about the contaminants and play  those being tested at all so the clay pot is actually not in the not on the campus of the high school it's actually not part of the high school property so we haven't tested that we're not building on it we're not right now we're not doing anything in it we may be looking at it for heat rejection we may look at putting some geothermal in there because it's quite deep and it's a good heat sink or a resource for energy but as far as testing the we've got it's not it's not of our if the talents to do that they certainly could do that but i don't know why they would do it just one reason why they why they might is because you know if you're if your heart is significantly contaminated  as some people have a bunch of us in the past i don't know the status of the pond you can have things of blowing off that pond that you may not want your kids exposed to so maybe what we should do is just have our professionals give a  desktop evaluation of of if that is even an issue and why it might not be an issue so that we could make sure that people bring that up now that i've heard you say that that we could make sure that that's that's comfortably put how if you look at the size of the school we're we're bracing upon the ideas that's a great resource you know and bringing community towards that bondage the views and the nature part of it is great calm calm like side or looking at how the pathway around can be integrated into school and teaching and learning so it's very exciting we have tomorrow it will be committee meeting in which we have a design a workshop and we're focusing i will call the outdoor self plaza so that's the peace between the school and the pond to see what opportunities the public wants to utilize for teaching and learning and civic purposes it's a you know we'll have prefrontal space that might on the well if it was raining but on a nice night like that i want to go up there and sit down and something that's comfortable and just enjoy i don't want to overextend my well thank you very much will bill and i first met i can't believe about ten years ago working on the electric substation sighting committee and i consider that a brilliant success and i'm hoping for the same result for the so us no an ice again over budget this year the number first came in at five hundred forty six thousand they wanted to sharpen their pencils and see what they could do j the total deficit now is  now four fifty eight one thirty two it went down a little bit because some of the those costs are water and sewer such as catch basins getting damaged during storms and then they were able to look within the budget and come up with about  hundred ten thousand five hundred in an budget savings or as of right now and put that into the deficit and so they're coming to us for a request of three forty seven six thirty two and really what happen is  everyone knows have march but before march we were over budget by two hundred thousand we had that storm that came over christmas and that is double time and holiday so it was expensive storm for us to take care of and i think there was another sunday storm which was double time as well so we were two hundred thousand and then we had the nor'easters in march which everyone knows about and not only were they that one was pretty heavy wet snow there's a lot of wind in some tree over run cars were in there too  know how many trees were down during that one storm in particular we talked about budgeting is difficult to budget this item and is one of only a few budget items that can run a deficit because of that and so towns like belmont and we do this r three forty seven sixty two to that there have been some gullibly large shortfalls in the snow and ice budget in recent years so i went back and look at about ten years worth of snow and ice budgeting and so far it looks like some of the larger overages in the last few years have been bad luck because over the long haul it's fairly fairly close to being balanced where you have good years and bad years but  now the world climate is really changing and the past is not a good guide to the future then it would be advisable to have a look at the methodology for estimating the snow and ice budget even though the challenges that we have  agent tree population so some histories need to come down which they're working on over the course of the year but those trees are more at risk you know more severe storms we're having more damage and costs i think the subcommittee so we took a vote voted ford four to nothing unanimous for people action they recognize him this is an amount that would be deducted from the four hundred thousand dollar war committee reserve fund that would leave us with approximately fifty three thousand dollars for anything that might happen between now and the end of the year for any further discussion yourself i just want to know where we were with schools and whether or not there are any requests coming from so far i've not heard anything from the schools with susan wright q three report so no we are not be there we are there is a deficit but it will be offset by right now which projecting using our circuit breaker next item on the agenda is the remaining part of a town meeting articles so we need to vote on the remaining c p a project which is the  question came up about the town's legal exposure if we don't do anything right now and and instead focus on potentially renegotiating the conservation restrictions or identifying a use for the barn in actual use of the barn before spending your money on it and george hall offered an opinion which i circulated to you where on the c p a article he does not see a meaningful risk to the town and that's where it stands at the town if we do nothing the barn w we do nothing with the article in the barn we continue to sit there and be read the conservation restrictions which are quite strict that as far as i can tell there's very little commercial potential for that building the way the conservation restrictions are written it's almost limited to a educational purpose where the bill the use of the building has to be directly related to the surrounding lands and i believe there's an outright prohibition on commercial development of that site that's certainly the language of the system restrictions but it seems to me that that could be brought up as a as an item pre negotiation but that said the choice before us tonight is to vote on the c p a request which is now one hundred seventy five thousand dollars the line item for the door restoration of the hardware restoration was taken out and there i think there are some others who just want the requesters for one hundred seventy five thousand dollars  and that's what we're going to vote on now i know that retain any further discussion my recollection of our discussion last time was did the town have an obligation as part of the clinton project to  maintain the book and i read george's e mail in decision this kind of carefully worded and when he spoke at the briefing on thursday monday think it was clear that we made a commitment to maintain now financially there may be limited recourse if we were negative on that commitment but i think ethically we made a commitment to maintain the bar and so although this group perhaps you only focus on the financial i actually think the town has an ethical obligation to make good on  promise that debate is part of a legal agreement so i for that reason although it may not be a great use of money i think we should make good on the agreement that we made at the time we did mclean deal to me as opposed to inherently moral and so i'd be very comfortable saying yes it's there but there are other obligations that rank a whole lot higher for me and this doesn't really rise to the level of being one that i feel to be completely particularly compelling my inclination is to vote against it i see a lot of projects on the horizon that benefit a lot more people that to me  a higher legal and moral obligation on this one does well i don't view this jack as a snapshot unit i am going to talk about the bond if you are right and we might very well have some commercial purpose well then maybe some other practical solution will be discussed but i think jack the if you vote to spend it and i tell waste of money it is a waste of money  practical one of the things i heard george say monday this is how i interpret it is that there may not be much much risk other than if we don't do this that there may be commitments that mclean that they would do and i guess i'm curious if it didn't register at the time or i would have asked the question what things did mclean promise in the agreement that they might then choose to not do next be sure please i think in reference to your question alan which is a great question is any dealings with clean in the future some of the things that happen in the community in regards to the seniors in the residence and the high school debt exclusion that's coming down the pike discussions are starting with that with that senior property what can be done now property to mitigate some of the concerns that seniors have right now in the community of staying in don't like even though they may not be able to afford their house my concern is that it's like overkill the fact if we don't hold up or into the agreement on this side  fees are about the barn or working to find a productive use of the park conceivable even for housing the sponsors of the article when they were here told us while reading go shading the room is very difficult and uncertain and made it sound asked me if he said you know that bar is like oh yeah i know the barn and his idea was a great one which he said i would love to see that become a farmer's market and do something to integrate the gardens around it and you know he had these really exciting ideas and i said run don't walk to on cushman and find out what can be done about this because that would be a useful exciting purpose for the barn that would bring people there that would highlight the gardens i think bob's point's a good one is instead of essentially spending wasting money on mark bowling can we use this as impetus to figure out something that's a win win win the clay might like the community might like that we might like in that it's a good investment of money and not but there was nothing along those lines that i saw you know it's building there's obviously deteriorated but it's been there for at least forty or fifty years and you know i'm sure it will stand for another good couple of years well people continue to think about it  mike i hate to see town houses wasted but at the same time we need to have use uses for those assets and so i would like to be able to say that a year from now we're spending some some amount of money to put that asset to use so i am completely comfortable with voting against funding a mosque bollinger stabilization project right now i think i would like to see some activity taking place in the next year to think you know what could be done with that building and i think by initiating that kind of a process it's not entirely up to the work committee but initiating that kind of a process just is also not statement to make claim that we're walking away from our responsibilities and saying that we need to take a careful look at what we're doing with this asset we want to do something positive with the asset work we're going to study it jenny i think a lot of good points are being made here i am still leaning toward voting for this because it's a historic x as that we don't have many of them and i think we do have an obligation so i agree with those arguments however i do think it is a good conversation that has started and if we can have assurances that this conversation is going to continue then i would be anxious to know that so i don't know if there's time but i actually would like to bring the proponents back to this table to have another discussion about where they stand given this conversation given all the things we've heard from our attorneys given where we are i think i would have to wait till the floor because con meeting starts on monday result in x but i don't think we actually understand what is going to happen when we spend the money now because it doesn't really solve the problem it only sort of pushes the can down the road a little bit but without any clear solution for where it's going to go and it's not clear to me who is actually responsible for doing the kinds of things that it was talking about and like calling people and asking to come up with creative solutions it's not clear what's going to happen or who's even responsible for figuring that out and so it just feels odd to spend a fair amount of money when none of that stuff is actually clear to me and so maybe i'm the only one that feels that way but you know who's going to use that argument for the landfill i mean you are spending money in the down meeting at the landfill to demolish the building last year and i think i don't think those are comparable situation i really don't but the reason helen was here is because she's the chairman of the war management committee she is that that's the committee that's responsible for this that's who is bringing this forward and  who was one of the high level administrators at mclean sits on that committee so it's not like the plane is not going to write so what is ellen's plan for well i think she described that to us when she was here what would you say that it is i don't remember i would say that this is a plan to try to stabilize the building so that the discussion can be held about the future uses that's what that's what why she brought this to us not to us just a question that we'll have to ask ourselves are we better off spending the money in order to figure it out later or not spend the money yet and then figure it out and then spend the money i wrote on waiting only because you know i have to say even though the goal  fortunately those line items were removed from the budget but i i do think we're putting the cart before the horse and i don't see any downside in letting the building sit for another year or two and having these types of discussions that we've been new to the concept of the other obligations that mclean made and i do think that we have a strong interest in trying to get it whether it's senior housing or it's an r and d facility or or property for twenty years now and i don't there's there's no argument for great urgency this spring to do something immediately it seems to me we the considerations that have been raised here are completely reasonable why not take even six months to talk to mclean and sort out what they would like to see what we would like to see and have better communication that way why should we be speculating what mclean thinks or might do  unless one wants to default on a commitment that money because we believe there is little financial recourse to the other party even if six months from now already here from now we say there is no use for it the current commitment is we will maintain that building the commitment that we made in the agreement wasn't to maintain the building subject to finding a use that met the restrictions the commitment was that we would maintain the property obligation will not be significantly be binned by making twenty years twenty years and six months but it's really unless there's some fundamentally new point to be made i think we are just going to have to exact vote three four five six seven eight nine ten in favor of the motion of those opposed three four  so i mean this is an interesting contentious discussion but you know i think we we voted our consciences and that's all we can do ok i want to now return to two other articles where i think our discussion actually there are three remaining articles which article nine which is the marijuana sales tax three percent should be an easy one and then there's the are out on the size of b o s if you want to come back to out came up and we discussed a little bit how there could be a financial impact from the opt out because if marijuana establishment is were banned then we would not have any opportunity to impose the sales tax and recognizing that the actual amount of revenue to be raised is on certain probably not enormous i think the discussion last time was a little on resolved about whether we should vote on this or not so what the way i'd like to approach it is the first have a motion on whether we should vote on the opt out and if that's approved i would move to a vote on the opt out so i don't know a better way to solve this problem so with that i will let you take the motion on whether we should vote on the opt out which is the article for the special town meeting i move that we consider i or any further discussion might just not apply to you know raise a question about how that money how that additional revenue can be spent because i believe that it has to be spent on prevention activities so it's not it's not as though it's going to solve lot so yes ellen i guess also for the part that's earmarked while it may not seem like a huge amount of money i think to the health department to put programs in for prevention substance abuse prevention that would actually be a lot of th and you know it's always hard to come up with a benchmark because for a while in my mind when i looked at small reputation i would think well you know the pre budget for some time was only ten thousand dollars over talking about three years worth of the budgets that to me is meaningful and with an eye toward the clock all those in favor of the motion to have a vote on the article for a special town meeting please raise your hand your post ok so we are now voting on the merits of the article for the special town meeting which is article says that song should amendments are about essentially undoing yeah i'm just not that complicated and it's not clear what amendments will actually be brought to the floor so i think we will have to caucus as a committee on the floor of town meeting so we can ignore those for right now right now ok my second question would be for patrice and you may have no idea what does it cost to have a special election seventeen thousand ok yes i was the number from residents saying they want to chance to vote whether it's protocol they want to chance to well i think i think this tension was on our minds last time we discussed this question so yes if no motion is made then we're not going to still then say no we're not going and if they say no the way this process works is that you can make it five hundred signatures and force the referendum and bypass the board of selectmen so this is going to go on for a while this this issue will not die i'm just just letting you know it and i think this is fundamental and nodded economic issues so we're in in all of this issue there's an economic element from my perspective if the voters voted favorably to allow marijuana it seems a little bit duplicate isn't disingenuous in my mind to say we want the product but we're unwilling to let it be sold in our community to mean those go part and parcel and that's why i  the ballot initiative and having fully understood what i was voting for i can understand that some people might have voted for it because they were in favor of general decriminalization without necessarily wanting a retail self sales of the product i don't i don't care i have i have no dog in the fight but i don't actually believe that we should send seventeen thousand dollars to revoke something we already voted for something that is legal and you know we've already chosen as a town for example to sell out so after years and years and years of not selling out all the town i think this is a waste of time and energy there will be a thousand discussion of it we can put it to bed if we voted down now so election where this was voted was eighty percent of the electorate and a special election is going to wind up being maybe thirty percent of the electorate and right it's not even a television and so the question is who  men instead the size and the duties of the board should be examined compared to the duties of the town administrator so that was question number one question number two was the additional burden of having a larger board in the sense that there will be stipends health insurance costs that were discussed a little bit on monday night and in addition incremental demand on the town  ministers town administrators office which i think could be very noticeable with two additional selectman so those are the economic i guess aspects of this  question and with it and in terms of the sheer size of the board we had even discussed last time whether one amongst us would move to postpone this article indefinitely because the approach seemed on satisfactory as a way to restructure down government so again that's kind of a borderline question for the warren committee so i like and leave it to the group to decide if that i've witnessed in my lifetime and it just has to have an effect on the quality of the governance which obviously has effect on the financing i think we have to weigh in on something  reexamined rather than voted on in this form because i think that it's not fully thought out i absolutely agree with that and i think that that is i don't know but i think that was building a consensus among the work committee as if that's true and i think that is our vehicle for expressing what we think about this well when i need to say i would be willing if we do that i'm willing to put drama in motion jack strikes me but that goes beyond an amendment what you're saying is you want to put a motion to withdraw his plea and i don't know that no no i checked robert's rules of order would be a motion to postpone the article indefinitely so that's a this is have to keep somebody would actually have to make such a motion so study the feasibility or should we or should not but not the implementation of it so it seems like to me the next step would be another committee or study for the if we were to do it what would the implementation be so i would be for tailing  but then would be abstaining as i don't want a decision because i want to know what would the implementation need to be to go to five and if that's too costly or too disruptive then that would help if it's my decision that would be ok i would  i guess my i just want to be clear that this is a citizen's petition it's it's not connected to the work took to the committee to study the numbers like but i will admit to being on the committee i also will admit to having signed the citizen petition but that's not representative of of the committee at large ellen i understand that we don't have a good sense of what the cost is however if it's not table the town meeting will vote on it right and so do we want to say anything in that circumstance and i do because i do believe there's a cost so that the micro level and at the macro level and so you know if we vote on it and there's a lot of abstention so be it that i think it is worth it's no reflection on the committee that studied this question that i think the problem is that their charge was too narrow and well and that that the citizens petition is not the same as the committee but it's two different things going on in the committee yeah i do yes i agree that being increased cost  first have a motion on the merits of article twelve itself and then we can move on to measure so wait wait so i think we've moved that way that we should vote on it i think you need to close that out and then we  consensus that if there was to be a motion the postponing definitely what our feelings would be that would be a good first  postponed and we could study the effect of the u s role of the town meeting viz of the three vs five and so forth therefore in the circumstances seem to me that i would move that the chair like i was part of last year the group that tried to get this away to redefine being voted on and town meeting for last year which is where this was headed i think the study group did a great job unfortunately i can't fully support that they should be looked at in combined there was absolutely no public comment last year think i have thought that mike would mary had limited the charge of the committee but i think now maybe he only intended to limit the scope of the discussion on town meeting floor in any event i would say regardless of how the follow up discussions with mike about exactly what the scope was of what the committee was doing so you know i don't think there was any misunderstanding ok any further discussion of all those in favor of a consensus over of consensus that if there's a vote to indefinitely postponed the how do we vote and the motion would be that we support a motion to indefinitely postponed or we've got a motion that we're voting on  discussion all those in favor of the motion for unfavorable action on article twelve it's razor him and he opposed any project i've been doing since we last met that's intended to provide a framework for thinking about free cash actually sounded very constructive like hope that you  ok so the idea with the basic issue with free cash is that it's a reserve fund maintained by the town it's available for emergencies it can also be used  to provide funds for the regular operating budget but of course to be drawdown you will only have free cash in the future if it is  what i've done here is develop a spreadsheet that will actually calculate your level of free cash is taking account of how you're drawing it down and how you replenishing it and in terms of making it free cash forecast going out a little bit i think you can do it in a crude but hopefully informative way by looking just at three things one is the amount of replenish men that you have to work with what's the size of your budget and how much is your use of free cash increasing your creasing over time so let me let me just start from the top and actually each one of these panels is kind of the same thing for each fiscal year it's just copying itself down what the reason i started to do this was because we mentioned last time the role that general stabilization fund and that had not been incorporated in a previous spreadsheet on this question that mike can and work on some years ago so what i have here is a way to consolidate the general stabilization a picture of the reserves like that let me just start from the top we have data for the top financial reports tell us what the free cash is on the certification dates which is essentially july i want to be each year so on july one of two thousand and sixteen we had about eight point eight million dollars in the combined free cash and stabilization  the f y sixteen budget which was the budget from the prior year was just about one hundred million dollars our free cash guideline for a given year takes a range of three to five percent of the budget from the prior year and says that should be the target range for free cash and the three percent number the lower range will be a floor on free cash we shouldn't go below that so what i have in the green shaded area is the surplus or deficit relative to that floor so back in f y seventeen the reserves were such that there was a five point eight million dollars excess above the three percent floor then the f i seventeen budget itself one point seven million was earmarked for the operating budget we take out another three hundred fifty thousand dollars because that's the source of funding for the open contribution there was a snow and ice transfer that year as well as three hundred twenty two thousand dollars and what we then doing to get this thing started is so we take our starting free cash and we've tabulated all the deductions from free cash we then jump ahead to the free cash certification from the next year and we find that the employee eighteen free cash that was certified in july two thousand and seventeen was eight point five million dollars the implication of that is if you started with five point eight million dollars and you spent roughly two point three but you ended up with eight point five there must have been replenished and that's the only way it could top off the number and so the implied replenish mint seventeen was two point one billion dollars by historical standards my correct me if i'm wrong two point one million dollars to someone on the low end of the range but david came out and been telling us for at least two years that he thought the rate have free cash that was certified now in july of two thousand and seventeen we have the f y seventeen budget which was now one hundred six million dollars that is still giving us a five point four million dollar cushion  over the three percent floor in the f y eighteen budget a total of two point three million free cash was used this four hundred seventy two thousand and opeth actually  says the current year we now just voted three hundred forty seven thousand dollars as a reserve fund transfer i put in three hundred fifty as a placeholder and when we last heard from patrice on this we thought there would be one hundred thousand dollars facilities deficit that's still to be until the fall when free cash is actually certified so this is one of the this is one of the first assumptions in the model let's just assume that replenish meant was whatever it was last year which is two point one million dollars in twenty two that there was two point three million for the operating budget that's not exactly correct yeah there was one point three million that was used for the operating budget and there was one million that was put into the general stabilization fund so that is correct that total amount is correct but million dollar transferred was merely to the general stabilization fund it was not a true expense that everything here is off by a million dollars but thank you for a fair point but just in terms of the method  have the one point five million dollar use of general stabilization i will assume that the contra contribution next year is the same as this year just for simplicity i will assume that replenish mint in the coming  and the same exercise brings you forward in f y twenty and the picture that emerges is that the the surplus of free cash over the three percent floor is shrinking all the time and the basic issue is that the use of free cash actually for a forty one thousand is the clearest example you're spending one point six for free cash and another one point five from general stabilization that's three point one million dollars another for five hundred thousand dollars for opec is something like three point six million dollars as a drawdown on reserves and if the assumed replenish mn is only two point one inescapable you're drawing down free cash and those lines cross in the fairly near future there's been position relative to the guidelines may be in a deficit position are very close to the bottom what i'm getting from this exercise is that it may well be well i should say it's a possibility that an override could be deferred from the spring of twenty the spring of twenty one but that's probably the best you can do the basic structural issue is continuing to spend more out of free cash than we're getting from replenish me jack yeah apart from the mechanics and i think this is great it seems to me that as you just described it one of the critical assumptions assuming that replenishment is the same constant number right and it would seem to me that what that replenishment is is really the variance in our budget certainty  better way to do that number would be to look historically at what percent what was the percentage of replenishment relative to that hears operating budget because that is kind of a measure of the v well but the question is how good is the past a predictor of the future because all the replenish men some years ago was very high it was three to four million dollars i believe yes unless there's a lot of revenues and expenses and if some years we were extra cautious and other years extra aggressive if we used basically the same approach that number is is your error margin  tunnel properties that were very one time events and i think that's one reason why david was always very conservative in calculating replenishment for the future because it was no game he that another question square would come along m i'm just going to say that i think you would see that vary of variability and revenue associated with growth but back to jack's point i think jack is absolutely right that that if your general budgeting approach just the same your turn backs ought to be proportional as your budget is growing well let me just say that the intent here was not to be the last word on this subject i felt actually when we discussed this last time i didn't have an adequate mental framework for the whole question and this was one way of organizing the concepts i should say that the collins center which has commenced this project with the town for general financial forecasting model and i mean jack and i and jeff and chris are part of that effort i'm not sure exactly what the work product will be from the column center but they've indicated they will provide an even more sophisticated financial modeling tool than we had from the financial taskforce and i assume those some module of that will address free cash forecast could have that if if you cannot increase your level of replenish when you somehow find a way to reduce your draw on free cash if you're not going to have overrides on a very periodic basis and i think the general sat would be used like free cash in order to we define specific things so you know gender stabilization was going to just be a draw for general revenue to try to get the operating budget to last longer well half because the budget is higher than what we take in notes let me just say that i didn't mean to have a full blown discussion of free cash this evening but just wanted to indicate that i always found this exercise kind of helpful and i would imagine that next fall we'll have free cash certified again from this year we'll have a better idea but well not will know what replacement will have been for f y eighteen we'll have two years of of actual recent replenished and data and we'll see who the common center should be wrapped up by the fall also and that's a cool tool and either i will continue to use it or my successor will be  continuing to edit and i i imagine will go right down to the deadline which will be in the middle of may i did want to discuss very quickly some comments that i highlighted in green because i knew that wasn't sure i understood them or i wasn't sure that the committee as a whole would agree i want to get your sense so the first one just scrolling through everything was in the assessor right up there with a recommendation that friends as follows we would like to see the assessor's office examine the potential impact of implementing a presidential exemption for owner occupied properties within the optimal amount of such an exemption a residential exemption should have no impact on the overall property tax receipts but may shift some of the residential property tax burden to rental properties and to properties with higher valuations  the group that developed this recommendation just explain the motivation for that and i wrote down what it was actually came out of thoughts i've had for a while and  discussions with without a dash so a lot of towns have a residential exemption so let me back up and say it won't affect the overall levy because that's just you got your letter you're just allocating it differently my understanding is that belmont has approximately forty percent of its housing as rentals as opposed to owner occupied a major driver about a school system  and what this would do most cities and towns around us do have a residential exemption and dan dargon who's in the assessor's office said he actually did an analysis of this for framing him before he came here or at least there seems to be a consensus that we need to look at this so his recommendation is that we at least do a study that he talked to the board of assessors about this and just find out what the impact would be but effectively what it would do is you say your residential exemption was two hundred thousand on a property that is valued at a million you don't get that exemption so effectively we're asking landlords to pay a higher rate of the overall residential tax levy the exceptions for that would be something that like a two family that's owner occupied we're not going to you can't divide that out and nor is that really the intent but the intent is really to equalize the burden between primary residences and what are effectively investment properties and i see a lot of that there was an owner occupied too in a building too you know so this is part of why we need a study i was it twenty percent properties that don't have a primary occupant in them i mean we don't know us a lot of what used to be two families are trying to condos now right so we need to know more did the subcommittee have a consensus on this or the subcommittee as a whole hasn't discussed  myself my god is the most landlords are charging what the market will bear right now there may be some pass through but if there is that is a reality of a cost to the school system that needs to be borne thank you i guess i would be concerned about what you're effectively doing i think and again i might be wrong but but it sounds to me like a shifting of burden to me something we're shifting a burden to landlords but it also sounds like to me it could be the shifting  burden to you know our our stock of affordable housing probably wouldn't because i'm affordable housing has a different valuation it's valuations are fairly limited we're actually disproportionately impacts higher than the tax burden on a two or three million dollar home can actually go up under this scenario because the exemption stays the same in a dollar amount but not a percentage of no i mean affordable housing the smaller yes right right w i don't i don't know whether the rents that we have in belmont i think there are after two i think work i don't know this is why we need to have a study to figure out what what the implications would be we need to have a discussion of this because we need to look at the growth is coming and it is coming from the our plans and then i'm potentially from cushing square as well so the purpose of this is not we're not making a decision but we do need to have a discussion there just to be clear this is not new revenue this is redistribution of the it's redistribution of revenue but the idea is if you redistribute the revenue and ease the burden frankly on the lower lower valuations that there might then be more stomach for an override jack can i suggest that this probably is a good form of a good time to go down the rabbit hole of what this would be and that if we feel like even a strong recommendation that we should do a study overstates it that the recommendation piece to consider a study or something that's really soft and we don't have to debate the merits tonight my sort of process perspective it's not my my  not my sort of historical expectation that we as a committee will discuss every single aspect of the work committee report as a committee but rather what happens is subcommittees will put forward their own sub committee report and that is the report of that group and it doesn't necessarily get discussed and reviewed unless it is somehow meaningfully controversial that we think that the group will disagree with so if you believe for example that that is something that is actually not representative of what the word committee is a whole would talk about and i think it's completely fair game to raise it and talk is not really discussed this either at this point would be good to have that kind of discussion at least report back to us how you how you come out on that ok and i'm mindful of the time  oh and and i'll raise one other point and maybe and stop there in the health department right up there's a recommendation to i have a dedicated full time town grant writer and i  i think rather than make this proposal in isolation we should coordinate this discussion with the taliban and so what we discussed it and i are held up and i thought our subcommittee meeting human services and concluded that this recommendation this this idea from the health department that they have not enough resources to actually apply for the grants that we give them more resources is not  they are the health departments not alone in experiencing in other departments or as well so what we talked about is taking it out from there and i was going to recommend putting it into the to administrative years section of the report that we would recommend having the town a minister's office take a look at not hiring somebody to take a look at how we're handling grants across the board is fortunately some turned backs have turned up so we haven't been able to agree to fund a number of things we're going to finalize that tomorrow however because of the discussion about free cash i want to say that you remember that i told you that there is a one point two million dollar bill coming due for a fire station repair and that the capital budget committee has been told on television this trader that we could fund half of that six hundred thousand dollars out of the capit budget which we have agreed to do and then moved on to what else we can fund that means we can't for example fund the fire engine this year so there are a number of things that fall off but the other six hundred thousand dollars is at this point proposed to com and we haven't talked about that here and so i want to put that on the table because it's important for the capital budget committee to be able to understand that we can rely on that at this point i will add that to my spreadsheet for our next meeting we will not have a presentation by the capital budget committee until pretty late in may everything this year has been and fortunately stretched out but all of our work depends on the understanding that we only have to find six hundred thousand dollars from the capital budget allocation