 Please come to order. Please rise for the Star Spangled Banner accompanied tonight by Ms. Howard. Thank you, Mrs. Howard. So far this year we've made pretty good progress with three-fifths of the way through. If we keep up this pace, we could have record-setting town meeting and shortness. If any precincts haven't organized, specifically two-and-seven didn't organize yet. They should go out by the front doors and organize. Fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen upstairs in the hallway. Eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-one in this hallway during the break. Yes, sir. Fifteen in the back corner. Okay, fifteen in that back corner. Any town meeting members who have yet to be sworn in? What about it? That's all going to be over there in the side. Two-and-seven out by the front doors. Fifteen in the corner. Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen upstairs. Nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one in this corridor. Sixteen's done. Good job. Thank you. Twenty's done. Twenty's done. Good. Well, if you're done, you're all set. I can give Stephanie the sheet afterwards. Mr. Dunn. The annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session when the meeting adjourns. It adjourns to Monday, May 6th, 2013, at 8 p.m. Monday we're going to have, well, if we don't finish tonight, we're going to have Mr. Boquillin of Minuteman here. And also, I think, Vision 2020 is going to present their report on Monday. But maybe we'll finish and they don't get a chance. Announcements of resolutions. Mr. Chapter Lane. Just two brief announcements. First, on the opening night of town meeting, Mr. Dunn mentioned that the town school and unions are cooperating on a compensation study for the town. So I've placed a memo on all of your seats just detailing the process that we've followed to date and our expected timeline going forward. We expect to have the process completed sometime this fall. And just very briefly, so you know, the major impetus for the study was the select man's interest in looking at the comparability of employees' compensation after the town moved to the GIC. And second announcement, as some of you might know, we are in the process of redesigning the town's website. So we have issued a public survey on the website that I'd ask you all to take the time to take. You can find the link at the town's website currently, ArlingtonMA.gov. And we're just trying to learn more about our site's visitors, what they want to look at, how they utilize the site, so that we can optimize our design as we go through the process. So if you can take the time to do that, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other announcements, Mr. Harrington? Sean Harrington, precinct 15. I'm rising because the Arlington Republican Town Committee will be having a meeting at the senior center tomorrow night at 7.30 p.m. You told us that the other day we remember. Ms. Howard. Mr. moderator, Jane Howard, precinct 10. I have an invitation for you all to do yet another cleanup on the 11th. And that is at the spypond trails day. It will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. As you probably know, we've put in over the years, nine trails down to the pond using discarded curbing. This keeps people from eroding the banks. And this will be an effort to keep those things in good order and also to pick up trash, improve the trails, as I said, probably pruned for vistas. We work along with the Appalachian Mountain Club. And we invite you to bring your lunch and just admire the work that you've done at the end of the cleanup. Thanks so much. Thank you, Ms. Howard. There's a pile of these in the back table. Oh, okay. So you can get your instructions in the back table. Ms. Weaver? Okay. Mr. Jamison. Thank you, Mr. Moderator Gordon Jamison, Precinct 12. And I rise today as the co-chair of the Arlington Recycling Committee. This little flyer about Community Collection Day is on all your seats. I also sent the presentation I'm about to give to everyone on the listserv. And you'll note around the room that there are recycling bins. So we can always recycle more. And there's an opportunity with all this vast amounts of paper to save us some money by not burning it. Let's see if I can do two things at once. Okay, before I get into the Community Collection Day, I wanted to give you a quick update on where we have been and where we're going as far as reducing our solid waste. And we pay about 70 bucks a ton now. So reducing that saves us money. On the far left, that's where we started out, about 19,000 tons of garbage that we incinerated. On the far right, that's where we're trying to go to, 50% diversion of our municipal solid waste. And next, one bar in from that, the checkered bar, is where we anticipate being at the end of this physical year or shortly thereafter, where we will have decreased the amount of solid waste we incinerate through a partnership with you all, the residents, the DPW and obviously the town manager and staff, by 38%. The net savings over that 10-year period is over $2 million. So this is a way to stretch our budget numbers further out. So we encourage you, there's always more things you can recycle. And thank you. Some of the Community Collection Day is one of the entrepreneurial activities that the Recycling Committee uses its funds in collaboration with the DPW. This spring's Collection Day is on May 11th. It happens at the DPWR on Grove Street. It's from 9 to 1. Don't come early, don't come late. You can drop off CRTs or televisions for $10 that day. If you haven't picked up curbside at your home that day, you have to arrange the DPW beforehand. That's $20. Any other time if you call them to tell them you want to take something away, it's $40. So there's good reason to stop by and drop it off. So microwave recycling is free on that day on May 11th only. Other electronics, anything with a plug, basically. Other than appliances, those have to go into the white goods collection stream, call the DPW for that. If it has a cord, it goes. There is a big hit over the last couple of years. There's been free secure paper shredding, two boxes per residence for free. There is no charge, but we're starting, you know, continuing with our effort to do good while doing good. We ask that you consider making a donation to the iron food pantry in lieu of paying a fee. And we think that would be a great addition to our work. Businesses pay for all shredding. Free propane tank. You got that old one that doesn't work anymore? Drop it off for free. Another new thing we're trying out is foam or styrofoam recycling. All colors, but no peanuts, okay? There's more information on the town website about these. One of the things I think is the most intriguing things that we do is the bikes not bomb collection. So these are clean adult bikes mostly, sometimes a few children's bikes, that the bikes not bombs takes and ships either to maybe Dorchester or overseas. When they go overseas, they can become a family's sole transportation. It's really quite an amazing thing. They ask for $10 in a donation to cover shipping costs. A couple changes here. In the past, we've collected prescription drugs and used syringes. The used syringes now have to be in one of those red official collection boxes. We'll be collecting those on the 11th. Prescription drugs are now, you can drop those off 24-7, as I understand it, at the community safety building. That saves them not having to have a police detail guarding the drugs so no one runs off with the old Oxycontin. Children's clothing and toys, okay? The adult clothes we ask you to bring to the Planet Aid boxes and other things, Goodwill and around the town, but the clean used clothing and books for children, we collect and those end up with the little fox. So that gives a revenue stream to the children's library. Books, DVDs and CDDs, the heavy stuff. Stratton PTO picks those up and takes them up to a God Books bin and they get money. They raise 200 or 300 bucks every collection day on that. We're assuming Diane has gotten someone to collect the sneakers. We're back in the sneaker recycling business. Those will be turned into sub-flooring for athletic things down at Nike Town. Only a couple more, sorry. Metal recycling. Dan Warren of the DPW initiated this a couple of years ago. Old pipes, poles, metal shells, file cabinets, whatever. Again, no appliances. Bring them, they go in the front loader and they go in a big bin and get taken away. Batteries, rechargeable and button batteries. A guy who sells batteries, I'm sorry, I forget his name, comes very nicely and volunteers his time to collect rechargeable batteries. Again, the alkaline batteries are not like the ones many years ago. Those can go in the regular trash. No cardboard collection. Please put that out on the curb like normally. And the Save Club will be there. You heard from them earlier this meeting. They collect returnable bottles and cans to fund their operations at the high school. Lots of recycling goodies available and free stickers, et cetera. All of this information is also available on the website. And as I said, I sent this presentation to the meeting listserv. Again, May 11th, DWR 9-1. Don't come early, don't come late. Thank you. Another announcement. Someone left these nice glasses. The real prescription glasses, I don't think they're readers. They're pretty nice. If they're yours, they're up here. I can't see through them. Any other announcements or resolutions? Reports? Oh, here's one more announcement. Beth Ann Friedman, precinct 15. Tomorrow, Thursday at 7.15, SNAC is holding a meeting at 87 Medford and 2nd floor. And I'm only mentioning this because Clarissa Rowe will be there speaking about the conservation land, which includes Vista Park, Sims Woods, and the extended Vista Park, which is a 1.8 acre area. And she will be discussing landscaping and conservation plans for those areas. So if anyone's interested, it's the 2nd floor of the Armstrong Amulance Building at 7.15 tomorrow night. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Seeing none. Article 3, reports of committees. Mr. Cole, did you want to go first? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Cole, chairman of the Permanent Town Building Committee. I would request that the report of the committee be received. All in favor of receiving the report of the town building committee, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? It is received. Thank you, Mr. Cole. Before we pull the curtain back there a little bit. Before I begin, I would like to thank everyone who has participated or contributed to the Books for Bill campaign. It's been enormously successful and we're looking forward to the day when the Thompson School Library will be filled with more books than they know what to do with. For the past year, the building committee has been very active. We're to advance the slides here. I just want to update you on the Highland Fire Station. There's been no building activity on site, but we did receive our official lead silver certificate from the United States Green Building Council, the first building in town to be so designated. I think that's an achievement for the town as a whole. Now we're moving on to the central station to complete the work that was started there last year when we improved the envelope. The interior, as you can see from these two slides, is in very tough shape and we have allocated in the capital plan this year design funds to redesign and update the interior to a standard equivalent of the Highland. The Robbins Library roof is also on our agenda. We are replacing the slate of the original 1892 historic building with the 1931 wing in the rear, which is the children's section. We received bids for that last week, the lowest qualified bid, $383,000, which was below our estimates. When we add that to the consultant fees, we will be under our total project appropriation of $505,000. That work will take place during the months of July and August when occupancy at the library is a little bit slower than during the school year. The community safety building has been our main focus of attention this year. As you may recall, the meeting allocated some money last year to fund a study of the envelope, including investigative testing, water testing, and other ways of determining both the cause of the leaks that have plagued that building for 30 years and trying to track down the myriad damage that it has done. That report recommended replacing parapets, roofs, windows, curtain wall, penthouse. That work started last summer. It's continuing now and we project that it will be finished probably in the month of August. I have to tell you it's been an incredibly difficult project for everyone. It's been difficult for the architect and the engineer, as we call latent conditions or unforeseen things have been uncovered as we got into those walls to replace deficient masonry, steel, you name it. The contractor has not had an easy time either. He's trying to build or rebuild in the building that's occupied 24-7, not easy. And his workflow has been stopped and started as we've had to reassess the unforeseen conditions as they come up. And lastly, it has not been easy for the occupants. I commend the police department on their professionalism and forbearance. To work in a job site is not easy. The leaks have continued from time to time and there's construction, noise and dust to add to it. Due to the latent conditions, and I'll go over a couple, on the left you can see they are replacing the large skylight also on the front. On the left here, that's easy. Look, they're standing on flat ground replacing those skylights. Then you look at the slide on the right and you understand that to do that, we've had to make the atrium of that building into a jungle gym. That's two and a half stories of staging to get a platform up to the level where they could actually do the work of replacing those skylight panels. As we replaced portions of the roof, it was discovered that the masonry, which you can see on the right, was not reinforced when the building was built. We had to go back, fill those cores with grout, add steel reinforcing as we went. And as we got into the stucco bands that you see as strips on the front of the building, we realized that the water which had penetrated at those points had traveled laterally and deteriorated the substrate that was holding the brick in place. So we had to remove large portions of brick and put in a new substrate to pin the brick back to. That has been slow and tedious, but I can say it's now complete. And we're moving on to the final pieces of the work, which are the replacement of the windows, the skylights, and the curtain wall, which is that large glass wall facing Mystic Street and the courtyard. There have been some issues there. We're going to have to reinforce the framing to hold the new wall in place. And most recently, the contractor has put in a claim for additional time. Whether that merits additional money is an issue that we will have to sort out with them. But right now, that's unresolved. So at any rate, we went back to the capital planning and finance committees a few months ago, seeking additional funds to deal with some of these conditions. And we were through the hard work of Mr. Flanagan and others, came up with $232,000 from other accounts, which has been allocated to this project. Going forward, the original capital plan projects two more phases to this project of interior reorganization and renovation. We have recommended that they look at that plan and try and consolidate it into one phase, because I personally cannot bear the thought of putting the occupants through two more rounds of this. Well, in conclusion, I'll say I'm frustrated. I'm not embarrassed, but I'm frustrated. This has been a difficult project, but I'd like to assure you that at every turn, we have done the right thing to make sure that this work is done completely and correctly. And we will turn this building back to the town as a capital asset, not an operating liability. Oh, yeah, and we had to replace the cooling tower in the mechanical system, not scheduled in this phase of the work, but it basically failed in the middle of the project. Happy news, Thompson School. We're getting down to the finish line. I can report that the final mechanical systems, the finish work and the site worker underway, these are photos taken this week of the exterior. That's the main lobby on the left, the typical classroom on the right. The project will be turned over to the school department in July. We are within our budget. And I think Superintendent Bote may speak to the school department's plan for the school and their reaction to it to date. Thank you. And I'll be available at the back of the hall at the break if anybody wants more details. Thank you, Mr. Cole. We appreciate the work of your committee. Mr. Schlickman, where do you go? Well, Mr. Judd, you just, Judd and Pierce is going to get up and start the school committee report. Mr. Moderator, honorable members of town meeting, I request the report of the Arlington School Committee be received. All in favor of receiving the report of the school committee, please say yes. Yes. Post is so received. A little nervous here. Folks, my name is Judd Pierce. I'm a precinct 11. I'm proud to chair the Arlington School Committee. Mr. Moderator, Madam Clerk, elected officials, honorable members. Today, I was reminded of an interesting definition of democracy posted by a professor, my alma mater. I think he said it in 1956. Thinking independently together. I like it. That's what all you do here in April and May every year. That's what we as a school committee try to do and accomplish. We have a lot to be proud of here in Arlington about our schools. We have a strong, rigorous, vibrant learning community. According to our 2012 MCAS data, Arlington is overall a high achieving district with moderate to very high student growth. Majority of our district grade level scores are in the top 15% of the state. I don't want to take up any more of your time. I want to introduce our superintendent to speak more about our successes and our goal of improving our district daily. Superintendent Schools, Dr. Kathleen Brody. Good evening, the school committee. I'm very pleased this evening to be here. I want to give you a short report on the Arlington Public Schools and its FY14 budget. My report will address, let me get this clicker right, will address these six topics. This morning, we had this PowerPoint and sent you electronically as well as the link to a more detail of the Arlington Public Schools budget. For those of you that are watching this evening at home, you can find both the PowerPoint and the budget detail on our website. The Arlington Public Schools are growing and they continue to grow. Since 2000, we've had an increase of 20.6%. Since 2005, what that translates into is the equivalent of another elementary school. I believe that the Arlington, the town of Arlington receives great value in our schools. As Judd Pierce said, we are high-achieving and high-growth district. But our pupil cost is considerably less than the state average. At $12,600, the state is $1,000 more on average. These are the FY12 numbers. The FY13 numbers had not been released yet. Looking at this year, some of the key highlights I want to give you is that the new Thompson School will open in 2013. This has been a much-awaited project. I can tell you that those, the people that have visited the school could not be more pleased in how it's turning out. It is going to be a wonderful school, very bright, state-of-the-art technology. It is going to come in on budget. We're going to have occupancy at an earlier date than we have had with any of our other elementary schools. Another accomplishment this year is that, together, we were able to eliminate our kindergarten fees. And the Chapter 70 reimbursement has actually exceeded our projections for the kindergarten recovery. Our expenses right now are tracking slightly below budget. And our grants this year grew at an increase of 7.9%, which was greater than our budgeted projections last year. But we also received, and this doesn't even include this number, a project success elementary counseling grant for $1.2 million that will be paid out over three years. We have begun central registration for our elementary schools in order to implement our redistricting plan. We have a shared vision of the Arlington Public Schools. And that is that every graduate of our school will be ready for college, career, and active citizenship. And we will continually support our staff with professional development to continuously improve. And we will do this in a very cost-effective way, and I think that's evidenced by our people costs as compared to even the state average. And we will do this in partnership with all of town departments and with collaboration and communication with all the stakeholders of the Arlington Public Schools. When we were developing the FY 14 budget, we had many priorities. Chief among them was that the budget would fund our educational strategy while also meeting our contractual obligations. And accomplishing both while operating within the framework of the town's three-year financial plan. Other priorities that we have had was that the Thompson School would open with full staffing comparable to all of the other elementary schools in town. That we would provide the professional development necessary for full implementation of the common core state standards that will be fully tested next year on the state assessment MCAS. And also professional development for the new Massachusetts Educator Evaluation System. We wanted to enhance instructional support at the elementary and the middle school for mathematics and provide the curriculum materials that are aligned with the core standards, both for mathematics and literacy. We also want to expand our world language offerings at the middle school and high school for global education. We have also increased our substitute salaries because in this regional market we have been quite below the average. But also one of the important goals for next year is to increase the professionalism of special education at the elementary school in order to provide more support for our teachers as they support and address the needs of all students in their classrooms. This next graphic gives you a visual overview of the type of support that we provide our elementary classroom teachers. On your left you will see that the special education resources consist of a team of special educators, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, physical therapists. We also have two learning specialists and this is where the major change is this next year. Instead of having one learning specialist in each elementary school, we are going to have two specialists as well as teaching assistants to support them and the students in the classrooms. There are also district resources and general education resources available to the teachers. So funding this vision. Our revenue next year will be over $52 million which is about 3.9% greater than our budget this year so that translates into slightly less than $2 million. The majority of those funds come from the town appropriation which is slightly over $2 million but we have a projected grant decrease of over $24,000 and a fee and reimbursement decrease next year. And the grant reduction is mainly due to federal sequestration cutbacks. But one thing that we have instituted which I think is going to be which will prove and has proved to be very helpful is that we have developed a cycle where we're using this year's circuit breaker reimbursement to fund the FY14 budget and we'll have that same pattern next year. So this year's payment will fund the next year's. The advantage of this is that we know what the circuit breaker number is. In the past we sort of had to wait and find out what the rate of reimbursement would be and we wouldn't often know that until the fall. Well beyond our time of projections. This particular graphic gives you an overview of our budget revenues and I think the thing that I want to point out about this is that the school department revenue is different than town in that not only do we have town appropriation but we also have revenue from grants and fees and reimbursements. This next graphic which again is in the report that we gave you gives you an overview of budget expenses by major category for our FY14 budget. And here and I will leave this slide with you are some of the highlights that you found in your report that demonstrate the success of our programs, the success of our students. And I want to conclude by saying that we are very proud of our students and we are proud of our teachers and staff who's hard work, competence and dedication support our students in achieving at these very high levels. Thank you and we will be available later for any questions that you might have. Thank you very much Dr. Vody. Any other reports or committees? Mr. McKinney. Lawrence McKinney precinct seven chairman of the Uncle Sam committee after such extraordinary work done in both the plant and the minds of our people. I come to you with a slightly less complex report and I hope you will find it an edification and perhaps even entertainment. No guitar today. Well I know you all want it but maybe later sometime. All right. You've heard about dissolving committees. Now as you probably know I for a while was standing up here saying if this committee doesn't do anything you should dissolve it. Well thank goodness in 2008 I was appointed chairman and we actually did our first town day. Well we had a problem. After years of inactivity we only had $334 remaining in the account just enough for a new banner, the tent and the prototype bumper sticker. We also did the first Arlington survey to learn that Uncle Sam is a popular but neglected town resource. Okay better. Okay we also did the first Arlington tourism survey. We learned that Uncle Sam is a popular but neglected town resource. We displayed George Jovellis' Arlington painting and welcomed officials and thanks to Diane Mahan for catching me in the act. Our first report was 2009. We came and seated next to the early committee member Bob Hillis. I actually put on a suit. Our proposal to fund a t-shirt project through arts council failed. What to do? We delivered survey results. The committee is running on empty. 210, town meeting and tosses a lifeline. With our initial funding proposal $2,500 for tourism survey rejected. We tried for $500 for a logo with the creation of a new tourism committee. We are no longer necessary but TM members Dick Smith, LC Fiori and Hugh McCrory speak up and were many funded. Hugh McCrory joins and we work on a real logo to tell the story. Costs of the town for all the design work? Zero. A craigslist contest winner's gift leaving us enough money to buy the buttons for town meeting 211. We discovered we had a bigger job ahead for Uncle Sam. We had a freestanding statue but no site connected with it. Wilson's colonial past in Arlington was almost unknown. Every visitor or tourist walks by the Uncle Sam statue. It's our unmanned inexpensive 24-7 focal point. We lobbied for more attention. We attended six MAPC planning meetings in three towns as well as six tourism committee meetings to ensure Sam Wilson was represented in any funded colonial projects. The by way failed but we had a focus now. Town meeting 212, not the same song and dance. To be an attraction, Uncle Sam had to be a site. Lexington promoted its colonial history with a well-lighted signed statue out in front with good signage. What do we have? No signage, no information. You can't read the inscription. No lighting, no planning. We have a statue. We have a space. What we needed was Uncle Sam Plaza. Everyone passes this spot. So many attractions. Let's step up for tourism. We've had hundreds of sites of that one. I think you all remember the Duda's of that night. We approached Microjury. His landscaping firm was familiar with the plot he joined the committee. We forgot to ask for any money. Well anyway, the selectmen liked the idea. We still had the tent and the banner and now buttons. So we were there for town day again. We did a second tourism survey. Everyone liked Uncle Sam Plaza. Committee members would get to work with public works and we'd start fixing the place up. To 12 town meeting, let a little light shine. Uncle Sam Plaza was gaining momentum. At this point we had cost the town about $850 for three and a half years but we finally knew how to approach the finance committee. Lexington Minuteman, Jefferson Cutter House and Sam's invisibility cloak. We asked for $500 to light the statue, $500 for an 1812 bicentennial birthday party and $500 to start designing a site sign to tell the story of Uncle Sam. Finally, a tiny budget and we have work to do. Uncle Sam Committee greets the town on Patriot State and we had meetings with Mike Radimaker and Wayne Chenard to fix up the lighting details and the most potent thing we could possibly have gotten, Elsie Fiore, who helped us out in 210 joins the committee. By September it was ready. Public works didn't charge for the light. On town day we served hundreds of cupcakes and ice cream snacks and the O'Brien and Carl Wagner join, red, white and blue frosting. It felt like a plaza. From 2008 to 2013 on less than $2,000. Two 13 town meetings, signage and synthesis. Working with tourism committee on signage and tourism building project became clear we need a good site sign. These days any sign can cost thousands of dollars but since we have now created a historic site wouldn't it be great to have a real historic site permanent cast metal sign? This is the Jason Russell historic site sign. Would we qualify? We qualify. It's a site, not just a statue. We found the people. Colonial brass, the authorized manufacturer of replacements and replicas has the original molds. They'll make us one for only $2,500. Authentic, permanent and just in time. And there it is, Uncle Sam Plaza. Near this spot stood the birthplace of Samuel Uncle Sam Wilson. Patriot participant in 1775, his Troy packaging plant fed the soldiers of 1813. His popular nickname associated with U.S. on the barrels gave us the term Uncle Sam for the United States. We also found total support for our town management to return printing birthplace of Uncle Sam at the bottom of all official Arlington stationery. Happy 200th anniversary of the term Uncle Sam first heard in September 1813. We got two winners here, tourism and of course Ed Markey. And thank you all for your help and for giving us the opportunity to put this plan in action. We've had many helpers and we appreciate it. Thank you Mr. Committee and to the Uncle Sam Statue Committee. Any other reports or committees? Seeing none. Mr. Tosti Q. Move that Article 3 be laid upon the table. All in favor of laying Article 3 upon the table please say yes. Yes. Closed. Nope, okay. And that brings us to Article 25. As I said the other day I'm going to step down with 25 and Mr. O'Connor our assistance is going to take over Mr. O'Connor. Article 25. Thank you Mr. Moderator. I'd like to introduce the Director of Assessments, John Spidell who's going to give the explanation. You have the Selectman's Comment already written in the book in front of you. Thank you. Hello my name is John Spidell and I'm the Director of Assessments and I'm here to talk to you about more in Article 25 which is to establish a minimum value of $2,000 for personal property. I'm sure many of you are wondering what personal property is so I was going to read a definition from the Department of Revenue's website. Personal property generally includes tangible items that are not firmly attached to land or buildings and are not specifically designed to or of such size and bulk to be considered part of the real estate. This includes merchandise, furnishings and effects, machinery, tools, animals and equipment. For fiscal 2013, we had 647 personal property accounts for a total value of over $100 million which brought in roughly $1.3 million. What we're trying to do is eliminate some of these smaller accounts and we have 196 accounts valued under $2,000. The total value would be $228,000. The total tax dollars would be $3,100 and if you got a $2,000 tax value on personal property would amount to a $27.22 tax which would be $6.81 per quarter. We're hoping that the town will back this warrant article. Are you concluded? Yes. Before we begin the speakers, please disclose any conflicts of interest or personal financial involvement you may have in this article. We can follow the town by law. Thank you. The first speaker is Paul Bear. Paul Bear, precinct 13. Who gets taxed for personal property? I've never gotten a bill for it. In the town of Arlington, it's mainly businesses. The biggest personal property taxes that are given out at our two utilities and NSTAR's value for the town is $31 million. Basically, the top seven accounts account for approximately $70 million worth of value. What's a typical commercial establishment that now falls underneath this new threshold? It's basically a lot of the smaller businesses in town like therapists, landscapers. Would like one of the major restaurants fall under? They are. If you're a corporation, you don't get taxed on personal property. If you pay federal corporate taxes. Well, NSTAR is a corporation then. It's a utility though, so it's handled differently. And why is the $2,000 threshold picked? Why isn't it higher or lower? We could go up to $10,000, but the board felt that $2,000 was a good number. Thank you. Bill Hayner. Bill Hayner, precinct two. The pieces of property, are they all owned by different people? Yes. They're all separate owners. Correct. Thank you. Andrew Fisher. Andrew Fisher, precinct six. Just to be clear, the people who have less than $2,000 worth, would they pay a minimum on being that, would they pay a tax on $2,000 or would they pay no tax because they didn't reach the threshold? Under $2,000, you wouldn't pay a tax. Okay. Thanks. I'd like to mention that we picked the $2,000 number because we feel that producing the bills and having myself, the tax collector, the IT department, we have a vendor. By the time everybody looks at these bills and touches them four times a year, that it's just really not worth the money to generate it. Mr. Gilligan, please. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steven Gilligan, town treasurer. Just to provide a little additional information, even though the threshold is $2,000, the typical bill is not assessed value of $2,000, the average bill is less than $4. Remember, these bills go out quarterly and each of these bills is averaging $4, less than $4, about $3.85. You heard Mr. Spidel talk about some of the things that the town incurs with respect to costs. The IT departments involve the assessors' offices involved, my office is involved, its software, its printing, its cost of paper, its postage. It costs us more money to mail and try and collect these taxes than it's worth. We're actually running in the red $2,000 per year. It's even viable to look at an assessed value of $5,000, but my office and the assessors felt that $2,000 was a good place to start. And I'm available for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Dean Karman. Dean Karman, precinct 20. I have a 2001 Civic. I think my excise bill is $45. Is it worth collecting? Yes. But why? It's under $2,000. Oh, my wife's CRV is $450. So is that worth collecting? I should ask that first. Well, I would say yes it is. But with the excise tax bill, it's more something with the registry emotive vehicles than it is. So how much more incremental effort is there to get from an excise bill from my car to a personal property bill? With the excise tax bill, if it's under $5, they won't generate one. Okay, but the threshold isn't $5, it's $2,000. No, the threshold you're proposing. Well, it's actually a $2,000 value is a $22 bill, but a lot of these bills we're sending out are like $3 and $4. So that's really the thing though. It's anything under a $2,000 assessed value which translates into a $22 tax bill is what you're exempting. So really the exemption floor is $22, not... $2,000 of value, yeah, $22. Yes, so actually my $45 excise bill, which I think is the state minimum, isn't it? Wherever that number is about. It depends on the car. Yeah, but there is like a bottom. But I think it's... So the number is $22 that we're setting as a floor, not $2,000. Correct. Really. All right, thank you. David Beane. David Beane, precinct date. How does a piece of small personal property come to the attention of the assessors? Well, if you're running a business in town, you go up to the clerk's office and it's called Doing Business As. And we get a copy of the certificate and then we would go out and visit the property if it was a new... Suppose I have, say, a good piano. Could I get taxed on that? Is it a business? No. Does this affect only businesses? Yeah. I see. That hasn't been said yet. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Michelle DeRosier. Michelle DeRosier, precinct 19. Has it been explored to find a more efficient way to collect the taxes rather than quarterly, perhaps annually? I really can't answer that. I think that would be more Stephen's area of expertise. Mr. Moderator, can somebody answer that question, please? Yes. Mr. Gilligan, please answer the question. Please repeat the question. Has it been explored to find a more efficient way to collect the taxes rather than quarterly, perhaps annually? No, you can't do that. State law requires that all taxes, whether real estate or personal property, is either collected twice yearly, every six months or quarterly. There's no other alternative. The town determined that it would be on quarterly billing, I want to say 40, 50 years ago. It's a cash flow issue. It's a collection issue. But no, there's no other alternative. It's one or the other. Did you say every six months was an option? No, every six months is an option. Would that not lower the costs? No, not necessarily. Because it means that the burden is then placed on the town. What would happen is, with respect to cash flow right now, I'll use real estate as an example. We collect approximately $25 million every quarter for real estate taxes. If we went to six-month collections, granted we would be collecting 50, but we would cause the town to have a cash flow problem with respect to paying payroll and accounts payable. And it may come to a point at some time where we would have to borrow money. And then any savings due to mailing and postage would then be lost because the town's borrowing money. I'm not suggesting for real estate taxes, just in the case that we're discussing. The concept is similar. It would apply as well. Not necessarily for borrowing, but if you cannot run real estate at six months and personal property or vice versa at four months accordingly and then six months of personal property, once you make a decision you're locked in with respect to the state laws. It's one or the other. You can't split hairs. Thank you. Paul Schlickman. Paul Schlickman, precinct nine motion to terminate debate. Second. We have a motion to terminate debate. For all those who would like to terminate debate, please say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. I think that the motion carries. So we'll conclude with the vote. The vote is that the town hereby set a minimum state personal property tax exemption of $2,000 under section 5 5D of chapter 39 of the mass general laws. All those in favor, please say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. Motion carries. Thank you. That's an affirmative vote and Jim so declared it. The next item is the appropriation of the town budgets. Appropriation town budgets, Mr. Tosti. A couple of comments before we start. This is all on B1 in your finance committee report. A couple of differences that we did today with this. The fiscal 2013 is not the same as the fiscal 2013 in last year's finance committee report because we've gone through and added in all the pay raises and steps pay raises in 2013. So when you're looking in 2013 and 2014 it's sort of apples and apples. So that's one difference. And the other is occasionally you will see an unused salary reserve down the bottom that's because when the things were originally done it was just sort of a 3% number but when we actually started adding the numbers into each of the salaries we occasionally came up with a little surplus. Those surpluses in this fiscal year in other words 13 when the fiscal year ends those surpluses will just all go back into the general fund for free cash. We stand ready to answer any questions that you may have at any time either myself or the manager or department heads. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. We're going to handle the budgets the same way we have for the past several years. We'll go through I'll read out the name of a particular department's budget if someone wants to discuss it you'll out hold then we'll go back to discuss those individual budgets and then when we're done vote the whole budget as a unified total budget. So the first one again they made them really small finance committee board of selectmen town manager human resources informational technologies, the IT budget hold budget 6 comptroller, 7 treasurer collector, 8 postage 9 board of assessors, 10 legal, 11 town clerk, 12 board of registrars 13 parking 14 planning and community development 15 hold really got to make these bigger I can't see them 16 zoning board of appeals hold on that 17 public works 18 community safety 19 inspections 20 education 21 libraries 22 health and human services 23 retirement 24 insurance 25 reserve fund 26 water and sewer wait that is a reserve fund water and sewer someone wants to hold that B recreation Ed Burns arena council on aging transportation excuse me hold youth services division that's it someone wanted to speak on zoning board of appeals who is that we will go back and talk about them we got through them all the ones people yelled hold on where are they wait a second I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't flick back enough pages board of selectmen sorry thank you I just wanted to make sure there may be a type of graphical error on this that we should correct before we vote it I notice that in the personal services summary there's a noted change of less 11,522 but in the personal services breakout I don't see that reduction accounted for and in fact the total personal services and the breakout a few lines down is up 2.5 8% you need to combine personal services which are included under B election in town meeting along with the detail of personal services under the selectmen's office and that totals to the total personal services at the top thank you anything else on selectmen seeing none the next one that was held was information the IT department Mr. Loretty and then Mr. Leonard thank you Mr. Loretty I had a question about the expense line item for information technology and I'm wondering does that item cover software that's used by the departments within the town or are the departmental software purchases covered elsewhere and I'll tell you in particular I'm wondering about the board of assessors software Mr. Good do you want to field that David Good chief technology officer the maintenance of the software packages is covered in my operating budget the purchases of the software is held in a capital line item thank you Mr. Marder I guess well Mr. Good is here just trying to figure out whether I should ask this question to the board of assessors and I'm wondering I noticed that the board of assessors that the public might see online has a new interface from patriot properties and I'm trying to find out whether that was something that the IT department was responsible for or was that a assessors decision patriot properties is the vendor that manages the assessor database they have a variety of different front ends the front end that is currently on site is a module that we purchased from them through the IT department through the IT department at the request of the assessor I guess what I'm wondering is there any plans to come up with a more user friendly front end in that module because in my opinion the current front end has considerably less functionality than the previous version that was out there that I believe was created by volunteer and I'm wondering how many gas stations are in town and if you're doing things like trying to find out how many gas stations are in town with the old front end you could do it in about two seconds with the new one it perhaps would take you 20 minutes and I'm wondering within this budget are there any plans to bring back the old functionality yes there is is that budgeted in FI 214 thank you thank you sir Mr. moderator John Leonard precinct 17 Mr. moderator in past town meetings I've noticed in the budget where all the figures are usually when there is a position removed we would see something that would denote it in the section of that budget which would say like 5 and then parentheses 4 which would tell the common person to take your position I call town meeting members to look at page 10 and on page 10 section 3 two positions in the information technology department have been deleted programmer and data processing administrative assistant but yet if we look at B2 in the section for information technology is listed programmer and data processing administrative assistant with a salary attached to it for 2014 and not showing any kind of downgrading to leading or position being removed I wonder if we can get a clarification on that please Mr. Tosti the format of the budget you're talking about the reclassifications that we did in a previous article I'm talking about on page 10 it says by deleting the following positions in certain departments two positions are named in the information and technology department but yet a salary is labeled for them for the upcoming season of 2014 on page B2 when the budgets were created that hadn't been voted so the new budgets for next year are going to be the new budget so can we say then that there is no programmer and no data processing administrative assistant down for 2014 Mr. Good Chief Technology Officer the program of position has been reclassified to a network desktop operations which is a position that Ruth Lewis the controller and I had shared and that position is being moved into my group full time so what you'll see in my group in the past was half of that salary for the administrator and now my department will absorb all of that so that's sort of an even swap the program of position although the title has been eliminated we kept the position reclassified the function and kept it in the same job category band so again because I'm not the sharpest tool in the box both those positions as we see it in B2 have zero salary no Adam Chaps Langtown Manager so what's happened is basically there were positions that were reclassified so on page 10 you pointed out two positions that were deleted from the classification plan but earlier in that warrant article you'll see two additions to the classification plan which represent the new job title for those reclassified positions so as Mr. Good just mentioned those two positions will basically remain similar to what they are but they've been renamed and reclassified so they are funded there's no positions being eliminated simply the classification plan will be cleaned up to be current with what the actual job titles will be I understand with it that the money is being changed over I'm just saying that it's just too bad we couldn't see what the new names were if you follow what I mean I follow that, yeah because it shows that a later run in the budget which I won't get into right now it happens in other sections of the budget also as Chairman Tosti mentioned I think it would have been presumptive for us to change the name of the title before town meeting voted on it thank you Steven Harrington increasing 13 I just have some informational questions Mr. Moderator I'm looking at this information technology budget and I notice that there's a little footnote it says additional 900,000 in school budget and so 600,000 is on the town side and 900,000 is on the school side I should read this I believe so is it true that on the school side will we see a breakdown like we do here and vote independently on the school side section of the information technology budget Mr. Good is shaking his head no yeah he's going to elucidate further hi Dave Good CTO the school IT budget is voted on with the rest of the school departments in mass so my understanding was that they combined information technology which I thought was a great idea I think it's worthwhile it makes a lot of sense but I would have expected that we can talk about the detail and see the detail and vote on the detail here theoretically we could change some of the detail but we're not able to do that on the school side because it's sort of the edry format and so when the departments were first combined was it more of a 50-50 split or is it a trend that more of the IT budget is going to be sort of an untouchable bucket on the school side can you give me a little history please untouchable meaning I don't understand that part of the question I think it means untouchable the town meeting votes their budget in mass we can't tell them how to spend the particular dollars I would think if you want to talk to them you got to go to their meetings and say whatever okay so just when the budgets were first combined for information technology was it the same 90-60 split that we see here the budgets were never combined the department the department spending I think he's referring to the entire department budget between the school and the town they were never combined under a budget the school budget for IT sits in the school budget and the town is as we see it here and they've both been relatively stable in two year and all they've both been relatively stable in two years the school IT budget is growing based on some of the technology upgrades that we've done in the infrastructure arena and the towns will grow a little bit for the same reasons and I guess part of what I'm saying is if I look at the percent change I look to all the budgets this is a 21% change so it's not small and it's known not to be able to look at most of it sort of at the same level and try to figure is that also a 21% change on the school budget side now the 21% change reflected in the town budget represents a request for a new position which is a systems analyst it represents the half of the salary being moved to my budget for the administrator the $12,000 for salary increases and longevity I think it's $106,000 so Mr. Moderator would it be appropriate to ask about the systems analyst because I see that as 70% of that change what is the program is in systems analysts so are you developing software or what's the role of the systems analyst so the role of the systems analyst will be to assist departments in their development to be automated for efficiency purposes so we have a sort of a hole in our department where we don't have an individual that can actually do process flow work with departments that don't have technology originally and don't have people with technology skill in the department thank you very much you're welcome Mr. Court can I ask anyone else on IT seeing none we're going to move on next one that was held was Treasurer Collector who wanted to talk about that Mr. I want to say Coke but I don't think it is thank you Mr. Moderator Peter Fuller Precinct 20 in the Treasurer budget under personnel services we list a position of Treasurer showing 4% salary increase for fiscal 2014 my understanding from looking at the Treasurer's website is that this position is presently vacant are there plans to fill it Mr. Gilligan do you plan to fill that position thank you we need redundancy up there next line management analyst shows a 8.6% salary increase rather than 3.5% for the whole department what's going on Mr. Gilligan can you come up and explain the changes in your budget thank you Mr. yes the management analyst position increase includes not only a salary increase due to collective bargaining but also a step increase with respect to the paying classification plan and it just so happens that that doubled up this time around okay thank you that's clear thank you very much thank you Mr. Fuller thank you Mr. Gilligan anyone else wish to discuss the treasurer Ms. Mahan Ms. Serena Mehman Precinct 21 I would like to know why the expenses have gone up on this from for the 2014 did I miss a step here Mr. Toss he's going to give it a go first Mr. Gilligan there's two reasons but the major one is that an expense which was formally netted out of tax takings is no longer that cannot longer be done in other words in process of tax takings the expenses were netted out of the collections and the money went into the general fund the department of revenue which is the regulatory authority said you can't do that anymore you have to appropriate the money so we had to appropriate $11,000 in this budget and that's the lion share of that so we're really not spending any more money it's just instead of taking in money netting out the expenses and putting it into the general fund we're taking the whole thing into the general fund and we have to appropriate the money here so that's really the lion share of it okay that's all thanks thank you anyone else on the treasurer Madam I just have a question about something that shows up here in the last few years isn't even $5,000 but because in the past it seems like it ought to be varied and we should know what it is and it comes up in some other places parking does the same thing so I just wondered if someone could account for what that means Mr. Gilligan you can speak to your budget if it hits on the other ones all the better thank you Mr. Mario overtime is generally dependent on the fixed amount but overtime is really based upon tax titles tax liens for delinquent accounts notices of foreclosures some years we're able to get that down through aggressive contacting of taxpayers and some years it's a higher amount and I'll give you an example earlier on we had tax liens and notices of foreclosures for 65 accounts but just last year it was 165 accounts so that makes additional effort in order to deal with those delinquent tax accounts and that's why you'll see variations in overtime what I'm confused about is that I'm not seeing variations you're not seeing the variations because if we have any funds left over in salaries for whatever reason the finance committee asks us to do an internal transfer to accommodate for that rather than appropriate the money or ask for a transfer there are years where we have actually gone for a transfer but we're not asking for that up front in the budget we wait to see what happens near the end of the fiscal year for example right today was the tax day for real estate taxes so starting tomorrow we are looking at how many delinquent accounts we have and we will contact individuals by phone and by mail in an attempt to get those taxes paid prior to the close of the fiscal year and advertising those accounts as delinquent now I can tell you we probably have about 700 tax delinquencies it's our intention over the next two to three weeks or it was certainly by the end of May to get that as low as possible in previous years we've got it under under 100 two years ago it was about 201 last year it was 165 so that always fluctuates if we have funds left over in salaries the finance committee asks us to do an internal transfer if we don't go to the finance committee and ask for a transfer out of their reserve fund but we appropriate the same amount of money and overtime each budget year okay so once you hit 5,000 it goes to salary once we hit no once we hit 5,000 then you're right we look at do we have any available funds in salary and or do we go to the finance committee and ask for a transfer great thank you you're welcome alright Mr. McCory then after Mr. McCory we'll take our ten minute break if there's no one else for Treasurer just a quick question for the Treasurer Mr. Moderator given that article 25 has passed what's the impact to the to this budget in the Treasurer's opinion I think the costs were exceeding 5,000 so thank you Mr. McCory Mr. Moderator the $5,000 figure for the cost of the 197 personal property bills that this town just exempted was not just from the Treasurer's budget it included expenses and costs from the assessors the information technology budget the collectors budget and the Treasurer's budget we looked at the impact on labor we looked at the impact on cost of goods cost of printing cost of running the software program and that added up to the $5,000 will save us some time but I really can't quantify that thank you Mr. Loretty thank you Mr. Moderator I have a another question about this non-existent deputy treasurer and Mr. Gilligan mentioned that that position is currently vacant I was wondering for how long has it been vacant the position has been vacant for a year and a half I think getting this question relates to the I think one of the questions of the previous speaker in this budget I think it's important to recognize that the 2011 through 2013 numbers are not actual expenditures they are budgeted amounts and what I'm curious about Mr. Moderator is there anyone who can tell us when I look at a budget I'm used to seeing not only what was budgeted in the past but the actual expenditure and I'm wondering is there any way for town meeting members to find out easily how much has been expended for the previous year for each of these line items Mr. Tosti as director of finance committee head of the finance committee can that be achieved because that would cut across all budgets that's right yeah I don't see why not the budget that the manager submits to the finance committee in January has two years of actuals and we look over that and that budget that's available electronically so I don't see why that can't be done years ago we did try this probably in the mid to late 90's we had two years of actuals so it was two years of actuals and two years of budgeted and it just it didn't work out very well it was more confusing than actually having the budgeted amount so we went back to the budgeted amounts thank you I'm aware of the manager's report and it has a lot of good information but the format's not quite the same and I always struggle to try to match up corresponding items I would hope we could try it again somehow thank you anyone else on the treasurer budget take our ten minute break boys across team is selling goodies out there help yourself Board of Assessors who wanted to talk about Board of Assessors there's still already did you come on let's go where's Harry who wanted to speak about Board of Assessors got ten seconds no one wants to talk about Board of Assessors they must have left the building alright who wants to talk about legal someone held legal Mr. Harrington Stephen Harrington precinct 13 so I'm not sure if this is where it would be so you know I'm really just asking this question because all these questions because I'm a little bit confused about where certain expenses would show up in these budgets as we probably all know or maybe we don't allington has a civil rights lawsuit of us a large one that goes to trial in June and so Mr. Moderator where would expenses for that lawsuit on the town side show up in the legal budget Mr. Tosti first then Mr. Rice unless Mr. Rice wants to go first thank you Mr. Moderator Julianna Rice Town Council any expenses on the town side associated with that case come from the legal expense budget which is the second line that you say so can you Mr. Moderator how much have we spent in fiscal year 13 on legal expenses surrounding the civil rights lawsuit 12 and 13 and I'm not exactly sure where the dividing line is but the total is about $17,000 and how much have we incurred that hasn't been expended so $17,000 for the complete preparation and expenses on the town side on the town side does that include any insurance expense so could maybe Mr. Moderator I don't know who the proper person would be to explain I guess we're insured up to a certain amount I'd like to know does that show up under the legal expenses too or is that insurance policy was that used to pay part of the expenses for that lawsuit the school committee holds insurance policy with a limit of $1 million expenses associated with the defense of both the school committee and various individual school side personnel have been paid out of that insurance policy that has nothing to do with the legal department budget the expenses I'm talking about are expenses incurred by me in defending the town which is also a defendant my understanding was that the court ruled that the school department just being a department of the town wasn't involved in the litigation and were dropped as a defendant it was all the town of Ellington I don't agree with that characterization the school committee not the department was dropped as a defendant at the motion to dismiss stage and the reason for the court's ruling was that those claims were precluded because they had been brought up previously in a state court case so we want to find out how much has been expended of the insurance in fighting this lawsuit I'll have to wait for the school budget Mr. Moderator I mean how much did the insurance company itself spend council Rice mentioned if I wanted to know how much has been expended out of that million dollar policy I'd have to wait until the school budget or I just don't know the appropriate time to ask that question something with privy to Mr. Rice how much insurance company has spent on the defense I don't know the number exactly now I don't think it would be in the school committee budget I think it would be outside that process so when would be the appropriate place to ask that question if not now well that's the kind of thing I asked people to give Mr. Rice a week or so heads up so she could get a real answer for you I guess she could try and get it and have it for the next meeting I believe the question was asked of Attorney Rice I have given an estimate of what I think I'm not privy to that information because the town is not an insured entity I've given that estimate is probably somewhere between four and five hundred thousand dollars okay and a follow up question Mr. Moderator if for instance we were to lose my understanding is that it could be on the order of seven and a half million dollars would that show up in this legal budget or where would that where's the appropriate time to ask that question it would not show up in the legal budget Mr. Tosti if the town got a judgment against it how would you get the money to pay it where is it budgeted for a potential judgment I'm taking it out of the select one's expense account but no there is no money specifically set aside for this lawsuit we have we usually have a certain amount of money set aside in the general spreadsheet for court judgments but that's a fairly small amount of money if there was a court judgment against the town for say several million dollars probably the first place we'd go would be the town stabilization fund which it now is close to three million would we have to have a special time meeting Mr. Moderator to expand those funds oh yes any appropriation from the stabilization fund requires a town meeting authorization now my understanding is that the proposition two and a half doesn't allow for the judgments against the town constrained by proposition two and a half would we be raising the taxes on the general populace to cover that stabilization fund withdrawal you know there's no automatic exemption from prop two and a half for a court judgment so it would either have to come from the reserves of the town and if those were not sufficient one way that can be done is probably special legislation to be able to borrow it and pay it back over say five years or something like that would be another way to do it I think there was a court settlement for a substantial amount of money in a city near here and I think that's how they handled it many years ago so in the case of so we didn't we haven't budgeted for anything the only reason I'm sort of pressing this point is 30 seconds left is that this case is coming to court in June is there a place in the budget now where any reserves have been built up or put aside in the case of a judgment against the town no we have not put aside any particular reserves for this court case what we do and this is really the purpose of the permanent stabilization fund is for emergency so that would be the first place we go to and that would require probably if this goes to trial in say June and something happened very quick which I can't anticipate it would you know we'd need a special town meeting to go to that fund thank you very much anything else on the legal on the sports fronts the Celtics of 192-96 Red Sox 9-1 over the Blue Jays top of the ninth and the Bruins won 4-1 thank you Mr. Schlickman anything else on legal seeing none planning and community development department someone wanted to talk about that Mr. Loretty thank you Mr. Modder I have a question about the trend in the budget and looking between 2011 and 2014 it seems to have increased by roughly $180,000 from about $235,000 to $420,000 in change yet based on my knowledge of the people in the planning department I'm trying to figure out whether they're actually new positions created or is this just a matter of shuffling around the funding I do understand that the assistant director has now become the economic development coordinator or slash assistant director but I still just trying to understand what positions represent that increase in spending Mr. Tosti well if you track them along of course the big change was between fiscal 11 and fiscal 12 and a lot of that is cutbacks in federal government for community development block grant money so positions that were formally entirely paid for with community development block grant money are now being shifted into the planning budget otherwise they would have to be eliminated I think the director of housing and disability would be one for example so that would probably be the major positions the major reason but I'm wondering those have we actually seen a change in the number of people working in the department over this period or is that really the same no I don't think so I think the positions were there but they were paid out of community development block grant money and as that has sort of gotten reduced we've either had to eliminate them or to move them into planning thank you anyone else under that department budget seeing none someone wanted the whole redevelopment board nobody wants to talk about it now zoning board of appeals who wanted to talk about that this is already okay look you four minutes under your old clock you could have left it Mr. moderate just a couple quick questions I'm wondering why there was a 22% increase in this appropriation from 2013 to 14 Mr. Trostey Mr. Chapter Lane wants so I don't care who wants to talk about it well the big reason is the principal cork and typist and I'm not quite sure for how long but there was a person in that position who deliberately was limited by his budget it was probably another public budget in how much he could make so he was willing to take a lower amount of money because if he took a higher amount he just he can't do that he'd lose it on his pension so that person finally left and they had to put in a person at the salary that was commencement with the number of hours that was required so we got a break for a few years by this person who was willing to work at a certain level that person left anybody else coming in working those hours would have to be paid at that higher level I'm curious is this position under the board of select I believe the zoning board of appeals is under the town manager yeah I think so even though the board of appeals itself is under the select well all those kind of Adam you can address this if I'm wrong but everybody reports to the manager and he's their boss even though they're appointed by the selectman right yeah I mean the certain budgets which are technically under the board of selectman but it's really controlled by others I think the zoning board is one for example the parking department is technically under the control of the board of selectman but the delegation has been to the town treasurer so he basically handles that budget I guess I'm wondering why that person is physically located where he or she is and typically in a town someone doing the zoning functions would be part of the planning department as I understood it the former person in that position was actually doing building inspections part of the time as well which is a very odd odd way of organizing things Adam chapter lane town manager I have no knowledge that the gentleman that Mr. Tosti was speaking about was performing building inspections in my time here this position was this position has been located in the building inspector's division as you've mentioned we've never had any internal discussions about moving it into the planning department it's certainly something we could have a discussion about I wouldn't characterize it as odd but it's nothing that we've had any discussions about thanks well I thought this individual didn't inspection on my own home so I'm not quite sure what to say but thank you Mr. moderator anyone else on zoning board of appeals seeing none someone wanted to talk about public works okay Mr. Trembly first and then we'll get Mr. Climan and then Mr. Warden Ed Trembly precinct 19 I'm asking about the annual question about salt how much salt did we Mr. moderator Director of Public Works this year we used approximately 8500 tons of salt at a cost of about $560,000 8500 tons of salt has the town ever thought about using some of the alternatives which alternatives well I mean there's other chemicals the state uses some much nastier chemicals than salt but we have investigated there is a liquid brine mix that you can apply you need to purchase special vehicles and a tank to mix it we have looked at it it's a you might get some cost savings on labor but the material itself costs more it's something we are currently looking at but there is no other than the salt product we use right now there is not a great alternative just yet now are you looking at calcium sodium chloride brine salt brine or not magnesium or calcium or any of the other I think we were looking at all the different options yes okay because it's my understanding that the liquid brines stay on the road better they don't bounce off I mean I know after some of these snowstorms there's kind of a salt fog in the air unmassive you're correct the liquid product does stick to the road better the challenges with the liquid product is the road surface has to be a certain temperature and if the humidity is a certain percentage it turns into a very slick material it's going to be more troublesome than beneficial so there are challenges to using that product and those challenges are based on weather and temperature conditions I saw in the capital budget you have $17,000 for a new sander body is that going to have metering devices in it the sander bodies we buy for existing vehicles the metering devices depend upon the sander body itself and the vehicle it's being installed in those metering devices they work with the vehicle's computer to judge the vehicle's speed a lot of our older vehicles are not necessarily adaptable to that technology readily available so the newer vehicles yes we would like to install those metering devices and any new vehicle we purchase large snow fighter we better regulate the application of salt but it's a challenge to put it into the older vehicle so when you say a sander body for instance taking the sander off of one of the old snow fighters and putting a new sander on it I did see on the capital budget that you have $330,000 for a catch basin cleaner it's a catch basin cleaner slash jet truck we use it to clear sewer blockages stone drain blockages it's used for excavation purposes for construction so this is a vector not the clamshell truck are you replacing one of the trucks? we are replacing an existing back truck that is older and undersized for what we need to do so the new one is going to be a ten wheeler the old one is a six wheeler do you guys get to every catch basin? we get to just about every catch basin annually which we are going to have to ramp up based on new regulations coming out from the Department of Environmental Protection so we will be there will be a schedule by which all the catch basins will have to be cleaned out or inspected annually so even some of the more obscure ones on some of the little side roads you will be looking at them? there are no doubt that there are some that we probably miss if anyone has a catch basin that for some reason the public works doesn't get to it we would be great to hear from the public so that we can get to those but any that we know about on our schedule we would get to okay alright, thank you very much thank you gentlemen Mr. Kleinman thank you Mr. Matoita Stuart Kleinman, Precent One I rise to say I cannot have enough praise for the Department of Public Works of course we know that we have snow storms and that we need to have plowing done but this past year we had storms that we did not expect and in East Arlington for example we had a microburst that microburst put us in pretty dire straits there were trees that came down there were roads that were blocked Mike and his staff I cannot tell you how quickly they were out there they were clearing the roads they were blocking roads, they were working and they made sure that we who were in dire straits were okay and whatever we put in the budget is basically not enough, it's not enough for any employee because our employees are really something I don't know whether other folks in other towns work as well as our Department of Public Works but I was just absolutely impressed and I can say personally we had a tree that came down incredibly close to our house and within 24 hours they removed it and they they were just amazing so thank you to our Department of Public Works Mr. Wharton Mr. Moderator John Wharton I would also like to say that the Public Works we had a situation in our street I think it was after the hurricane and there was a big tree that was apparently wobbling around under the ground and disrupting the water and gas pipes and at 11 or 12 o'clock the Public Works fellows and the fire truck and the gas company were out there working on it and they took care of it and it didn't blow up which I'm sure they're very grateful for but I also wanted to say that I don't know who laid the new brick sidewalk on this Academy's side of town hall but it looks very nice and I also have a brick sidewalk and when I was coming home tonight I noticed that one of the bricks was disintegrated and there was a little rectangular space where there should have been a brick and so I thought well I'll do it later but then I thought no I'll do it now I wouldn't take that long so I went to the backyard and I found a brick and I got a trowel and I dug out the old brick and put in the new one and it didn't fit and I had to dig out some more and I pounded it in and got some sand and put it around and I I figured it was day-minimus Mr. moderator so it's now you couldn't tell where that went in and so that sidewalk is now really safe to walk on but then we came down to town hall tonight we counted nine bricks nine non-bricks rectangular holes in the pavement just from the corner up to the front steps and I was wondering if somehow there wasn't somebody I mean in the town who could maybe do what I did it took me 12 minutes and I would not put myself down as a young or competent workman but that's what it took me to do this stuff and if there were 10 of them that would be two hours if they worked at the same not very rapid pace I do so that we don't have those holes in our brick sidewalk in front of town hall and I just wonder if maybe somebody could find a way to do that thank you we would address that problem Mr. Rotemaker Mike Rotemaker director of public works I'll have someone take a look at that tomorrow or at least schedule the work brick sidewalks are a difficult to maintain and as you noted sometimes as you start you unearth more problems and getting it to matches and always that easy we will have someone look at right away thank you Mr. Harrington Stephen Stephen Harrington precinct 13 so I have a question related to the snow removal my understanding is that for years we used the sim site as a snow graveyard and this year we used apparently an athletic field behind the stop and shop next to the high school so it looks like it needs to be remediated I don't know if anyone's looked there but it was pretty well destroyed and those were active playing fields is that in the current DPW budget to repair those fields Mr. moderator Mr. Chaplain is going to tell us how he's going to fix them so funds for the remediation as you mentioned of those excuse me those will either come out of the DPW budget or potentially take the form of a reserve fund transfer in FY 13 through the finance committee how much does the expected cost we're expecting the mitigation costs to be somewhere between 50 and 100,000 compared to the costs of trucking the snow out of town which are estimated between 100,000 and 150,000 so that property that was used as school property is that correct that's my understanding so how were you authorized to use school property for non-school use so I thought and maybe this is just my misunderstanding that the procedure was for a different department in the town to use school property for non-school use that the school committee voted it as a surplus property then the town meeting decided which department got it and then it would be turned over to another department in the town how was this school property determined to be used for non-school use so the process during the storm several discussions occurred between myself the director of public works and the superintendent in regards to our need for a very large storage area as you mentioned sims hospital was no longer available or the sims site was no longer available the reservoir parking lot was not nearly large enough there was really no other site available or currently no other site available in town so in speaking with the superintendent and understanding that we would be putting limitations on the spring use of the field we decided that for public safety and the clearing of the roads to remove the snow we would utilize that field so on this moderate is maybe a question for legal is that permissible that school property can be used for non-school use outside I know it can be categorized as an emergency but does snow in Ellington in the winter and it's got to go somewhere and what it sounds like is that that's the only place next year that when it snows you'll be putting snow as well so you know is this now the permanent snow graveyard no in fact and I'll defer to town council for any comment she wants to make on the permissibility however just today myself and the director of public works were having a conversation about working both within the borders of Ellington outside the borders of Ellington for finding as you've termed it an alternative snow graveyard if we're going to remediate the field as we've discussed there would be no plans to again use it next year and now part of that remediation we know that that's a is that a capped landfill site it is so is there any mitigation expense you know for the DEP to come out and inspect it looks like is when I look at the field you can see you know the irrigation system was ripped up it's you know it's piled pretty high it's a you know it's obviously a site that so is that been reported to the DEP it has been in our private consultant that handles the numerous landfill caps around town has come out and inspected and has found no serious mitigation issues to be addressed okay thank you thank you Mr. Bayer thank you mr. moderator Paul Bayer precinct 13 last July we started the new trash pick up rules where you had to have a recycling bin out and there was a limit of 3 well whatever 100 pounds of or whatever I can't remember what the specifics were 100 gallons of trash I'd like to know how that has gone over with the public and are people following the rules have are people complaining about it have people been denied pick up because they've had too much trash or not a recycling bin Mr. Rademacher Mike Rademacher director of public works when the new rules initially became policy we did have a certain level of complaints or folks calling not quite clear on the different regulations how many barrels what kind of recycling so forth and so on so there was a bit of a learning curve the first few months I would say that that did quiet down considerably and to the point where we don't get nearly as many calls now on limits or recycling requirements there were also initially some folks that did not realize that there could clear the apartment out or when they moved the line the sidewalk with them belong as they didn't want to take with them and we're concerned that that wouldn't get picked up when we further explain the process and that the program allowed for a small fee to have additional waste picked up that seemed to ease the pain there so I guess there was a learning curve but currently it seems to be running a lot more smoothly and do we believe that this whole program has helped that 38% increase or decrease in trash that Mr Gordon showed earlier the numbers we have now as a trend towards the first full year of this contract are very positive we're showing a significant decrease in solid waste collection in addition to the actual collection contract itself being more affordable to the town thank you Peter Fiori I have a question about street cleaning and I too want to praise public works there was a broken gate down at Thorndike field a couple of years ago and they came right down and fixed it and they did a good job days are street cleaning down and then the precinct to the area of market street Dorothy there's a lot of commuters that parked there some from Arlington some from out of town I'm sure the folks from out of town probably have no idea when the streets going to be cleaned so I was just wondering if it's reasonable within the budget to maybe get some temporary signage posted there in advance so that those folks in that really limited area could get their streets so I told me he never gets it clean in front of his house because the commuters are always parked there is that something that could be done the temporary signage in advance on out of town commuters when it's going to be cleaned sure it is something that can be done it is fairly costly in time consuming we sweep quite a few streets at a time and to post all those neighborhoods with enough signage to get compliance would be extensive we have struggled with that that area specifically because of commuter parking and there is no great solution we've discussed potential night work but obviously that's disruptive to folks sleeping so we do constantly think about that and try to develop a way where we can do a better job in that area where the on-street parking is worse but the posting of signs would be a significant cost okay if you maybe just consider again that kind of limited square of Margaret Dorothy Burch within that it was just those couple of blocks but all right thank you thank you Mr. O'Connor James O'Connor precinct 19 I have a question for Mr. Rademacher regarding this spreading of salt and preparation for the storms we previously discussed how the town policy was rather than plow to prepare the streets first with salt substances and several members of my precinct contacted me regarding the metering systems because they found that their properties were getting covered with salt and they actually reported that there was property damage to their lawns and is there any way to accommodate the needs for spreading management in areas where the streets are narrow and may cover their property rather than the street director public works it is a difficult process that it's not much of an exact science but one of the ways that we can do that is to have this other technology in the sander vehicles the salting vehicles that control the rate at which the spinner applies it based on vehicle speed so there is some technology that can be incorporated into newer vehicles which we are actively pursuing okay great thank you thank you gentlemen in the back did you have your hand up I guess not I thought just thought you raised your hand before Miss Sharps Stamps Susan Stamps precinct 3 and a member of the tree committee and I was wondering if Mr. Rademacher could speak to what percentage of the $9 million budget it goes for trees the purchase and planting of trees and also give a very brief report on the state of trees in Arlington and how many were losing every year and how many were replacing and what the plan going forward might be thank you can you give us that information Mr. Rademacher I will try Mike Rademacher director of public works so I'm trying to remember exactly the questions here trees planted currently our program is we plant approximately 100 to 125 trees a year which is regrettably less than we lose a year we probably remove I don't know the number out my head but due to disease or storms we remove on average about 150 the past few years has been greater than that we had a hurricane sandy the microburst some other storms I can't remember the names of so in recent years we have not kept up with the lost trees to mitigate for that in the budget this year is an additional $40,000 which we would use specifically for the replacement of street trees and we would contract that out so that the work we can guarantee that work gets done by a vendor sometimes the difficulty we have with our own staff is we're busy maintaining the trees we have now and don't have the manpower to be planting trees all the time the 120 or 125 trees we plant is with town forces but this additional money in the budget is dedicated solely to hiring a planting program as far as the percentage of my budget that is dedicated to planting trees I don't know if it taught my head the percentage I would say it's small how many trees or 40,000 get us if you're going to contract when we, if the town was to plant a tree we basically the cost of the tree is about $100 and then whatever our labor is to contract it out you're probably talking closer to $200 a tree to buy and install the tree under that program though the tree would have about a one year warranty so if it failed over the course of a year it would be replanted again at the vendor's expense okay thanks Mr. Sean Harrington Mr. already James Sean Harrington Precinct 15 in Precinct 15 on Morningside Drive near the intersection of Teresa's Circle in Morningside Drive exactly there's a very narrow passageway where there's a speed bump that's not painted at all if you're driving at night it's very hard to see and if you don't know it's there I feel bad for your car and every winter it seems to get moved by the stolen removal trucks and it's just moved back my question is whether or not it's an appropriate task whether or not his department can fix it or if it's possible that they can fix it at all what can you do about that speed bump Mr. Rademacher Mike Rademacher Director of Public Works you'll have to help me out here is this a private way no it is not to my knowledge it's Morningside Drive or that part of Morningside Drive is not a private way to my knowledge there are no speed bumps on public ways so we'd have to look into it if it's a problem on a public way then we can address that and either look into why it's there in the first place or fix it permanently if that seems to be the correct answer but if it's a private way we don't have a say in its maintenance Thank you I have questions in a couple of different areas but since somebody's already started talking about trees I was wondering if either someone from the tree committee or DBW can give an estimate of the total number of trees that we lost last year in the storms Mr. Tosti is going to know the number of trees lost approximately in the hurricane and in the microburst was approximately 200 Mr. Modder I had spoken to someone from the tree committee and the number I was getting I think was closer to four or five hundred and it really concerns me that there's such a huge discrepancy is there anyone from the tree committee who can answer that question Mr. Tremblay you want the tree committee can you answer that question if you can't it's okay I don't want to put you on the spot at Tremblay precinct 19 it was my understanding that there was roughly 165 trees or 150 trees per event per big events you know about 150 from Sandy and 150 from the microburst but I have definitely not putting my hand on a Bible to swear to that thank you Mr. Chaplain might know more Adam Chaplain town manager so the four to five hundred number that's the first time I've heard that figure but based on what Mr. Tremblay just said it would seem conceivable to me that the number we've been reporting as 200 for downed trees was strictly a tree that fell down and was removed there was a great deal of other trees that were impacted losing limbs or number of limbs so there could be some you know haze in the communication about how many trees were damaged and how many actually fell down and would need to be replanted that could be the root of some of the difference in the numbers thank you I appreciate the additional budgeting or monies in the budget for replacing trees this year as I did kind of a rough calculation in my head at $200 for a contractor tree $200 for a a town planted tree there still seems to be a lot of trees that were lost that will not be covered by this $40,000 is there the expectation that additional funding will continue in the future to try to replace all those trees that were lost and will anyone be tracking that either DPW or the tree committee Mr. Chaplain Adam Chaplain town manager so currently what DPW is doing is replacing trees that have both been lost based on the storms that are also being requested by residents who want the tree there are some instances where there's a resident who may have been glad the tree fell down in front of their home based on any number of reasons however our the current plan or my plan would be to submit in both next year's budget and in subsequent budgets amounts to get back to where we need to be based on requests of citizen for trees so I would consider this to be a multi-year attempt to recover from last year's storms is the message though to people out there that they need to make a request if they want a tree replaced it would certainly help us if they made a request to know that they certainly want a tree there thank you Mr. Mauder just a quick question on a completely different part of the budget under administration there are a couple of part-time positions one is the recycling coordinator and one is the energy manager and if I remember right when discussion of those positions came up at town meeting one of the justifications for them was that the energy savings or the increased recycling would pay for those positions and I'm wondering whether anyone has done that analysis or has planned to do it that is specifically looking at whether the increased cost of hiring into those positions has you know it's directly attributable to any reduction in energy consumption or increase in recycling that would justify those costs Mr. Rademacher has Mike Rademacher director of public works for the recycling coordinator position that position was and is still instrumental in helping to roll out this new recycling and trash program we have which currently we're estimating of savings of about $100,000 this year alone and which which covers quite a bit that person's salary the energy managers position was just filled recently so we don't have any data yet on the results of that thank you Mr. Jamison thank you Mr. moderator according to Jamison precinct 12 just quickly I missed already's question I think the savings we've only institutionalized fully the recycling coordinator part-time position over the last several years and like Mr. Rademacher said instrumental for the committee to recycling committee to think entrepreneurial about additional things while the person in place Charlotte Milan takes care of the day-to-day things that Mr. Rademacher the savings of over $2 million from 10 years ago over that period of time I think speaks to the efficacy of the program I rose to speak about trees when I first moved the town there was a program that the DPW ran that I took advantage of where you could I don't know if adopt a tree or something but I was able to go down to the cemetery where behind the building there they had a whole bunch of trees in the ground they picked it up and I was able to get two very nice flowering pairs which have prospered on the berm in front of my house and it seems like a very cost effective mechanism of getting more trees out in town in replacement is that something Mr. Rademacher might consider re-instituting Mike Rademacher director of public works I am aware that in the past there was a program where residents could request a tree we obviously buy in bulk and get a good price and there was a program where residents could buy a tree at that price and it was discontinued but I'm more than happy to look into it I think it was discontinued when we were really really poor several years after I bought that maybe I mean it didn't cost the town any money the residents still paid for the tree I paid like 20 bucks a piece it was a great deal I'm happy to look into it Mr. Rademacher Thank you Mr. Moderator Bob Rademacher precinct 11 does anyone know what the cost to the town is for sidewalk repair from uprooted trees there aren't many residential areas that can walk around these days without tripping or falling over something it's usually a tree that has uprooted the sidewalk and then we have to go and replace it any idea what the annual cost on that may be Mr. Rademacher units of that Mike Rademacher director of public works it would be difficult to specifically break out the cost of that we have a budget of about $240,000 to repair potholes failing sidewalks that the town takes care of aside from when we have larger projects contracted out so it's a portion of that I would say it's a significant portion of that that we use to repair sidewalks on an annual basis Thank you Thank you Mr. Trembly for a second time Mr. Moderator if I could board some meeting here a little bit a previous speaker asked about trees and I would like to put on my tree committee hat and make a blatant appeal for the trees please fund there is a fund that's handled by the public works department into which private citizens can donate to the trees please fund and that little pot of money and it does have some money in it does in fact get used to replant trees and generally help out with the tree situation so we did lose a lot of trees last year we are working with the DPW and trying to get some more trees planted and restore not only the trees that were lost but also to take out to replace them with some of the trees like Norway maples are an invasion of species and they don't grow that well so we are trying to replace them with trees that are native and also do well given that we flood their roots with salt and they don't have much water because the tree strips are narrow they don't get a lot of water through the pavement so the environment for a tree to grow here in town is not always the best and so the DPW and the tree committee both do really do work at getting species that will do well as best it could be expected and also we are also taking a long view towards not having the trees interfere with the power lines too thank you for your question Mr. Stamps a second time pass and that leaves Mr. Chappett thank you Mr. moderator Roland Chappett precinct 12 I'll be very brief the trees please program really works for four or five years in a row we bought trees through the program for $100 a piece and planted most of them over Robin's farm and they do very well and so we would like to make sure that the program is continued because we've got some ideas on some additional trees in certain places up there around the farm so it's a very good program worked very well thank you and Mr. McCory please be trees to death I'll also be brief I just want to acknowledge DPW I made a number of requests last year since this time meeting for places on the bike path and they were all affixed these were places where the tree roots had basically uplifted the tarmac so nice job thank you anybody else who wants to talk about community safety who wanted to talk about community safety sir Len Cardin precinct 20 before I start I just wanted to ask with the superintendent being here tonight in the hour do we want to take the consider taking the education budget out of order well hopefully we're going to get through the rest of the budgets and get the education that's only one or two more we're going to finish the budget tonight we're going to talk about trees so so first a couple of general comments with I appreciate the need to restructure budgets from time to time but without also restructuring the 2013 budget it's impossible for us to tell what has been changed in here so when this is done in the future if you could do a pro form of 2013 then we can see the changes in the budget that we're going to look at more completely so it looks like there's a 2.8 2.76 percent increase overall in community safety which is below the 3.5 percent town plan increase so one question I have is in is there something between fire and police that we're not seeing here Mr. Mr. Tosti is going to address it for us if he can answer your question could you repeat that question please so we're seeing a 2.7 0.6 percent increase overall in community safety but we can't tell what the increase is between police and fire is it commensurate or is it 4 percent and fire 2 percent in police well if you look at the police budget it's going up considerably yeah I think it's reasonably there's no changes in the position and the personnel and that's 80 percent of this budget and the changes and expenses so yes I think they're equivalent okay so there's been a lot of talk just recently on the Arrington list and it comes back from time to time about policing in the community sort of related to traffic issues bike enforcement of bad behavior with bicyclists, bad behavior with driving and so that comes up from time to time and I think this has been addressed in previous meetings and the answer has been constrained so my question is you know there does seem to be some talk in town that this is a need that's not being met I don't know if you're hearing it if Mr. Ryan the moderator if Mr. Ryan is hearing these concerns or whether he really feels that things are being adequately patrolled or not or whether it still is a budget constrained issue thank you Mr. moderator please so specific to bicycle enforcement both bicyclists speeding cars not stopping at stop signs all sorts of bad behavior we have five police officers in the training academy currently we expect them to graduate in July and upon their graduation we intend to assign more officers to the traffic unit we've also partnered with the Cambridge police department to work on a regional basis on bicycle enforcement and we've trained up our officers and we're making that a higher priority than we have in the past and that can be done within the budget yes sir and we also actively seek alternative funding sources through the governor's highway safety bureau to perform those initiatives great thank you and then my other general comment to move beyond the three year plan that was part of the override so starting in 2015 I would hope that we take a more strategic approach to budgeting where we're not just looking at the 3.5% I appreciate that on the town side you came in at 3.4% but as we look I hope you look a little bit more strategically about where are the needs is 2% right is 4% maybe one year we have to go 4% in some area and then the next year I think the you know the plan was good for three years but we're moving beyond that so hopefully we'll do a little bit more strategic budgeting thank you thank you Mr. Warden thank you Mr. moderator John Warden precinct 8 and I'm going to apologize in advance I'm going to mention the word trees again but these are not the ones that we like to see that are or should be lining our tree lined streets and so on or even those that are pushing the sidewalks up these are in Monotomy Rocks Park it seems to me there's a very large number of dead fallen trees some of them are on the ground some of them have been on the ground for a long time but every time I go up there there seems to be more and some of them are kind of leaning in a kind of widowmaker position but the reason I bring it up under the public safety budget is whether the fire department considers that this might be a fire risk because there's an awful lot of dry tinder up there in the back thank you Chief, is he over there? Bob, here's Chief Jefferson Bob Jefferson fire chief any type of brush that's excessive around town could be considered a fire danger when the weather gets dry it gets warmer it's not a thondike field it's issues that unless Mike Rademacher gets another hundred guys to clean up Monotomy Rocks Park it's something that we don't really have the finances to deal with as far as a fire hazard any place that gets dry that has excessive brush could be considered a fire hazard I don't know how we would deal with that other than we respond when that happens ma'am what's your point? I think I can answer Mr. Warden's question as the former Clarissa Rowe precinct 4 when I lived in precinct 8 I took a yearly walk with Jim Dodge through the park and we went we looked at all the widow makers which are the branches that might fall on people on the paths the friends also have paid for pruning of those branches for I think three out of the last five years I did move away three years ago so I don't know if they're continuing that practice but that might be something that you bring up at their friends meeting okay that's not information but Mr. Schlickman I could have been on Paul Schlickman precinct 9 not to be labor the point or take a lot of time but I do rise in my annual protest to state that one full time and two part time parking control officers for a town of 43,000 people five square miles with the density of cars and illegal parkers is absurdly small and that this is a revenue producing position we should expand this and I hope next year I see improvement in this line item thank you Mr. Harrington Sean in the last couple of years we've seen some sad tragedies with suicides happening in public parks and stuff I was wondering if the chief of police can answer whether or not there's been an increase in patrolling those areas since that has happened I would hope that's the case I was just curious of what they've been doing to try to prevent that in any way thank you Mr. Moderator if I understand the question of prevention of suicides in public parks well patrolling the area because I don't want to use any of this stuff but for instance what happened at Manami Rocks Park sadly with the young girl that took her life up there and then over here and oh sorry and over in the garden has there been more patrolling of public parks since the parks and playgrounds are always a priority particularly in the warmer weather and seasonal so the answer is yes Mr. Trembly I'm an increasing 19 and you know the previous speaker talked about parking and I rather like being able to shop in Arlington without getting a parking ticket it's I don't go in Boston and Cambridge much because the meter people there are just too hard to deal with thank you anybody else on community safety seeing none the next step was inspections we wanted to talk about inspectional services oh okay Beth Ann Friedman precinct 15 I see this nothing budgeted for this for 2014 for Sims does that assume that their development is going to be complete by the year because Brightview may not be can the directors Mr. Tosti is going to address it but the permits are pulled at the beginning of the work you know before you can do X Y or Z you've got to pull the permit and pay the fee so the money tends to come in at the beginning of the process not the end anything else on inspectional education anyone want to ask what education Mr. Leonard okay let me see Leonard Joe thank you Mr. moderator John Leonard precinct 17 Mr. moderator earlier tonight the superintendent mentioned that the chapter 70 money that will be getting from the state will exceed the amount $975,000 is what I understood I wonder if she could elaborate how much more than the 975 it exceeds and that the excess what would happen to that excess would that go into the school budget future use Superintendent Bode do you have a hard number on that if I could just perhaps the amount that the chapter 70 increased due to the change that we made in the kindergarten was I believe about what we were projected last fall in addition to that there have been increases in the chapter 70 in general so it's not all because of that but I believe it was pretty much on target for what was projected is there any way Dr. Bode do you have a hard number I think she had no she doesn't have a hard number we don't have a hard number yet because the budget state budget hasn't been approved but our expectation right now at least in terms of the governance budget is it would be $1.6 million in chapter 78 now Mr. Tosti is correct some of that money is additional chapter 78 but chapter 70 is a function of your number of students that are enrolled and because by having our kindergarten students now as counted as a 1 each child is counted as 1 rather than 0.5 we will the number of students in kindergarten affects that number so we had expected to have about 1.2 to offset our kindergarten fees in the 900s but right now we're thinking that the chapter 70 money would be 1.6 in that vicinity it's not definite until the budget is approved so just basically it's that in 975 a vision we thought of getting back 1.6 at least for this time around well cheers Mr. Hanner seems to have some sort of information Mr. Rodman what's with these mics tonight Bill Hanner on the school community right now the one thing I can add is that the difference between what it costs for running the kindergarten if we get any extra money in chapter 70 for that aspect of it that goes to the town that extra money I just want to make that clear so all the money that we get for having full-time students we had half time before we got an increase of chapter 70 money on that aspect but only the money that will cover the expenses for the full-time kindergarten the school gets any additional money coming in under that piece of chapter 70 goes to the town is there a ballpark Mr. Hanner just to basically say when we might receive this money knowing that they haven't done any budget yet probably in the state are we talking July or August any idea Mr. Chappell Adam has a good guess on that Adam Chappell and town manager so just a few points on this topic when we came here in the fall for the special town meeting we asked for an appropriation from free cash in that $970,000 amount however it was anticipated that the chapter 70 that would be received based on that change would be 1.4 million the current house budget which was approved last week estimates somewhere between just about $180,000 more than that from what we had anticipated in the 1.4 so as Mr. Hanner just mentioned as part of the long-term plan the funding or spending levels for the school department and the town are capped and any additional revenues that come in within the plan are then appropriated through the override stabilization fund which are used to extend the plan and extend the period of time before the override would be asked for in terms of when the budget will be finalized I would expect that a final state budget would be made available or approved by both branches of the legislature and the governor probably sometime middle to late June or early July okay all I really was interested in was basically something in the report maybe moving forward next year or something that says hey we not only got our 975 but we got extra in regards to this particular phase with the school you know with the situation that's what I'm trying to get at okay thank you very much thank you Mr. Variglou Mr. Variglou, precinct 10 so I'm going to have a question about something that I think could be improved but I do want to recognize that based on the MCAS scores for whatever weight we want to give them as a measure of the quality of our schools and also looking at the state rankings we have a very great very good school system I am appreciative of that so please take my question with a grain of salt looking at the MCAS English Language Arts I did a quick percentile measurement we basically balanced between about 80 and 90 fourth percentile I'm not using the state average percentage in the 2012 percentage I'm looking at page 43 of the school report so that's great it's sort of like noise back and forth and this is from third grade to tenth grade over seven years when a very tight band in mathematics except for the third grade where it's 63rd percentile again we bounce around the 80s to 90s the science MCAS there's a lot less data there's only three years to look at but the trend is unfortunately dropping in the second grade we're in the 70th percentile whereas we actually start near the 90th percentile so I think my question would be as I've been reading this report I don't really see first is this recognized as an issue I can't really see anything to that effect in the report again I do think we have a great system I'm just not everything will be in here so one question is is this an issue and then I don't really looking at the science budget it appears that we're spending less money in that area I don't know if that's the right way to gauge what we're going to get we're spending less money this year than we have in last year by about ten million dollars and looking at the district goals I see the 2012 to 2013 goals English language arts and mathematics are there we're doing great in those but science is not so I guess I have three questions regarding the drop in percentile the way we're budgeting for it and the goals going forward Mr. Moderator if you would help me with those Dr. Bode can you answer his questions well I think I can if I can understand the question first of all thank you I'm sure that all of the staff that are listening appreciate your comments is your question are we reducing the amount of money that we're allocating for science or or wanting to know what we're planning to do to improve science scores my main question is really how would we improve science scores and I think the anomaly I saw which you can take as an aside is we've budgeted 90 million or we spent 90 million in fiscal year 2012 we had 105 million budget for 2013 but the projected expense is 81 million and I think that's really maybe it's a red herring I guess the real question is there's about a 20 percentile drop from 5th grade to 10th grade and I don't really care I'd prefer we didn't spend more money to fix it but I would like to know if there's a way to keep the science percentile similar to the mathematics and English language arts percentiles well we certainly are focusing right now on math and English language arts because of the common core state standards but we have not ignored science in fact those last two years we've been introducing engineering units in the elementary school and we have probably not done as much in terms of alignment of our curriculum any work on curriculum development because the new science standards really just were released two weeks ago and I know that this is going to be a focus over the next year in looking at our curriculum at all levels to see how it corresponds to the new standards I think that one of the big changes in the state standards that we're going to see is much more around project, hands on science and I will say that Arlington has done a fairly good job in that area in terms of our science curriculum with the elementary but there's more that we need to do we need to make sure that we've aligned it's a much more well I think I may be going beyond the parameters of what you wanted to ask but yes we are going to spend more time looking at science aligning our curriculum to the new standards and hopefully is going to meet an investment in new science materials and we will certainly see hopefully over time an improvement in our science scores thank you Mr. Curl what do you want to talk about the science? I just wanted to ask are you looking at the 2011 state average numbers 69%, 43%, 52% because our last year we exceeded those numbers by quite a bit I'm looking at the percentile state rankings I'm looking at the state ranking as I'd rather compete against the other towns I don't really care about what the average in the so I look at the percentile you guys can have a little side conversation if you want Mr. Curran thank you Mr. moderator Joe Curran precinct 13 and I'm here to to ask a question excuse my paper about about user fees for athletics and user fees in general fortunately or unfortunately I served on the school committee when one summer night they decided to take a vote to cut out athletics and I was very disappointed by that I didn't prove it I didn't vote for it being a physical I should disclose the fact that I'm a phys ed teacher and a coach I have 8 children and 6 have gone through the high school and I'm very proud of the education and the opportunities they were afforded by going to a great school and it was great to hear Dr. Bodey talking about all the successes our schools are making and one thing I do know is that as an educator you educate the whole child and the whole child if you look at the foundation budget that was passed with ed reform it says the one thing this is athletics that's the one thing you want to fund because it brings the community together now when a storm comes you take the patio furniture you put it downstairs because you don't want to lose it unfortunately we lost a lot of opportunity lost a lot of funding the storm is gone now now when the storm is gone you put the furniture back out you enjoy the things that you already had unfortunately we didn't put the furniture back out I think our children and I think a lot of kids have missed opportunities because my understanding is is that when we first caught it there was no limit to how much kids were going to have to pay or how families were so one gentleman called me and said it was going to be upwards to $3,500 for his three kids to play sports at Arlington High School that's quite dramatic then there was a lot of negotiations done and a sports group got together and they were able to cut it down so the family cap is now down to $1,250 when I was on the school when I first went on the school committee the family cap was $500 somewhat palatable something that you know you can handle and I know my kids have all been through youth sports you pay a lot of money you pay a lot of money for sports you'll pay the user fees because most people don't have enough money to live in it try and arraignment these sports do a lot of good things for kids they keep them busy after school keep them out of trouble you can laugh about it but it's true so I guess my point is that what has been done since the storm has passed and money is getting better I see that we're adding a lot of personnel up at the sixth floor we have a human resources director who really haven't given the kids back what they had before the storm came so I was just wondering what is being done by the committee to try to reduce the use of it Mr. Pierce Justin Pierce, precinct 11 the storm hasn't passed we still have prop 2.5 we've had it since 1980 we have to do more with less we are doing more with less if you note on page one of one the budget funding summary under revolving fees and reimbursements Mr. Curran you'll see 417 budgeted in FY11 417,000 FY12 budget 299 we put some of those deck chairs back it's regrettable we have fees it's regrettable we have music fees for people who play music and I think Ed reform talked about not only athletics being integral to a whole child arts but you didn't mention that but it's really important to note that it's the whole child that we're talking about and what we are putting back are teachers in the classrooms kids had gym once a week now they have gym twice a week we are adding back we are still dealing with a limited I'm quite aware of it I have kids in the school and things have been added back and you had it twice a week before the storm I get it it's going back I have one other question that would be to scholarships when people aren't able to afford it how is it afforded for them how do we do that in the school department Miss Johnson I'm the one who calls on people it's my meeting not yours Miss Johnson Diane Johnson CFO school department we take financial information from families that request a fee waiver and we use the scale set up by the CDGB block grant we receive a certain amount of money from that grant to offset the fees we forgive from the students but if we have students who qualify and we don't have enough CDGB money they still play and they don't pay but it is essential that they provide us with the documentation we ask for can I ask you how do you pay for the people that my understanding is that $5,000 in CDGB funds for for education this year I believe it's $8000 if 10% of the students qualify there would be a need of $50,000 what does that money come from it's absorbed by the school budget if we can't collect the fees because they can't afford to pay the fees and they provide us with all the documentation we absorb that but if they don't provide us with the documentation it's a problem how do you absorb it from different accounts does it come from the we set the athletic budget for a certain amount of money 44% of it is offset by fees the remainder is offset by the general fund and by ticket, gate ticket, pierce field rental and so we collect the amount of fees that we're collecting understands that there will be some students who cannot afford to pay they will not be offset by CDGB we factor that in budget for it I'm trying to understand that she pre-budgets for it excuse me I think she's telling us she budgets for it we're in the budget we budget for an entire amount for the school department budget and we assume we're going to collect only a certain amount of fees we know that we don't have 100% fee collection we know that some students are unable to pay and we know that a portion of that is offset by CDGB but not 100% of that is offset by CDGB so you have to come up with in some case let's say it was 50,008 was provided for you we we assume that we're going to get $260,000 in fees we do not assume that we're going to collect we don't base that number on 100% assumption of paying players we know that some players will not pay because they cannot pay and CDGB offset some of that but the rest of it we basically cover that out of the general fund the general fund okay thank you Steve Harrington Mr. Toss is going to move to adjourn so Steve I'll save you to next Monday we'll start the list where we left it off thank you Ms. Moderator we'll start the list with Mr. Harrington on Monday Mr. Toss he's got two or three comments and then we're going to move to adjourn okay what I'd like to just suggest on the rest of the budgets a lot of questions that you might have give us a call we might be able to answer them for you call the manager's office talk to the manager the deputy the department heads I'd be happy to take any questions and we could sort of move through the rest of this now on Monday so what I'd like to do if possible and this up to the moderator is have start off with Minuteman and the superintendent because he's got to be at other towns when he gets 16 towns to do so with that I move that we adjourn hold on okay what's your name excuse me Mr. Moderator wait wait this lady will you consider your name Lisa okay thank you Mr. Caner Mr. Moderator the finance chair just asked for the Minuteman budget to be taken first I appreciate the need for that superintendent to be other way but we just had our superintendent and several other people here all night and I think they should have consideration to be first okay we'll address that Monday I'll speak to both of you gentlemen during the next few days I think we should also probably finish up the education budget because right in the middle of it we only have a few more people then we'll go to Minuteman but we'll make that determination Monday evening okay we are adjourned all in favor of adjournment please say yes opposed thank you you can stay