Emergency Parking Ban Starts At 6 PM; No School Tuesday; Trash Pickup Delayed One Day

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Town officials have announced a snow emergency parking ban on all roadways, municipal parking lots and Belmont Public School parking lots, effective at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1 and will continue into Tuesday, February 2, 2021 until further notice.  All vehicles parked in violation of the ban will be towed at the owner’s expense.

The Belmont School District has also announced there will be no school Tuesday, Feb. 2, due to the impending snow storm. Please know that all classes, hybrid and remote-only, are cancelled.

All scheduled public meetings scheduled for tonight will be held virtually. 

There will be no trash pickup on Tuesday, Feb. 2.  The trash, recycling and yard waste pickup schedule will be delayed by a day through the end of the week.

Upland Road Rage Charges Upped To Murder As Select Board Calls Special Public Forum For Wednesday

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Photo: Participants in the rally to remember Henry Tapia.

The Belmont Select Board will be hosting a special community forum on Wednesday, Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. to discuss the death of Henry Tapia who was killed in an alleged road rage incident a week ago on Upland Road.

On Monday, Jan. 25, at Cambridge District Court, the assailant, Dean Kapsalis, saw an additional charge of leaving the scene of an accident causing death added to his existing charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and a civil rights violation.

He was ordered held without bail with his next court appearance on March 1.

Nearly 200 residents and citizens joined Tapia’s friends and family for a rally to celebrate Tapia’s life on Thursday, Jan. 21 in Cushing Square. Kim Haley-Jackson, vice chair of the Belmont Human Rights Commission, Belmont Police Chief James MacIsaac, Middlesex DA and Belmont resident Marion Ryan, Select Board’s Adam Dash, State Rep. Rogers, State Sen. Will Brownsberger each spoke to the impact of a race-based killing in a town that at times seems, as one attendee said, “devoid in discussing” the racial issues affecting the country.

“What I want to say to everyone is: Yes, Belmont. You too,” said Haley-Jackson.

“What I want to ask from my town is to think about your everyday actions. You think about your neighbors who don’t look like you. We are a community and not everyone is the same. We don’t all have the same belief system, we don’t all live the same lives but we all live together,” she said.

An agenda has not been published for the community forum. People can attend by going to the Zoom site: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82245770498?pwd=Smt2a3llQUp0OXRQMzhodTJxWFIvdz09 Meeting ID: 822 4577 0498

Tapia’s friends created a GoFundMe page to help his partner, Courtney Morton, and his three children. It has raised $152,800 as of Wednesday morning.

Tapia, a Black/Latino Boston resident living with his partner in Belmont, was killed when Kapsalis, a 54-year-old from Hudson who was living with his girlfriend on Upland Road, hit and dragged the victim after the pair squared off during what is alleged to have been a road rage incident sometime after 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 19.

In court Monday, prosecutors from the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office said witnesses heard as well as an alarm system recorded as Kapsalis “yelled racial slurs” at Tapia during the confrontation.

“There was a Ring doorbell near the scene of this incident, and it captured the audio of the interaction between the victim and the defendant,” said prosecutor Nicole Allain.

“The defendant can be heard calling the victim a series of derogatory terms, which culminated in his use of the N-word. Seconds later, that’s when the vehicle accelerates. A loud ‘thud’ noise can be heard, and the defendant’s red truck can be seen on video driving [away from] the scene,” said Allain.

MacIsaac’s said the first responding officers found Tapia conscious but in distress, reportedly saying “I can’t breathe.” Tapia was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital where he died soon after arriving.

“My officers were shocked to hear that he had died,” said MacIsaac. “It has effected the department.”

Select Board Approves Placing $6.4M Override On April’s Town Election Ballot

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Photo: An override will be on the April 6 town election ballot.

The Belmont Select Board unanimously accepted the Financial Task Force’s recommendation to place a $6.4 million Proposition 2 1/2 override on the April 6, 2021, town election ballot.

While the vote comes in the midst of a year long pandemic which has wounded the local and national economy, there is few alternatives other than huge cuts in town services – with massive layoffs – and a retreat on nearly a decade of investments in teaching and student growth.

“It’s never the right time or a good year to ask for this … but the situation has put us in a point where we have no choice,” said the Select Board’s Adam Dash.

Select Board’s Tom Caputo, who also chaired the Task Force, said working for the past two years using a multi-year financial forecasting modeling tool from the Collins Center at UMass/Boston to help make more precise results from projections and data allowed him to “appreciate the financial challenges ahead of us and the importance of an override to maintain fiscal stability for the town.”

I am very comfortable with the recommendation that we brought to the town,” he said.

If approved by voters, homeowners would see a $900 pop in property taxes on the “average” valued house pegged at $1.25 million.

The override amount is approximately half the $12.5 million the Select Board approved back in July.

“I think that’s progress,” said Roy Epstein, chair of the Select Board.

Flush with nearly $11.2 million in free cash certified by the state – an amount historically higher than most years through minimizing expenditures during last year’s COVID crisis – and the recent forecast of state and local revenues will be higher than pervious years, town will leverage the onetime windfall to help moderate the override’s size, said Caputo.

After setting aside portions of free cash according to decade long town guidelines, the town will take $8.2 million in free cash and spread it over three years from ’22 to ’24. Include $3.2 million in additional state aid in fiscal ’22 split between fiscal years ’23 and ’24.

The task force forecasts that Belmont would be facing a debt of $8.3 million by fiscal ’24 on an annual budget of $166.7 million.

The override would allow the town to support a “minimal level service budget” as it will maintain town services with “very very small additional positions” such as a social worker at the Senior Center, said Dash.

But for several residents who commented during the public comment portion of the meeting, just the tiniest jump in taxes would be devastating to many.

“Any dollar increase for us right now is too much considering the thousands of dollars in revenue that we’ve all lost and the percentage of business down,” said Deran Muckjian, a lifelong resident and owner of The Toy Shop of Belmont on Leonard Street.

Dawn McCarren said a lot of good ideas have come from the task force “but the town will survive without an override.”

“I realize that there will be cuts but families are at stake and this is extremely difficult pill to swallow, forcing some to sell homes where residents lived for multigenerationd,” she said.

No short-term solution

But the Board contend the town has not other short-term option but to back placing the override on the ballot.

“I recognize that we have a lot of folks in the community that are in economically challenging times as a result of COVID, that are on fixed incomes for which this tax is an incredible burden and it’s hard for us to solve,” said Caputo.

“At the end of the day, this override is indicated by the facts and the realities and as such it needs to be put on the ballot,” Caputo said.

A delay, said Epstein, would made a bad situation even worse, as cuts would be made to services, nearly the entire free cash account would be used in one year which would imperil the town’s “gold standard” AAA bond rating and ultimately require a much more robust override amount in 2023.

Epstein also wanted to dampen down any suggestions that, as one resident said in an email, voters suspect the funds raised through the override would be spent on “grandiose capital projects.” The reality, he said, was the additional funds will be directed to operating expenses such as paying for teacher salaries while continue vital infrastructure projects.

Epstein did acknowledge the fiscal ’22 education expenses accedes what he believes is a minimal level but that is due to the district introducing a new school – the Chenery Middle School at the high school location – in the next two years and to maintain “considerable progress” its has invested in over the past five years.

School costs will continue to lead the way adding more than 32 FTE (Full-time equivalent) positions in the next three years “to address increase in enrollment, grade configuration and what the school committee’s vision for the future,” said Patrice Garvin, town administrator, at last week’s meeting of the Select Board.

Enrollment changes FY ’20 to FY ’24

Yet also noting that an override will have little impact on the town’s structural deficit in which revenues are unable to match expenses due to annual limits on property tax increases while education costs due to students entering the district – a 1,000 new pupils in just the past few years – has far outpaced revenues.

Dash said the town has created two new committee, the Structural Budget Impact Group and Long-term Capital Budget Planning Committee, which will look for opportunities to increase revenues and decrease expenses. Around March, the town will open a portal on the town’s web site where people will be able to put in any structural change suggestions for the boards to review.

“There are no stupid ideas, every idea will be looked at and vetted, put into a matrix and analyzed,” said Dash.

Looking into the horizon, Epstein believes Belmont may finally see by 2026 some stability or even slight decrease in the decade of sky rocking enrollment – greater than 10 percent over the past 10 years – in town schools which will in turn decrease the need to hire teachers, staff and other expenses.

“As soon as there’s stability in the number of schoolchildren instead of this continuous very rapid growth that will give us a lot more flexibility in managing the budget,” he said.

Greater detail on the budget planning for the next three fiscal years can be found in the documents at the Town of Belmont website.

In addition, Belmont Media Center has recorded Financial Task Force meetings.

Breaking: Caputo Will Not Run For Re-election To Select Board

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Photo: Tom Caputo

Citing time away from his family and work demands, first term member Tom Caputo will not seek re-election to the Belmont Select Board.

“I am making this decision to not seek reelection so that I can prioritize my family and my full-time work,” he said.

Caputo’s announcement, made Friday, Jan. 22, comes with less than a month remaining for residents to submit nomination papers to the Town Clerk’s Office by the deadline, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m.

Caputo has worked with current members Adam Dash and Roy Epstein for approximately two years serving as the steady moderating element of an efficient team, relying on his business acumen and good nature to find compromise in tackling issues before the town. He also chaired the Financial Task Force II whose recommendation for a $6.4 million override was accepted unanimously by the Select Board earlier on Friday.

Caputo won his seat on the board with 94 percent of vote in 2018. The year previously, he won a full-term on the school committee topping the ballot with 51 percent of the vote. Caputo served as chair of the board in 2019-2020.

Caputo entered elected office when he joined the school committee in November 2014 as an appointed member to fill the interim vacancy left by the resignation of Kevin Cunningham. He won the election to serve the two years remaining on Cunningham’s term in 2015 with 99.3 percent of the vote.

“It has been a privilege to serve the Belmont community as a member of the Select Board for the last three years, but I have decided that I will not seek reelection in April.”

Below is Caputo’s press release:

“The time requirements of the Select Board role in the last year have become increasingly demanding, and I anticipate that pace will continue for the foreseeable future. I am making this decision to not seek reelection so that I can prioritize my family and my full-time work.”

“This was not an easy decision. I have always been committed to community service, and it has been rewarding to work with our deeply committed Town and School staff and volunteers. We have accomplished a lot together – building a new school and renovating the police station and DPW facility; rezoning the McLean parcel for development and affordable housing; advancing the community path design; financial modeling and planning for the town’s future; and much more. It is challenging work filled with purpose, and I will miss it.”

“I particularly want to thank everyone I have met along the way. It has been an honor to get to know you and serve as a member of your Select Board.”

“I hope that I can continue to play a role in the town in the days and months ahead. But for now, I look forward to maximizing the time with my family before my teenage daughters head off to college.”

After Year End Review, Belmont Records 13 ‘Extra’ COVID-19 Deaths, 10 Since Thanksgiving

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Photo: COVID-19 deaths in Belmont is higher than originally thought.

A year-end review of official death records maintained by the Belmont Town Clerk’s Office revealed 13 additional Belmont deaths attributed to COVID-19 in 2020, according to the Belmont Health Department.

The revised total brings the town’s total COVID-19 death count since March 2020 to 74 resident including a death since the beginning of the new year, said Wesley Chin, Belmont’s Health Department director in his weekly health report dated Friday, Jan. 8.

And the Belmont health director is anticipating more cases and possible deaths in the near future.

“It’ll be a tough winter,” Chin told the Select Board last week due to the record number of COVID cases and deaths in the US and state over the past five weeks, as residents traveled to see relatives and were more likely to be at social events during the holiday season.

According to Chin:

  • Ten Belmont residents – all living outside long-term facilities – have died from COVID-19 since Thanksgiving.
  • COVID-19 deaths have disproportionately older residents, with the average age of death being approximately 85 years old.
  • 22 of these all deaths occurred among community members who were not residing in a local long-term care facility.

Belmont has 737 cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19, which is an increase of 48 cases since a Jan. 4 report.

Due to the new case count over the past two weeks, this puts Belmont in the state’s “yellow” zone according to the new color designation metrics; lower than 10 average cases/100,000 or five percentage positivity, as reported in the last two weeks.

The Town Clerk’s Office will continue to provide information for COVID-19 death statistics; the data will contribute to the town’s COVID-19 dashboard on Fridays.

The COVID-19 Vaccine

The Belmont Health Department is monitoring the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and preparing for the eventual vaccination of the general public. The Town is updating plans for large-scale vaccination of residents to ensure that doses of the vaccine are given quickly and efficiently when they arrive in Belmont.

At this time, Massachusetts is currently in Phase 1 of its vaccine distribution plan, and vaccines in Massachusetts are reserved for healthcare workers doing direct and COVID-facing care as well as employees and residents of Long-Term Care facilities. Vaccine requests for these groups are being
approved and overseen by the state.

Belmont is participating in a regional collaborative to administer vaccinations to first responders, the third priority group within Phase 1 of the Commonwealth’s vaccine distribution timeline. First responder vaccinations will begin on Tuesday, Jan 12.

At this time, the Belmont Health Department does not currently have access to COVID-19 vaccine, other than the vaccine that has already been allocated to the Town’s first responders, Chin said. Currently, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has not determined that local health departments will be involved with additional vaccine administration prior to the general public in Phase 3 of the State’s distribution plan, but that is subject to change.

No Big Surprise: Snow Storm Closes Belmont Schools Thursday; Townwide Parking Ban Starts At Midnight

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Photo: Remote snow day

No big surprise here: There will be no school for all students on Thursday, Dec. 17, as a result of the winter storm.

“This means that there will be no remote learning and no in-person learning tomorrow and our buildings will be closed,” read a press release from Belmont Superintendent John Phelan.

Parking ban for Thursday

Due to the foot of snow expected from the storm, a SNOW EMERGENCY PARKING BAN has been declared for all roadways and municipal and Belmont Public School parking lots.

The ban goes into effect at midnight, Dec. 17, and will last until further notice, according to Michael Santoro, assistant director of the Department of Public Works.

All vehicles parked in violation of the ban will be towed at the owner’s expense.

Belmont’s FY’22 Property Tax Rate Jumps To $11.55 per $1,000 Driven By New School Borrowing

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Photo: The second $100 million borrowing for the new Middle and High School has driven the property tax rate higher.

Belmont taxpayers will see their property tax rate increase by four bits and a nickel as the Board of Assessors recommended a rate for fiscal year 2022 during its annual presentation before the Select Board on Thursday morning, Dec. 10.

“This [coming fiscal] year the tax rate will be going up 55 cents … from $11 to $11.55,” Reardon told the board. According to the assessors, the impact on a residential property valued at $1,285,000 – what the average single family house in Belmont is worth – will be $706. The annual tax bill for that average house comes out to $14,842.

While property values calculated by the assessors cooled off from the past years of double digit increases – this year single families are up 3 percent (as opposed to 18 percent last year), condos 5 percent, two and three families increased by 4 percent and commercial property was flat – the biggest impact on property taxes is the second phase of borrowing for the Middle and High School project. The new $100 million borrowing added 56 cents to the tax bill, said Reardon.

As in past years, the assessors recommended and the selectmen agreed to a single tax classification and no real estate exemptions. Reardon said Belmont does not have anywhere near the amount of commercial and industrial space (at must be least a minimum of 30 percent, said Reardon) to creating separate tax rates for residential and commercial properties. Belmont’s commercial base is approximately four percent of the total real estate inventory.

As for exemptions, the administrative costs to run such a program would be prohibitive for a revenue neutral imitative. And as with the split rate, the majority of taxpayers would see little in reductions or increases in their tax bill.

The Board of Assessors will officially set the fiscal year ‘22 property tax rate on Friday, Dec. 11.

Breaking: Belmont Schools Return To Remote Learning For The Week After Thanksgiving

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Photo: Belmont School District headquarters on Pleasant Street.

Saying the Belmont School District was “making a decision regarding the safety of students, educators, and families,” Belmont Schools Superintendent John Phelan announced that all Belmont students will transition to the remote schedule for the week following Thanksgiving, Nov. 30 to Dec. 4.

“It is not a decision we take lightly,” said Phelan. “While we wish we did not have to make a decision, we are confident it is the safest choice during this time of increasing transmission rates, nationally, state-wide, and locally.”

Elementary and Middle School pupils will revert back to the remote plan from their current hybrid schedule and the introduction of the hybrid model for Belmont High School students scheduled for this week will be delayed.

Pre-K and LABBB will remain in-person for the week. Transportation for those programs will continue as regularly scheduled.

In an email to the Belmont community, Phelan noted the decision was based on six factors relating to the safety of students, educators and families.

“The decision for any school district cannot hinge on a single factor, but rather on a consideration of all factors taken together,” said Phelan.

Those factors include:

  1. Communication with families regarding their travel and hosting plans.
  2. Analyzing our staffing data to get a sense of educators’ travel and hosting plans.
  3. Coordinating with available substitutes.
  4. Seeking the advice of the Belmont Health Department
  5. Networking with other superintendents in the Middlesex League athletic league
  6. Discussing this topic publicly at our Nov. 24 School Committee meeting

“It is our hope that by being proactive and strategic in the short-term we will avoid difficulty in the long-term,” said Phelan.

Rink Sinks: New Skating Facility Proposal ‘Not Economically Viable’

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Photo: The Skip has opened for the season.

On the day the town opened the 40-year-old plus Viglirolo Skating Rink for the season, the Select Board heard that a long sought after replacement for the current dilapidated facility came to a close after the only candidate to reply to the ambitious proposal could not make the project financially feasible.

“I wish I had better news to report,” said Tom Caputo who was the Select Board’s liaison to the town’s effort to create a one-and-a-half ice sheet rink to the west of the current facility known as the “Skip.”

“But the consensus of the group [of town and school officials] who worked on this is we don’t have an economically viable public/private partnership at this point,” said Caputo during the board’s ultramarathon of a meeting [four hours and 26 minutes] held Monday, Nov. 9

This comes as Recreation Department personnel who run the rink state that it is only a matter of time before a catastrophic mechanical failure involving the pipes and compressors – some original underground equipment from the 1970s that are no longer being manufactured – will require the facility to be closed for good.

“It’s running. That’s the key every year, we just hope it gets up and going,” said Recreation Director and Assistant Town Administrator Jon Marshall.

“But in the near future, we’re not going to be lucky. That’s the challenge,” said Marshal.

First proposed in September 2015, a long sought-after new rink was envisioned to be private/public partnership in which the school department would lease a portion of its land west of Harris Field to a private developer/rink manager at not cost for at least 25 years. In exchange, the Belmont High ice hockey teams would practice and hold games for free as well as allow for free recreational skating while the rink manager would rent the space to hockey leagues and private functions.

A detailed request for proposal was developed with input from the school committee and district, the town and neighbors during at times laborious negotiations. While there was some interest in the proposal, only one team headed by Belmont Youth Hockey put their hat in the ring to move to more substantial discussions with the town.

A tall order that failed

According to Caputo, what doomed the talks directed at replacing the ancient rink was how the RFP “was pretty highly constrained” to the developer. Not only was the town seeking for them to fund, construct and operate a multi-sheet facility, it required more than 100 parking spaces that would be linked to the high school and construct three high school playing and practice fields while providing aforementioned free playing and game time for varsity and junior varsity teams.

“That was a tall order, to say the least,” acknowledged Caputo.

While the two sides negotiated over the summer and resolved many conflicts facing the proposal, at the end of the day, the Youth Hockey team could not made their proposal work financially if it had to meet the space requirements in the RFP, especially the parking component, as well as providing a large chunk of no cost ice time to the school department.

“We just could not come up with an economically viable project that would work for the applicate that they could get funded and be confident to make payments on,” said Caputo. In fact, the town believes as currently written, the RFP as outlined and as constrained is such that there is not a viable project that will work.

Under the column titled Next Steps, Caputo said there is interest in adjusting the long list of town requirements for the project and modify the RFP.

“This is not unusual … to have a couple of rounds with the RFP before you get it right,” said Caputo. “There is creative ideas around parking and maybe not have free access to ice time that can be explored.”

But Caputo admitted that some of those creative adjustments that are “kicking around” is that “they are so far from the RFP that was created that they are probably outside the bounds of what we can reasonably negotiate.”

In addition, Marshall has begun the first steps in better understanding what it would take to renovate or rebuild the current location.

Select Board Member Adam Dash said that many of the required changes needed in the RFP to spark interest from a private developer would be “no gos” on the town side as the RFP required a great deal of negotiations with the school district and residents.

Dash also derided any thoughts of refurbishing the “Skip,” describing it as a “disaster.”

“What would it cost to build a one sheet of ice rink? God knows when we could get the money to do it,” said Dash. “This one is gonna die probably before we can get there. It’s not a good situation.”

Schools To Remain In Remote Learning Through Tuesday As District Reviews Air Exchange Data … Again

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After suffering through the public embarassment of admitting the data supporting one of the pillars of its safety protocol was rife with faulty calculations, Belmont School District has decided it needs double the time it orginally believed before finally feeling confidence with the numbers.

So, with an abundance of caution in mind, the district announced late Friday, Oct 23, that PreK to 8th grade students will remain in remote learning for a fourth and fifth day: Monday, Oct. 26, and Tuesday, Oct. 27.

“Our expectation at this time is for hybrid in-person learning to resume at the elementary level on Wednesday, Oct. 28, and at the middle school level on Thursday, Oct. 29,” read an email from Belmont Superintendent John Phelan.

The reason for these additional days is to ensure “the accuracy of the data” coming from a third round of air exchange tests conducted in Belmont’s six public school buildings.

“This is a time consuming process, and we do not want to rush,” said Phelan.

The extent of the problem was revealed at the Tuesday, Oct. 20, Belmont School Committee meeting when Keith Prata from Bala Consulting Engineers, hired to conduct air exchange tests and advise the town on the number of fans and ventulators required in each classroom, admitted that miscalculations on the use of a multiplier led to discrepancies throughout the Excel spreadsheet underestimated the equipment needed. The errors were discovered at the beginning of the month.

In its mitigation of the faulty data set, the district has been testing and reviewing the latest numbers with Bala and the town’s Facilities Department:

  • For a third time Bala has walked through the buildings to review and assess the allocation of resources to ensure appropriate air exchange.
  • In an abundance of caution, the district has implemented a peer review process.
  • Steven Dorrance, the town’s director of facilities is reviewing the data with Bala.
  • School principals will do a building-based review of the latest data.
  • The review will be shared with the educators’ health and wellness committee
  • Meetings with be held with all parties in the review process.

“We expect the review, sharing of data, and meetings will take two days. We are still awaiting the final report and executive summary from Bala,” said Phelan. “When the School Department receives this, we will submit it to our stakeholders.”