You Still Have Time To Get On The Town Election Ballot; Deadline is Feb. 13

By Leave a Comment

Photo: Nomination papers

Nomination papers for the Annual Town Election on April 3, (Town Meeting Member and Town-wide offices) are available now at the Town Clerk’s Office, and are due back to the Town Clerk for certification by Tuesday, Feb. 13, at 5 p.m. Fifty certified signatures of registered Belmont voters are required for Town-wide office, 25 certified signatures of Belmont registered voters dwelling in the appropriate precinct are required for Town Meeting. It is always wise to obtain and provide at least 20 percent more signatures than the requirement to meet the certification minimums.

Click here for ballot info.

Getting Your Name on the Ballot

Running for election is simple. Pick up nomination papers in the Town Clerk’s office and have your neighbors and friends who are registered voters sign your papers and submit the signed forms to the Town Clerk by the deadline.

Town-wide Offices

To be considered a candidate for town-wide office, you must be at least 18 years old and a registered voter in Belmont.

There are many Town-wide elected offices that will appear on the annual Town Election ballot.

Signatures of at least 50 registered voters of the Town are required on the nomination papers.

Representative Town Meeting: Representatives from Each of the Eight Voting Precincts

In addition to the 12 Representative Town Meeting Members that are elected for three-year terms from each of our eight voting precincts, there may also be openings for one (1), or two (2) year terms.

There are partial terms in the following precincts:

  • One 2-year term in Precinct 1
  • One 1-year term in Precinct 2
  • Two 2-year terms in Precinct 5

Incumbent Town Meeting Members

Incumbent Town Meeting Members who intend to run for re-election have missed the deadline of Jan. 23 to return the Intention Letter. Missing the return date means having to collect signatures on nomination papers.

New Candidates for Town Meeting Member

To be considered a new candidate for Town Meeting Member, you must be at least 18 years old and a registered voter of the Town of Belmont. If you are currently serving as a Town Meeting Member who was elected at the caucus, not by Town ballot, you will need to submit nomination papers as a new candidate.

Signatures of at least 25 registered voters of your precinct are required on the nomination papers. The Town Clerk must certify these signatures so we always suggest obtaining about 20 percent more just to be safe.

Withdrawing Your Name From the Ballot

If you have taken out nomination papers and the signatures have been certified, but you change your mind, you may remove your name from the ballot by notifying the Town Clerk in writing by Feb. 13.

Size Matters: Committee Recommends Selectmen Increase Number On Board

By Leave a Comment

Photo: Not enough according to the committee set to review the number of selectmen.

Just how thorough the Committee to Study the Number of Selectmen took its mission, the appendix which documents the details of studies, interviews and raw data comprises more pages, 41, than the 32-page final report.

“It’s a big relief to finally get this report out after so much work by the members of the committee,” said Committee Chair Paul Rickter.

After seven months of discussions with the 16 current and past selectmen, speaking to countless elected representatives from outside of Belmont, leaders from municipalities that went through a similar process as well as gathering copious amounts of data – one of the first set of facts it compiled was a set of data from the 44 towns in Massachusetts with populations between 19,000 and 31,000 residents – in January the committee voted 9 to 4 to recommend increasing the number of selectmen from three to some number to be determined by Town Meeting

“My sense of the committee is that we found the town to be generally well-run, but that some felt that there are opportunities to improve town governance by increasing the size of the Board,” said Rickter.

Read the committee’s recommendation here.

The committee was created at the annual Town Meeting this past May and made up of 13 members – selected by Town Moderator Mike Widmer – representing each of the town’s eight precincts. Its charge was straightforward: to recommend whether or not the Board of Selectmen should be expanded from three members. After months of meetings – starting in June and really got going in October – the committee produced 11 arguments both pro and con on changing the status quo which has been in affect since Belmont’s founding in 1859.

On the pro side, the committee saw greater stability for town government in policy, planning, and hiring; an increased representation, diversity, and viewpoints; less likelihood of one Board member being isolated or dominating others; the potential for wider range of skills and experience on the Board; and permits members to use one other member as a sounding board.

For those in favor of keeping the current board size, all Board deliberations remain transparent and open to the public; elections would remain competitive; three members are more apt to reach a consensus, meetings are efficient and reasonable in length; and there is too much at stake for a change of this magnitude right now.

For Rickter, the most convincing arguments that swayed the majority were “the ideas that a larger board could be more broadly representative of the town as well as the potential for a wider variety of skills and experience benefiting a larger board.”

“The minority also saw those ideas as … benefits, but they thought they were only potential benefits,” he said, while expressing concern about the transparency of board deliberations – the state’s Open Meeting Laws requires a quorum of three for the three-member board to legally discuss issues brought before it – and competitiveness in elections with a larger board.

“As we said in the report, we all see valid arguments on both sides — we simply weighed them differently,” said Rickter, who added that the committee will attend Town Meeting in May to answer questions rather than “holding any advocacy role … going forward.”

Rickter said an important byproduct of the report is that a majority of members on both sides of the size question believe the town must consider strengthening the role of Town Administrator, whether or not Town Meeting increases the board’s size.

“But that topic was outside of our charge, so we limited ourselves to making only observations in that area,” he said.

For Rickter, the committee’s comprehensive reporting will allow for an honest discussion on the issue without the specter of bias.

“This was a conscientious group that worked together well, gathered tons of information, and engaged with the work of compiling this report in a truly collaborative way,” he noted. Even though the decision was not unanimous, “we never wavered from the goal of giving Town Meeting members a detailed snapshot of both sides of the issue.”

 

Global Disruption in Recycling Market Has Belmont Over The Trash Barrel

By 5 Comments

Photo: Recycling will be changing after a rewriting of the RFP.

Belmont Selectman Adam Dash was blunt when Jay Marcotte, director of the Department of Public Works, gave him and the other Selectmen the news at its Monday, Feb. 5 meeting of a proverbial dumpster fire of a dispute with the town’s trash hauler.

The town’s long-time collecter F W Russell & Sons Disposal recently issued a demand that the town either begin picking up the cost of taking away household recyclables – the cans, paper and all other stuff that has cost the town nothing in the past – or be threatened with “either disruption in service or litigation,” according to Belmont’s counsel Mina Makarious. 

While the town sent several messages noting its “displeasure” concerning the ultimatum by the company, the town has “tried to resolve this dispute at a reasonable cost,” said Makarious, noting the contract with Russell runs for only five more months. 

With the short time remaining on the current curbside agreement and without many alternatives before it, the board reluctantly voted to alter the existing contract and agreed to pay half the cost of the recycling collection up to $45 per ton. Marcotte told the Belmontonian the new change would cost his department about $24,000, funds the department had set aside for community education.

While the board approved the new language, Dash said the sudden demand from the hauler was unacceptable. “I’m not happy with this,” he said casting a symbolic “no” protest vote.

The demands by Russell are indicative in how Belmont and other communities around the US have suddenly found itself in the middle of a worldwide recycling surplus in which the value of mixed material has plummeted due to changes in packaging, low oil prices and a drop in paper fiber waste. A study by the State Recycling Program in the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality found that the average market value of a ton of mixed recyclable material fell from $180 in 2011 to less than $80 by the end of 2015.

But the most dramatic shock to solid waste prices is coming from the demand end half a world away in China, which until recently imported half of the world’s waste paper, metals and used plastic totaling 7.3 million tons in 2016. According to an article in the New York Times, starting Jan. 1, China – in an attempt to stem pollution and environmental issues related to being since the 1990s the “world’s garbage dump” – has placed a ban on a wide range of waste, including unsorted paper and plastic bottles while setting new limits on the levels of impurities in other recyclables.

“It’s almost like they turned the spigot off overnight,” said Jim Fish, president of Waste Management, a Houston-based company that is the largest recycler of residential waste in North America, as reported in a November article in the Times. Where once recycling was a cash cow, today its dead weight.

The combined impact of supply and demand is being felt in Belmont with who are bidding on the town’s trash contract. At Monday’s meeting, Marcotte told the board that haulers and the material recycling facilities which process solid waste are finding their profits cut significantly or eliminated.

“The recycling market has completely flipped,” said Marcotte, told the board. “Once it was no cost [to the disposal companies], now its become a significant one.”

And those new realities are being felt in the rewarding of the town’s new trash collection contract.

When the selectmen OK’d the blueprint of the next five-year contract in September, it insisted on maintaining the town’s 1991 bylaw that committed the town to a “dual stream” recycling system which separated by paper and other recyclables such as plastic bottles and cans. While the town is moving to an automated trash collection system, homeowners would keep their blue and green bins to place paper in one and bottles and cans in another as a lasting pledge to recycling.

But the town’s nearly 30-year recycling program is being swept aside by cold hard economics. On Monday, the Selectmen changed the contract’s Request for Proposal to allow for a “single” stream recycling which all material – cans, bottles, glass, paper, packaging, paper bags – will be lumped into a single bin after the three companies which recently submitted proposals to become the town’s hauler would only accept a single stream recycling program. 

Marcotte said the new recycling collection regime [see the town release below] will be run biweekly with the recyclables either collected manually as they are now or by an automated system where residents will use their new 96-gallon recycling barrels – to be issued by the town in the next few months – for that week’s curbside recycling pickup. 

While acknowledging changes to long-standing town recycling policy is “regrettable,” Marcotte told the board the realities of the marketplace makes “a dual stream system no longer an option.” 

Town’s release on the new single stream recycling program

Because of the decreased values in the recycling markets, Material Recycling Facilities (MRF’s) are no longer accepting dual stream recycling.

What does this mean for Belmont?

Belmont will continue to RECYCLE…For the remaining five months, our hauler will continue to pick-up DUAL STREAM recycling at the curb. The change for Belmont is our recycling will be processed and charged as SINGLE STREAM.

In the next five months, there will be comprehensive community outreach and education on all the changes that will happen for TRASH AND RECYCLING.

This July 1st, the Town will be converting to AUTOMATED TRASH & SINGLE STREAM RECYCLING.

SINGLE STREAM RECYCLING will be collected every other week one of two ways:

  • Manual, using existing barrels/bins and placing all recyclables mixed.
  • Automated, using a Town issued 96-gallon container and placing all recyclables mixed.

This is an unfortunate situation that we are faced with and one in which we have no control. We apologize for this change and are working diligently to minimize disruption. If you have any questions, please call the Department of Public Works. 617-993-2680

Town Election ’18: Logjam For School Committee As Three Take Out Papers

By 1 Comment

Photo: Town Clerk’s Office

Here’s a little math for those seeking a seat on the Belmont School Committee:

If four possible candidates run for two available seats, that result will likely be an exciting Town Election this spring as the potential field to fill the pair of committee slots has doubled as more residents have taken out nomination papers with just eight days remaining to submit 50 signatures to the Town Clerk.

As of Monday morning, Feb. 5, three newcomers to town-wide elections have taken out nomination papers for School Committee:

  • Claus Becker, Poplar Street
  • Tara Donner, Payson Road
  • Jill Norton, Clark Street

Becker is a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5 who is an active campaigner to increase the use of alternative energy in town.

Donner represents Precinct 6 in Town Meeting and is an English teacher at McCall Middle School in Winchester.

Norton is director of education policy at Cambridge-based Abt Associates, and previously was a senior policy adviser for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education.

Incumbent Susan Burgess-Cox is the only candidate to submit her nomination papers to Town Clerk Ellen Cushman.

Current School Committee Chair Lisa Fiore is seeking a partial one-year term rather than defend her full three-year seat on the board.

Lickety Split: New Town Administrator Secures $30K In State Funding In Her First Week

By Leave a Comment

Photo: (from left) Patrice Garvin, Mark Paolillo, Jim Williams, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, State Rep. Dave Rogers, Adam Dash.

The Board of Selectmen’s Room at Belmont Town Hall was packed Tuesday, Jan. 30 with town and public safety officials, staff and residents for the dual purposes of greeting the state’s Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, and to recognize the town being the 327th grant recipient to join the state in supporting “best practices.” 

Polito and Board of Selectmen Chair Jim Williams signed the Community Compact agreement, a voluntary, mutual agreement in which cities and towns choose to implement method or techniques that reflect needed areas of improvement which the Commonwealth helps accomplish by providing grants, resources, and incentives. 

Belmont will use a total of $30,000 in grants to develop a set of formal financial policies and practices and create a long-range financial forecasting model which could be used to review pensions and other retirement obligations.

“It’s a hallmark of the cooperation between state and local government that is so important,” said State Rep. Dave Rogers of the state program that dates back to January 2015.

But the state funds would likely have stayed on Beacon Hill if Belmont Town Administrator Patrice Garvin’s had not made a quick decision to apply for funds from a program she had used in her previous position.

“You should talk to the real hero,” Williams said pointing to Garvin.

Less than two weeks on the job, Garvin was able to secure the $30,000 by using her own initiative and past experience with the state program. 

Being a member of the compact “benefits you on every grant you apply for,” said Garvin.

When she was being interviewed for the Belmont position, Garvin told the selectmen and staff she would seek to increase outside sources of funding as to diversify the town’s revenue stream, critical in a town that relies heavily on residential real estate taxes.

Garvin got her chance to mobilize Belmont to procure state grants soon after arriving on the job on Jan. 16 when she discovered while the Selectmen approved joining the pact with the state, it hadn’t moved forward with the implementation

“When I came in, someone casually said the board had just agreed to join.”

“For me, it’s just a no-brainer. Even though the board hadn’t yet begun the application process, I decided to do so,” said Garvin. “I went online [to the compact’s website] that day to apply and the next day we had a day that the Lt. Governor was coming. It was really quick,” said Garvin. 

Garvin said in her experience, municipalities need to be active in seeking intergovernmental or private funding sources. 

“It’s a piece of the toolbox that you need to get more money in the future,” she said.

Brownsberger Hosting Belmont ‘Town Hall’ Saturday, Feb. 10

By Leave a Comment

Photo: State Sen. Brownsberger is holding a town hall in Belmont.

State Sen. Will Brownsberger will host a series of town hall meetings throughout his district in February. All are encouraged to attend and share their thoughts on current events and legislative priorities.

Belmont: Saturday, Feb. 10 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Beech Street Center, 266 Beech St.

UPDATE: Town Election ’18: Caputo In, Williams Out for Selectmen; A Race For Health Board [VIDEO]

By Leave a Comment

Photo: Tom Caputo delivers his nomination papers to Town Clerk Ellen Cushman.

There will be a new face on the Belmont Board of Selectmen. The question now is will there be a race for the open seat?

So far the facts are that one-term selectman and current chair Jim Williams said he will not submit papers to retain his seat for a second three-year term. 

“I’m not running. I’m certain about that,” said the Glenn Road resident this week.

As Williams exits town government, Tom Caputo made it official submitting nomination papers to Town Clerk Ellen Cushman on Friday, Feb. 2, accompanied by his campaign manager Ellen Schreiber. 

“I believe Belmont as a town have some very important decisions to make in the next three years, and they will impact our community for the next 30 years,” said Caputo. 

See the accompanying video to hear more from Caputo on why he’s running and issues before the board.

The Richmond Road resident is currently serving his first full three-year seat on the School Committee after being appointed to the committee on Nov. 2014 to replace Kevin Cunningham who resigned. At the town election in April 2015, Caputo ran uncontested for the two-years remaining in Cunningham’s term. In April 2017, Caputo was elected to a full three-year appointment with 3,014 votes running with Kate Bowen to fill two slots.

With nomination papers due to the Town Clerk’s Office in less than 10 days on Feb. 13 at 5 p.m., a challenger to Caputo will have about to week to secure the signatures of at least 50 registered voters.

Race for Health Board Now On

There will be a good race for the seat on the Belmont Board of Health as a Van Ness Road resident has returned nomination papers to take on long-time Board member Dr. David Alper who has submitted his papers. 

Stephen Fiore is an attorney in civil litigation with the Cambridge firm of Foster & Eldridge, LLP, who is a frequent lecturer on medical-legal issues and health care law. If the last name sounds familiar, Fiore’s wife is Lisa Fiore, the current chair of the Belmont School Committee, who is giving up her three-year seat to seek election for a single year, the remainder of Murat Bicer’s term. Bicer has resigned from the committee as he is moving away from Belmont.

Alper is a Podiatry specialist with an office in his Oak Street home. He is currently serving his tenth elected three-year term as a member of a three-person board the directs the seven-member Health Department staff and its $500,000 annual budget.

Editor’s note: The Health Board story has been revised due to Fiore’s submission of nomination papers to the Town Clerk on Monday, Feb. 5.

Belmont Republicans To Select State Convention Delegates Feb. 6

By Leave a Comment

Photo: MassGOP logo.

On Tuesday, Feb. 6 (snow date Tuesday, Feb. 13) the Belmont Republican Town Committee will Caucus to select 18 delegates to the Massachusetts Republican Convention which will take place on Saturday, April 28 at the DCU Center in Worcester. 
At the convention Republican candidates for federal and state positions, will be selected. The list of candidates include:
  • United States Senator in Congress (Class I)
  • Governor of the Commonwealth
  • Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth
  • Treasurer and Receiver-General
  • Auditor of the Commonwealth
  • Attorney General
  • Secretary of the Commonwealth
The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in the Belmont Art Gallery (third floor) in the Homer Building in the Town Hall complex. 
Any Republican who was registered by Dec. 31, 2017, is eligible for selection as a delegate. All Republicans are invited to come to this very important caucus. 

Shake Up: Major Changes For School Committee With Members On The Move

By Leave a Comment

Photo: Lisa Fiore will be seeking a one-year term on the School Committee.

A resignation, a reduction in time and a decision to seek higher office could likely bring a whole new look to the Belmont School Committee this Spring. At least one full-three year seat is currently open and a partial term could become vacant after the results of the annual Town Election on April 4 are tallied. 

• A move to the west coast to pursue career opportunities resulted in Murat Bicer resigning his seat. 

“Yes, I will be resigning as a result of the move, and I’m planning to do that early next week to give candidates enough time to collect signatures,” Bicer told the Belmontonian, who has a year remaining in his term. 

• Current Committee Chair Lisa Fiore is giving up her full three-year seat to finish the one year position made available by Bicer’s departure. The college administrator who has led the committee for the past two years told the Belmontonian last week she was leaving the committee to spend more time with her children who attend Belmont High School and the Chenery Middle School. A day later Fiore said she “decided to seek the one-year term for School Committee, and pulled papers this morning.”

“After coming to terms with not running again, it is a nice opportunity to continue to serve the town AND focus on family,” she said. 

Susan Burgess-Cox, who is the committee’s secretary, has submitted her nomination papers to Town Clerk Ellen Cushman for certification. She will be seeking one of the two three-year terms up for grabs in April.

• As reported in the Belmontonian, Committee member Tom Caputo has pulled papers for a seat on the Board of Selectmen, to fill the seat currently occupied by Chairman Jim Williams. If he is successful, a joint committee of the Selectmen and the School Committee will select a replacement to fill Caputo’s remaining term which runs until April 2020. 

New Belmont High School Debt Vote Set For Nov. 6 After Meeting OKs Design, 7-12 School

By 4 Comments

Photo: Belmont High School Building Committee Chair William Lovallo.

The future of a new Belmont High School will be decided on Tuesday, Nov. 6 when residents vote whether to authorize a debt exclusion for more than $200 million for a new high school, according to the head of the committee shepherding the project from concept to completion. 

“We are looking at the November general election, definitely,” said Belmont High School Building Committee Chair William Lovallo, who made the announcement after the Belmont High School project crossed a significant milestone when the Belmont School Committee unanimously approved the recommendation of School Superintendent John Plehan to house 7th through 12th grades in the new school.

The School Committee’s action took place before members of the Belmont High School Building Committee, the Board of Selectmen, the design and project management teams and 85 residents who crammed into the Wellington Elementary School’s cafeteria on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

With Belmont’s student enrollment continuing to skyrocket – it is expected to increase district-wide by 375 students between now and the 2024-2025 school year – Phelan said the only grade option that will allow the school district to meet its educational vision while being financially viable while adding space required to house the K-12 pupil population is to create a 7th to 12th grade high school.

The presentation, which included data Phelan has shown to the committee and the public for the past year highlighted the disadvantages the district would face by selecting another configuration. For instance, a 9-12 high school would require the town to finance and build a new elementary school and expensive renovations in an 8-12 school. 

“This is a really exciting time, it’s also a very anxious time to change your configuration,” said Phelan as the high school transforms from a 9-12 traditional model into essentially two sections: a lower high school for grades 7 to 9 and an upper school for 10-12. 

“But as long as we do a good job within our schools, the rest will take care of itself,” said Phelan. 

Immediately after the vote, the building committee selected the “bow tie” design scheme (known as C.4.2) from four approaches that survived a year-long process. See all of the designs here. 

While the building committee selected its “favorite” style, the design phase is at its beginning stage, according to representatives from the architectural firm commissioned to create the new school.

“We are not by any means done at this point. We will continue our work together,” said Brooke Trivas, principal and project lead at the firm Perkins+Will, a notion reiterated by Owner’s Project Manager Thomas Gatzunis.

With grade configuration and design in hand, the project – easily the largest construction project in Belmont’s 159-year history – will quickly gather steam in the creation of a schematic diagram as well as a clearer picture of how much it will cost. Last week, an initial rough estimate of the same design approved by the building committee came in at approximately $310 million.

According to Lovallo, the debt exclusion vote will be one of two watershed events the project will face this year. The second is the production of “a large document” known as the Project Funding Agreement. The PFA is the primary contract the MSBA enters into with districts whose school projects have been approved to receive reimbursement grants. 

The PFA also governs the relationship between the district and the MSBA during the school building process from design through construction and completion of the project and will determine how much the Massachusetts School Building Committee will reimburse the town in construction costs.

“Our work will be intense until July as we will produce the PFA for the MSBA and that will bind us with the state sometime in August,” said Lovallo, who said an independent group of residents would work gathering support for the debt exclusion.

Tuesday’s meeting was mainly a reiteration of the information and data gathered and formulated from a year of public meetings and other forums. Lovallo began the session with a detailed, step-by-step retelling of how the cost of the project was determined, the amount that will be reimbursed by the state, and how the project will impact residential taxes.

One week before, the committee announced the initial rough estimate for a new high school – mostly new construction with minor renovation – would cost approximately $310 million with Belmont residents picking up $231 million after the state’s reimbursement. 

Lovallo stressed was it was “not a wise choice” to make direct cost comparisons between Belmont and other high school projects as factors as diverse as enrollment, the sum of the renovations, removing hazardous material and abatement expenses and how much it would cost to phase the building onto the site while students are being taught there.

In addition, the project cost during the feasibility study stage is more an educated estimate than firm figures, calculated using a formula incorporating the building’s total square footage and not the actual cost of installed building’s mechanical systems (HVAC operations, for example) or the complexity of constructing science labs and other types of construction spaces.

With the new 7-12 school topping 422,700 sq.-ft., “[the high school] will have a large project cost,” said Lovallo. But a big price tag does not mean the building is riddled with extravagances. “I can say to those that question if we are building an opulent building, the answer is no.”

“The Building Committee continues to focus on cost-effective solutions to remain fiscally responsible and not just in capital costs but also in operating costs,” he said.

Lovallo said the “Belmont” cost for the building would be impacted by how much the Mass School Building Authority will provide for reimbursement. Currently, the state is looking to chip in 36.89 percent of “eligible” costs, a significant portion which is made up of a cap on construction costs of $326 per square foot, anything above that amount is Belmont’s to pay. There are opportunities for the reimbursement rate to increase with incentive points up for demonstrating, for instance, a high efficiency designed building, retaining a portion of the existing school and showing good capital maintenance practices.

Lovallo concluded saying the estimated $310 million cost is “within about 5 to 10 percent accuracy” of the final price tag so a 10 percent reduction in the cost of the new school would see the last price tag fall to approximately $280 million with Belmont’s bill knocked down to the low $200 million. 

“I am optimistic that … we will find ways to reduce the project cost from the numbers we have been discussing,” he said.