Wednesday’s Comm. Path Feasibility Meeting: $ and Rating the Routes

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Photo: Community path in Somerville.

The penultimate public meeting of the Belmont Community Path feasibility study will finally focus on how much each of the possible routes running across Belmont will cost and how to find the Benjamins to pay for it.

The meeting, at 7 p.m., Wednesday, April 26, in the Chenery Middle School’s auditorium, will feature the work of Pare Corporation, the firm hired last year by the Belmont Board of Selectmen to be the study’s project manager. 

Wednesday’s gathering – dubbed “Hot Topics” by Pare – is the final public meeting before Pare presents its recommended path route to the Board of Selectmen in May. 

Wednesday’s event, the ninth feasibility study public meeting held by Pare, will focus on presenting four major components in evaluating and analyzing the routes that transverse the town from the Waltham border outside of Waverley Square to the Cambridge city line just off Brighton Street at the Fitchburg Cutoff Bikepath.

The night’s agenda includes:
        • The “Full” Matrix,
        • The study’s evaluation criteria,
        • Cost summaries for the route options, and 
        • Potential funding sources.

Pare will present what it is calling “the Full Matrix”, which is a spreadsheet in which each of the more than two dozen paths evaluated are ranked on a series of criteria, i.e. user experience, design attributes, cost, to determine the suitability of each route.

Town Meeting Preview: Warrant Briefing Monday Night at the Beech

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Photo: Warrant Committee Chair Roy Epstein

The Belmont League of Women Voters and Warrant Committee is co-sponsoring the annual warrant briefing to acquaint Town Meeting members and residents with the non-financial articles on the Town Meeting warrant.

The meeting will take place Monday evening, April 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the Beech Street Center, 266 Beech St.

This is an opportunity for Town Meeting members and the general public to ask questions of town officials and department heads concerning any of the warrant articles prior to the 2017 Town Meeting beginning in one week on Monday, May 1. 

Warrant Committee Chair Roy Epstein will preside.

This year, Town Meeting Moderator Michael Widmer will hold an orientation/information session for new Town Meeting members at 6:30 p.m. immediately prior to the warrant discussion. All Town Meeting member is welcome to attend this session.

Housing Trust’s Meeting On Increasing Housing Options Thurs. Apr. 27

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Photo: Housing affordability thrust of Housing Trust’s meeting.

Next week, the Belmont Housing Trust will host a public meeting to discuss its Housing Production Plan, which provides a five-year framework and strategy for the development of a variety of housing options to meet the needs of the Belmont residents.

Cosponsored by the League of Woman Voters, the meeting will be held at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 27 at the Beech Street Center, 266 Beech St.

“We’re excited to gather final public input and comments on Belmont’s housing future. The high level of interest in this month’s town election suggests people are really thinking about what we need to do, going forward, to make Belmont a more livable place for all,” said Judie Feins, co-chair of the Housing Trust.

In community meetings over the past year, residents participated in discussions about “imagining Belmont’s housing future,” identifying their interests and concerns about housing in Belmont. Their input was combined with a Housing Needs Assessment based on demographics and economic data to develop the Housing Production Plan, which details production goals and strategies aimed at meeting those needs.

The draft Housing Production Plan is available here.

Participants Thursday will provide additional input before the Plan is finalized and submitted to town officials for approval and action.

The Housing Needs Assessment noted that Belmont’s population continues to rise modestly, with a forecasted need for housing for seniors and new families, including rentals and community housing. Housing costs in Belmont have increased more than 40 percent since 2009, making Belmont less accessible for lower and moderate income households. 

In addition, while nearly a quarter of Belmont households are eligible for affordable housing, only seven percent of Belmont’s housing units are considered affordable. Belmont’s housing is also generally quite old and may have significant maintenance needs.

Massachusetts requires cities and towns to have affordable housing of at least 10 percent of total housing units.  Affordable housing is defined as housing that is affordable to households earning less than 80 percent of Area Median Income – $51,150 for a single person household. 

Once the town’s newest and largest housing developments, Royal Belmont and Cushing Village, are completed, the town will remain 337 units short of the 10 percent benchmark. 

The primary goal of the Housing Production Plan is to identify opportunities to create these 337 affordable units. Those units should, however, meet the needs reflected in the recent assessment. Thus the Plan proposes to create housing for seniors, new families, and for lower income households.

 

The Plan has identified several strategies, including the development of housing near transportation centers, leveraging opportunities on public land, supporting redevelopment of industrial sites, revitalizing existing community housing, and networking with Belmont residents, organizations, property owners and local businesses. 

Stay on Course: Fiore Retains Chair of School Committee

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Photo: Lisa Fiore.

While the Belmont Board of Selectmen made a significant change to its leadership after Town Election, the Belmont School Committee decided it would stay the course.

During a possibly record-setting meeting for brevity – the get-together took a mere 25 minutes which included the members having a new group portrait taken – the committee vote Tuesday, April 11 to retain Dr. Lisa Fiore as chair for a second consecutive term.

The professor and administrator at Leslie University helped shepherd the committee through this and last year’s budget process while leading the group as it dealt with issues related to increasing enrollment, the beginning of the course of renovating/building a new high school and the district’s exit from the Minuteman Tech agreement.

The members also voted Susan Burgess-Cox, a Belmont native, and attorney, as vice chair.

The committee Tuesday night welcomed Catherine (Kate) Bowen to the group, having won election to the group on April 4.

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Belmont School Committee’s Kate Bowen.

A program administrator at Harvard and chair of Sustainable Belmont, the Bartlett Avenue mother of two young students said she is looking forward to being a “voice for the Butler [Elementary] School community” on the committee, a neighborhood which she and many who live in and around Waverley Square believe has been missing for the past few years.

14 Roads Slated For Reconstruction in Fiscal ’18

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Photo: It’s so bad, it’s a winner! (Thanks, Google)

For homeowners on 14 roads in Belmont: Congratulations, you’ve won the bad street lottery.

According to the town’s Office of Community Development, the thoroughfares you live on are deemed so in disrepair – more than half of the roads have a pavement condition index (PCI) rating in the 30s, considered a “poor” grade where travel is “uncomfortable with frequent bumps or depressions” – that it made the cut to undergo a complete reconstruction in fiscal 2018 which begins July 1. 

The “winners” are:

  • Williston Road from Trapelo to Horne (with a PCI rating of 34)
  • Alma Avenue from Bartlett to Belmont
  • Louise Road from Edgemore to Becket
  • Newton Street from Belmont to Fairview
  • Ridge Road from Belmont to White
  • Carleton Road from Washington to Chester
  • Juniper Road from Somerset to Fletcher
  • Branchaud Road from Carleton to Washington
  • Creeley Road from Slate to Hammond
  • Harriet Avenue from Bartlett to Belmont
  • Benton Road from Payson to Oakley
  • Lawndale Street from Oakley to Payson Road
  • Townsend Road from Payson (North) to Payson (South)
  • Payson Road from Oakley to Belmont

The list is subject to change based on the availability of utility work by National Grid to be completed on the roads in 2017. All the work in fiscal ’18 follows the replacement of nearly 100-year-old water mains by the Department of Public Work’s Water Division. 

New Belmont High Team – So Far – Introduced to Public

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Photo: Thomas Gatzunis (left) and Richard Marks of the Daedalus Projects Company.

More than 100 residents braved the cold rain Thursday night, April 6, to head to the Beech Street Center to get an early look at the progress of the construction/renovation of a new Belmont High School.

And if the albeit limited number of comments were any indication what the public is thinking, it constructs a school which will meet the needs of a growing student population but don’t go overboard.

“Keep on budget,” said John O’Connor from Precinct 5. “It should be a good job well done” but done so responsibly.

“That’s the biggest thing,” he said.

The turnout was a welcomed surprise for Belmont High Building Committee Chair William Lovallo who arranged for the meeting to be held in the evening as opposed to the committee’s typical 7:30 a.m. meeting time.

“It was impressive to see this much interest so early on in the process,” said Lovallo, who is leading his second school building committee having chaired the construction of Wellington Elementary School. Much of the curiousness related to early estimates replacing the nearly 50-year-old structure will require a debt exclusion of between $80 to $200 million depending on how many grades will attend the school.

Thursday’s meeting was the opportunity for the building committee to announce the town’s Owners Project Manager as Lovallo introduced Founder and President Richard Marks and Senior Project Manager Thomas Gatzunis of the Daedalus Projects Company of Boston.

The OPM was hired by the Committee to represent the town during the design and construction phases of the building’s creation.

The town hired a familiar face with Daedalus and Gatzunis. Daedalus was the project manager for the construction of the Chenery Middle School 20 years ago (for $20 million!). For many longer-tenured residents, Gatzunis is remembered as a Belmont town employee for 32 years, rising to become the town’s director of community development.

“Tom has institutional knowledge of Belmont, its approvals process, and its public affairs challenges,” said Lovallo, who said Gatzunis’ presence was a major factor why Daedalus was selected. Daedalus’ Shane Nolan will be the on-site project manager.

Daedalus’ Shane Nolan will be the day-to-day on-site project manager for the High School.

“It is great to be back in Belmont,” Marks told the Belmontonian, who noted the team is currently building a $60 million STEM 6-12 grade school in Boston and managed the construction of the $101 million Franklin High School that opened two years ago and a new co-located middle school/renovated high school in Rockland for $82 million.

Gatzunis said that cost control and keeping the project on a schedule will be two of the most important functions he and Daedalus will provide the town.

“[Clients] get angry with me … because I’m constantly that guy saying, ‘We can’t do it'” whether some aspect of the project is too expensive or they need to keep on a tight deadline.

“It’s part of what I do is to have people angry with me. That’s why you hired me,” said Gatzunis.

The next “big step” said Marks for the Building Committee and Daedalus is the hiring of an architect which will a hired through a collaborative process between the town and the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which is funding up to 40 percent of the eligible cost of the new school.

While the architect will be creating separate designs for the different grade groups being proposed, Belmont School Superintendent John Phelan reiterated to the audience a talk he gave residents, parents, PTOs, and students which the one scenario alleviating the stress of overcrowding in the elementary and middle schools would be the 7th grade through 12th-grade high school.

While there are obvious questions about placing a wide-age range of students on one campus, Phelan said through careful planning; a larger school could prove beneficial educationally.

Phelan is inviting the public to hear from Education Facilitator Frank Locker on May 4 and 5 on just such a scenario. 

Residents were interested in the 7-12 grade option, with Mary Lewis liking how the district is “thinking outside the box” suggesting if the 7-12 grade option is approved the Chenery Middle School should be turned into an elementary school, creating five K-6th grade schools in Belmont, an idea that got a positive reaction.

Phil Thayer of Precinct 6 strongly suggested that the new school have a net zero energy footprints with the use of solar and energy-saving mechanicals.  

Holding his young son’s hand, Han Xu advised that a new school be functional, sacrificing on most architectural features and building fixtures, going so far as suggesting a new five grade school doesn’t need an auditorium.

“I know the trend in education construction is to be up-to-date technically but most kids already have the devices they need,” said Xu, who is a structural engineer who has worked on university buildings. 

“You can buy an Apple but it is quite expensive, or you can buy a Dell which can do all the same [tasks]. That’s how the new school should be built,” said Xu.

Winn Brook Tennis Courts Renovation Bid Under Budget

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Photo: Winn Brook Tennis Courts.

The Community Preservation Committee will be receiving a chunk of change back into its coffers after the town accepted the lowest qualified bid for the renovation of the Winn Brook Tennis Courts. 

Century Paving and Construction of Fall River was awarded the contract to replace the four tennis courts adjacent to the Winn Brook School, according to Jay Marcotte, the town’s director of the Department of Public Works. It was the low bid of the 16 firms submitting proposals for the job; he told the Board of Selectmen on Monday, April 5.

The work will begin on April 17 with a completion date of mid-June.

The good news is Century’s estimated cost of $231,100 with a 10 percent contingency – totaling $289,000 – is below the $325,000 the CPC granted and Town Meeting approved last year to repair the courts. 

If the job is completed as expected, the $36,000 in savings will be transferred back into the CPC’s budget, said Marcotte.

Dash Joins Selectmen; Williams Selected Board Chair

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Photo: The new board: Mark Paolillo (left), Jim Williams and Adam Dash

Adam Dash had arrived early Wednesday morning, April 5, at Town Hall waiting to be sworn in as Belmont’s newest Selectman by Town Clerk Ellen Cushman.

But Dash and his supporters, many who celebrated the candidate’s big victory over challenger Guy Carbone just hours before at the winner’s Goden Street house, weren’t the only one’s waiting for the Town Clerk. Eric and Britney had come to Belmont’s Town Hall to fill out a marriage certificate since the clerk’s office was the earliest in the area to open which allowed the couple to get hitched before heading off to work.

Dash said he would happily let the to-be bride and groom cut in line before him “because they are signing up for a lifetime commitment and I’m only doing so for three years.” 

A few minutes after 8 a.m., Cushman formally swore Dash into office, and he joined his two new colleagues – current board members Jim Williams and Mark Paolillo – in his first Selectmen’s meeting. 

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During the annual organizational meeting held the day after Town Election, Williams was unanimously elected to serve as chair, with Paolillo taking over as vice chair.

The selection came a year after Williams felt Paolillo and former selectman Sami Baghdady – whose seat Dash now occupies – joined against him gaining the chairmanship due to his campaign highlighting a solution to better manage OPEB and pension payments.

But on Wednesday morning, each board member spoke of working together in a cooperative manner. 

“We accomplished a lot last year and while not always agreeing” on issues,” said Williams.

Newbies Out In The Rain To Vote, Support or Hopefully Win Election

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Photo: Oliver Leeb receiving congratulations after his first vote.

The all-day rain that has softened voter counts at Belmont’s eight precincts during the annual Town Election did not deter new voters and candidates who were voting for the first time,  

Precinct 2 (Belmont Town Hall)

The last time most people saw Oliver Leeb was when he was waltzing in high heels, in the role of Mary Sunshine in the Belmont High School Performing Arts Company’s production of “Chicago.” On Tuesday, the high school senior who will be attending Brandeis in the fall was with his mother preparing to vote for the first time.

“I have been excited about this for a while,” said Leeb. “It’s important to have some say in things that affect our lives.” 

And while he did have a slight bubble when casting the ballot – he left it in the folder before being told to slide it into the box – Leeb was congratulated by Precinct 2 Captain Henry Kazarian who shook his hand, having become an official voter.

Precinct 1 (Belmont Public Library)

Not only did Belmont High School Senior Samantha Casey get to cast a vote for the first time, but she also knew one of the Town Meeting candidates she was voting for: her mom, Emma Thurston.

“I did vote for her,” said Casey, with Thurston saying “Good answer!” as they stood outside in the rain holding signs.

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Casey said she voted for her mom because “she’s passionate about everything. She does a great job because she knows about town politics and is involved in all the schools.”

As for voting: “It was very exciting, and everyone was super nice when they found out it was my first vote. They call clapped for me,” said Casey, who still has to choice between Boston University and Northeastern to attend in the fall.

Precinct 8 (Winn Brook Elementary School)

First-time candidate Natalie Leino was out greeting voters entering the Winn Brook School with her campaign staff: daughter Carlie and son Ian.

“It’s been fun meeting friends,” said Leino as Carlie – a kindergartener at the Winn Brook – wandered off to Joey’s Park while Ian appeared ready to head home.

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“I just wanted to get more involved in the town having been here for the past five years,” said Leino whø is the chair of the Vision 21 Implementation Committee which recently held the successful “Talk of the Town” forum. 

“And running for Town Meeting is the natural next step to learn what’s going on in town and have a say.” 

Precinct 2 (Town Hall)

You know who your friends are when they are willing to stand out in the rain for you after school. So first-time candidate Devan O’Toole has a friend in David Korn, a fellow senior at Belmont High School, who stood by O’Toole with a sign in hand during the late afternoon rush hour outside Town Hall.

“I’m here to support one of my best friends in his endeavors to become a Town Meeting member. I’ve been canvassing the neighborhood which has been fun,” said Korn who is heading to Berklee this fall. 

“I want to see him make a change in Belmont. I think he can do that because he’s a great kid.”

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BREAKING: Dash Wins Big In Selectmen’s Race, Incumbents Retain Trustee Seats

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Photo: Adam Dash in front of Precinct 8

Warrant Committee Vice Chair Adam Dash defeated Woodfall Road’s Guy Carbone by nearly a two to one margin as the Goden Street resident wins the contested race for a seat on the Belmont Board of Selectmen in results from the Belmont annual Town Election held in rainy conditions, Tuesday, April 4.

Known for his expertise in zoning and financial matters along with his fashionable fedoras, Dash received 3,125 votes to Carbone’s 1,808 from Belmont’s eight precincts.

In the other contested town-wide race, incumbents Kathleen Keohane and Gail Mann will return to the Board of Library Trustees, defeating the challenge of first-time candidate David Stievater, as both women nearly doubled the number of votes received by Stievater.

Despite the wet conditions, approximately 28 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

More to come.