Smaller Real Estate Tax Bill Jump in ’17 as Property Values Cool

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Photo: Belmont’s Assessors’ (from left) Charles R. Laverty, III, Robert P. Reardon, Martin B. Millane, Jr.

Real estate taxes on the average-valued home in Belmont will increase by the least amount in the past four years after the Belmont Board of Selectmen approved at its Monday, Dec. 19 meeting the recommendation of the town’s Board of Assessors’ to up the town’s property tax rate 14 cents in 2017.

The annual tax bill for the average assessed valued property – currently $941,700 – would increase by $311 to $11,960, less than half of last year’s hike of $717 under the new tax rate of $12.70 per $1,000 of assessed value. The current rate is $12.56 per $1,000.

Under the new rate, the annual tax for a property assessed at $750,000 will be $9,525, or $2,381.25 per quarterly tax bill.

The increase in the tax rate “is a result of a slight increase in real property values with an increase in the tax levy capacity,” wrote Assessors’ Chair Robert P. Reardon in the board’s yearly report to the Selectmen.

Reardon told the Belmontonian the town data showed a significant cooling in real estate values in Belmont this year. After increases of $55,300 ($782,600 to $847,900) from 2014 to 2015 and $79,500 between 2016-15 ($847,900 to $927,400), assessed values increased just $14,300 in 2017 compared to 2016.

After years of five percent increases in average assessed values, “[y]ou expect it to pull back, and it did this year,” said Reardon, who predicts home values will continue to level off in 2017 with two interest rate hikes anticipated by the Federal Reserve.

Under the new rate, Belmont will collect $85.6 million from residential, commercial, open land and personal properties. Last fiscal year, the town raised $82.9 million in real estate taxes.

Reardon noted a healthy increase in new property growth totaling $788,000 from the construction of the Belmont Uplands and the sale of prime properties on Woodland Road provided a “nice” bump into the town’s coffers.

As with past years, the assessors’ recommended, and the selectmen agreed to a single tax classification for all properties and no real estate exemptions.

Reardon said Belmont does not have anywhere near the amount of commercial and industrial space – at a minimum 20 percent – to creating separate tax rates for residential and commercial properties. Belmont’s commercial base is 4.24 percent of the total real estate.

“People always assumes there’s money if you go with the split rate and that’s not true,” Reardon told the Belmontonian.

With Pot Legal, Selectmen Consider Curbs on Retail Sale of Marijuana

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Photo: What could be coming to Belmont in 13 months.

A head shop on every street corner in Belmont?

While not the most likely business scenario for the “Town of Homes,” unless the Belmont Board of Selectmen and Town Meeting gets together to place allowable restrictions on the retail sale of marijuana, stores much like those in Colorado, dubbed “recreational dispensaries,” could spring up in Belmont’s commercial districts with no prohibition on numbers.

And the clock is ticking.

“If Belmont wants to control [marajuna sales], it has a shorter timetable than it realizes,” said Board of Health Chair Dr. David Alper who meet the Selectmen with fellow board member Julie LeMay on Monday, Dec. 12.

The possession, use, and home-growing of marijuana became legal under state law for adults 21 and older on Thursday, Dec. 15 when the Governor’s Council certified the ballot question 4 which passed on Nov. 8. Adults can hold up to 10 oz. and grow six plants with a maximum of 12 per household.

While municipalities can adopt an outright moratorium on “smoke” shops – Ashland has gone that route – that sell smokable and eatable marijuana, Alper noted Belmont residents voted 53 percent to 47 percent for legalizing pot. Also, prohibiting pot sales would preclude Belmont from receiving up to 2 percent local tax on purchases.

Rather than a ban, Alper advised following the state’s goal of treating marijuana like alcohol, such as placing a cap on the number of establishments in town. The only current restriction on pot shops is they can not be within 500 feet of a school zone.

But Alper said the town must have any limitations in the town’s bylaws by January 2018 when the new law permits the first head shops to open for business.

“[The selectmen] must have an article before Town Meeting [in May 2017] so the town can vote in September,” he said.

“You are driving [future restrictions],” Alper told the selectmen, who advised creating a committee with representatives from the Zoning Board of Appeals, Planning, and Health boards to create guidelines for the Selectmen to follow.

“If we do nothing, there could be as many stores … [located] anywhere,” said Alper.

How Much? Early Hints on Cost, Reimbursement for New High School

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Photo: A new school will be behind this sign within the next decade

So Belmont, are you ready to pay $140 million for a new 9-12 grade High School?

How about $175 million for a structure housing 8-12 grades?

And a whopping $211 million for 7-12 grades?

Now before residents begin forming pitchfork and torch brigades to march on the School Administration building, the proposed price tags are very rough and early estimates which were created by the 16-person Belmont High School Building Committee as part of the committee’s next step in a protracted journey to a new building, according to town and committee officials.

After successfully completing the initial eligability period in November – known as Module 1 – the Building Committee proceeds to Module 2 where they begin forming the school’s project team including a owner’s project manager and a designer.

“Now we’re off and running,” said Building Committee Chair William Lovallo as the project will begin to take shape with the first significant hirings.

But as the committee discovered during the initial module, working in partnership with the MSBA – which will – can be laborious. Hiring a project manager isn’t as simple as placing an ad and waiting for firms to respond. Rather, the MSBA requires a 25 step, five-month long process (Step 16: School Committee evaluates responses and prepares a short list of 3 to 5 firms) to select the person who’ll shepherd the project for what could be close to a decade until completion.

Not that Belmont will find it difficult to secure a big time manager Lovallo said since the district’s project is considered a plum assignment for most firms.

And part of the process is for the committee to come up with a very early idea of the possible cost of the structure when advertising for the manager post.

“The reality is the only reason [for the estimates for the three building types] is we had to put something [in the advertisement],” said Lovallo who put together a chart using the project costs from 13 new and one addition/renovation building projects financed by the MSBA.

Inputting number of students, square-footage of new schools, project budget with additional data, Lovallo came up with $95,053 for each student in the school in 2020. With an estimated enrollment of 1,470 (9-12) to 2,215 (7-12), the cost of the schools being designed will be impressive.

But Lovallo reiterated that “while these numbers are significant [in price], they are just numbers.”

“Until we know the programs, we have no real hard data just estimates,” he said.

While the Building Committee were estimating costs, the MSBA has preliminary results of its own – again early and rough – on the percentage the state would reimburse the town on construction costs.

Under a rate that will apply throughout the feasibility study process, Belmont will see a nearly 37 percent (actually 36.89 percent) of construction costs compensated. The rate was determined using a chart that included factors – such as income and property wealth – and incentives including energy efficiency and maintenance.

Only after the study is complete will the state determine Belmont’s final allowance.

In a rough estimate, the price tag of $140 million for a 9-12 school would be reduced by $52 million with the town paying $88 million.

While the meeting was dominated by charts and numbers, the committee began discussing the need for community outreach in promoting its work and keeping residents informed where in the process the project currently stands. A professional webpage and video presentations were two items that topped the list of public relations needs.

Never Give Up: New Harris Field Press Box A Statement In Perseverance

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Photo: Belmont will soon have a press box at Harris Field: (from left) Jim Williams, Bill Webster, Bob McLaughlin, Rick Jones, Mark Paolillo and Sami Baghdady.

At Monday’s Board of Selectmen’s meeting, Dec. 12, Bob McLaughlin told the old chestnut of Winston Churchill speaking to graduates at a college commencement after WWII.

“He told them “Never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up,” said McLaughlin.

And when it came to getting a new press box at Belmont High’s Harris Field paid for, “Bill Webster is our Winston Churchill.”

Since 2001, Webster – a long time member of the Belmont Permanent Building Advisory Committee – has led the effort through some difficult times to where he and his team of volunteers gave a ceremonial “big” check of $75,000 to the Selectmen for the construction this spring of the long-sought-after amenity.

For a decade and a half, since 2001, a group of Belmont Boosters and interested residents attempted first to receive from the courts an exemption to the American with Disabilities Act – they never did – from building an expensive elevator to the top of the stands adjacent to the Skating Rink.

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Then there was the challenge of raising the $150,000 needed to build the mechanism. Last year, an attempt at securing Community Preservation Act funds was turned down.

“It’s been a long, long road,” said McLaughlin. “But this year, the stars aligned.”

The town via Town Administrator David Kale, the support of the Capital Budget Committee and other left over athletic field funds provided $75,000 which would be released if the volunteers could match that amount.

McLaughlin praised Rick Jones – who was already instrumental in renovating the White Field House and the High School fitness center – who led the fundraising campaign which was supported by Belmont Savings Bank, the Brendan Grant Foundation, the Boosters and “lots and lots of great people” who contributed.

“This generous gift will allow us to move forward with this structure,” said Selectmen Chair Mark Paolillo.

$45M Substation Sale In A Bind As Town Assess Eversource’s Tax Motives

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Photo: The new electrical substation, not yet Eversources

The largest financial transaction in the Town of Belmont’s history is on tenterhooks as a last-minute dispute over a powerful regional utility’s attempt to limit its exposure to municipal taxes has town officials demanding changes to the already signed sales agreement.

With only four days left to complete the deal, the Belmont Light Board (made up of the Board of Selectmen) and the chair of the town’s Board of Assessors are seeking changes to or the elimination of a single paragraph in the sale of the town’s new substation and two land easements which would nearly zero-out the firm’s exposure to paying non-property taxes by binding Belmont to the utilities’ interpretation of those costs.

“We are at an impasse,” said Light Board Chair Mark Paolillo at the Board’s Monday afternoon meeting at Town Hall, Dec. 12.

“We as the town fathers would be failing to do our job to approve this agreement as it is right now,” said board member Sami Baghdady.

What’s not in dispute is the $45 million Eversource will pay Belmont for the newly-constructed 10,000 square-foot electrical substations off Brighton Street on Flanders Road on the Cambridge line and new 115 kV transmission lines using easements along the MBTA Commuter Rail tracks and on town property. The new substation was approved by a unanimous vote of Special Town Meeting in Feb. 2012.

Formerly known as Northeast Utilities, the Hartford- and Boston-based Eversource is a regional electrical and gas utility with more than 3.6 million customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. It merged with NSTAR in 2012.

Belmont Town Treasurer Floyd Carman said the payment, which last week he called the largest financial transaction the town has committed to, will be used to pay off $28 million in short-term bonds which financed the construction.

Carman said the remaining $17 million would be set aside to pay the cost of decommissioning Belmont Light’s three former substations located at the Chenery Middle School, off Hittinger Street and at the old Light Department Headquarters adjacent the Police Station on Concord Avenue and other improvements.

Under a joint development agreement, Belmont’s electrical utility Belmont Light and Eversource agreed to close the deal and transfer the assets two weeks after final testings concluded which occurred on Dec. 2. The Light Board – which is the governing body of Belmont Light – and Eversource then worked to reach an agreement before Dec. 16.

It was during the reading of the purchase and sale agreement that Baghdady, a transactional attorney, spotted a line in the document concerning the assessment of non-property personal services, which is the value of the contractional work on the project.

“I could tell that [Eversource] appeared to be attempting to minimize their taxes to the town,” said Baghdady.

While the Light Board signed the sales agreement at an Emergency Meeting on Friday, Dec. 9, it did so with the caveat that more information on the fallout of Eversource’s motive to add the language to the deal. The board then asked the town’s Board of Assessors’ Chair Robert Reardon to lend his expertise to the matter.

Reardon, whose day job is the director of the Cambridge Assessing Department, concluded the current language would bind Belmont’s assessors to that went against its best interest and ran counter to state assessing law which allows municipalities to not just tax real property but the value of the personal services, in Belmont’s case when engineers installed the transformers, switchgear, and protective equipment.

In Reardon’s opinion under the existing agreement, Eversource could point to the sales document to prevent Belmont’s assessors from taxing the services rendered.

In his view, the annual assessed payment from the utility to the town would be reduced from approximately $350,000 to $3,500, saving the utility $346,500 annually to Belmont’s deficit.

“I trying to protect the town,” said Reardon as he declared his opposition to the deal.

Belmont Light’s counsel Walter Foskett said Eversource could be reluctant to make changes to a signed sales document, but Paolillo noted that Eversourse “showed their hand” on including and defending the particular paragraph to the agreement.

“Why care about the language if you are not going to use it … for a tax break,” he said.

In the view of Reardon and the Light Board, taking out the disputed language doesn’t prevent Eversource from appealing the judgment of Belmont’s assessors to the appellate court.

“This is important enough to meet again,” said Paolillo.

Town Election ’17: Dash Readies Run for Selectmen

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Photo: Adam Dash.

If all indications are correct – and so far there’s no evidence to the contrary – it appears Adam Dash will soon have to choose from one of his collection of dapper fedoras to “toss into the ring” as the Goden Street resident readies to declare his candidacy for the Board of Selectmen in the April 2017 town election.

“I am excited about the race and look forward to discussing the issues facing our wonderful Town of Homes,” Dash wrote in an email response to quires from the Belmontonian.

Dash said while he and his supporter have gone so far as to form a campaign committee (that document can be found on the Belmont Town Clerk’s website) called Elect Adam Dash, “we are still in the early, preparatory stages” of a possible challenge to the seat currently held by Sami Baghdady.

While it was “premature” to say that he is definitely running, Dash noted that residents “can check out our preliminary website www.electadamdash.com for updates and information, and to make donations.”

While never elected to town-wide office, Dash is no stranger to Belmont government or political campaigns. A member of the financial watchdog Warrant Committee since 2009, Dash’s profile rose to prominence in 2015 as the public face of the “Yes for Belmont” campaign, successfully arguing the need for a $4.5 million multi-year override.

Town Election ’17: Carman Seeking Re-Election as Treasurer

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Photo: Floyd Carman.

Belmont Town Teasurer and long-time resident Floyd Carman told the Belmontonian this week he will be running to retain his post as the town’s manager of its financial assets and liabilities and tax collector.

Now in his 12th year in the post, Carman is known for his ahearance to conservative financial principles which he says is one reason the town has maintained the gold standard Triple A rating from Moody’s, the bond credit rating firm, for most of a decade. 

Carman was first elected treasurer in 2005, winning a close race over Danelia Boccia. He has run unopposed since.

Born in Cambridge, Carman spent four decades with John Hancock, reaching the position of vice president before retiring in August 2005. The Brighton Street resident matriculated at Bentley College and received his MBA in Finance from Western New England College.

Community Path’s ‘Hot’ Topics at Wednesday’s Meeting

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Photo: A previous public meeting of the Community Path Implementation committee.

“Hot topics” raised at three previous community meetings will return for a second go-around before residents as the Community Path Implementation Advisory Committee holds its fourth public meeting on the creation of a multi-use route through Belmont.

The meeting takes place on Wednesday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. at the Chenery Middle School, 90 School St.

The night will focus on discussing the major issues – such as privacy, on- and off-road path and alternative routes – with the committee’s engineering and landscaping consultants who are creating a feasibility study of the pathway.

The consultants, lead by Foxboro-based Pare Corp., will take data and information from the meeting and incorporate it into a matrix which will evaluate the various alternative routes.

“All views and comments made during the meeting will be reviewed and considered to the maximum extent possible,” said the committee in its agenda.

Historic Resources Survey Makes Public Debut on Thursday

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Photo: Redtop, the historic house located at 90 Somerset St. It was once the home of William Dean Howells and family.

After two years of compiling and sorting data and information, the summary findings of the Belmont Historic Resources Survey will be presented in the Board of Selectmen’s Meeting Room, at 7 p.m. this Thursday, Dec. 8.

The town-wide survey of historic properties, conducted by Preservation Consultant Lisa Mausolf, was funded by a grant of $115,000 from the Community Preservation Committee in 2013.

“The Historic District Commission is excited that the historic survey project is nearing completion,” said Lauren Meier, co-chair of the Belmont Historic District Commission.

“It fills in a number of gaps in the documentation about Belmont’s historic resources and will be a valuable tool for the Commission going forward. We are grateful to the Community Preservation Committee and Town Meeting for making this possible,” said Meier.

The survey is an update of the 1984 book Belmont: The Architecture and Development of the Town of Homes, a comprehensive architectural and historic survey of Belmont created by the Boston University Preservation Studies Program. 

In 2013, the Belmont Historic District Commission embarked on revisiting the data, hiring Mausolf to update forms with new information and prepare new forms for resources that had been overlooked in the previous effort.   

The information collected can inform state and federal agencies when federally or state funded projects are planned that might adversely affect a significant cultural resource.  

On the local level, the new inventory can help communities identify significant resources and prioritize future preservation activities including listing properties on the National Register of Historic Places and establishing local historic districts or neighborhood conservation districts.  

The inventory also serves as a basis for the Belmont Historic District Commission to determine which of the town’s significant historic buildings should be subject to the Demolition Delay Bylaw.

Holiday Cardboard Recycling Set for Saturday, Dec. 3

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Photo:

For the first time, Belmont’s Highway Department will accept uncut cardboard packaging for recycling. 

Residents will be able to drop off cardboard – which will need to be folded at the Department of Public Works Town Yard – on Saturday, Dec. 3 between 9 a.m. and noon.

While Belmont’s trash and recycling contractor accept cardboard, it must be cut into pieces no larger than 3 feet by 3 feet and tied or taped together to make a stack no more than nine inches high.

The new pilot program will take place on three Saturdays – the other dates are Jan. 7 and Feb. 4 – during the holiday season. The DPW will evaluate the scheme in February to determine if it will become an annual service.