Running for Office/Town Meeting: Belmont’s Nomination Process [VIDEO]

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Photo: The steps to get you on the ballot.

Thinking about running for Belmont Town Meeting? Or maybe taking a step up and seeking town-wide office?

What eligible voters need first to understand is the nomination process to place your name on the ballot for the 2017 Town Election which takes place on Tuesday, April 4.

And the person to ask those and other questions is Belmont’s Town Clerk, Ellen Cushman. In this video, Cushman gives interested residents the basics of getting on the ballot.

More information can be found at the Town Clerk’s web page located on the town’s website.

After Tax Dispute Resolved, Town’s Substation Sold to Eversource for $45M

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Photo: The 60-megawatt Blair Pond substation off Brighton Street.

After being delayed for several days to resolve a last-minute tax dispute, the most expensive transaction in the Town of Belmont’s history was approved Dec. 15 when the Light Board OK’d the sale of the newly-constructed Belmont Light’s 60-megawatt Blair Pond substation off Brighton Street and three new 115kV transmission lines to utility giant Eversource for $45 million.

The push back of the agreement’s closing date was due to an objection initiated by Selectman Sami Baghdady – the Board of Selectmen makes up the Light Board – who questioned Eversource’s assumption it was exempt from paying local taxes on contractual services which would reduce its tax burden to the town by nearly 90 percent.

In the end, the town’s contention made by Town Assessors’ Chair Robert Reardon that Eversource would be required to pay the full tax won the day as the utility will send an estimated $350,000 in annual taxes to the town.

The $45 million for the new cables and the 10,000 square-foot electrical substation off Brighton Street on Flanders Road on the Cambridge line will be used to pay off the $26 million in short-term loans used to construct the project.

The town’s new system that is connected to New England Electric Grid at Alewife will provide “an effective energy distribution solution for Belmont residents and businesses for the next forty years,” stated a press release from Belmont Light

In February 2012, Belmont Town Meeting voted unanimously to authorize $53.7 million in new bonding capacity to finance the new system which doubled electrical capacity increasing reliability for Belmont customers.

In its Joint Development Agreement, Eversource reimburses Belmont $45 million for the cost of constructing the transmission line and for the utility to take permanent ownership and maintenance responsibilities for the transmission line moving forward.

With the transfer of ownership, Belmont’s construction costs for the Blair Pond Substation and Transmission Line project, anticipated to be $53.7 million, closed out at $26.1 million, a $27.6 million savings for Belmont ratepayers.

A corresponding rate increase associated with the cost of this project that was initially anticipated to be approximately 14 percent for Belmont Light customers is instead 6 percent, an increase that has already been factored into rates, according to Belmont Light calculations.

“At the end of the day, in working with Eversource, we [can] deliver a critical project for Belmont electric users that addresses our serious capacity concerns, skyrocketing maintenance costs and power quality issues, in the most modernized and efficient manner,” said Belmont Light General Manager Jim Palmer in the press release.

“Just as important, due to our agreement with Eversource, we are able to do so substantially under the original cost estimates approved by Town Meeting and save the Belmont ratepayers $27.6 million while providing the best possible solution for our future needs.”

GOP Stalwart Guy Carbone Pulls Papers for Selectmen Race

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Photo: Guy Carbone (courtesy photo c. 2010)

Guy Carbone, a perennial candidate for statewide and congressional offices, is eyeing a much more down ballot race in 2017 as the former head of the Metropolitan District Commission has taken out nomination paper to run for Belmont Board of Selectmen.

If he submits signatures from 50 registered voters by Feb. 14, the octogenarian attorney will join incumbent Sami Baghdady and challenger Adam Dash as likely candidates for the one Selectmen’s seat up for grabs this year.

The 2017 town election takes place on Tuesday, April 4.

A call to the Woodfall Road resident was not returned as of 5 p.m.

While a bit of a surprise for Carbone to run for the seat – he made no recent statement on issues or concerns he had that would prompt him taking out papers – earlier this year Carbone was part of a contentious hearing before the Belmont Zoning Board of Appeals in 2015-16 when a relative sought a special permit to replace a large bay garage on Holt Street with a storage space. After challenges by neighbors, the ZBA denied the permit which Carbone took considerable issue.

Carbone, who holds several engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a degree from Suffolk University Law School, is a long-time member of Belmont’s Republican Town Committee who served as commissioner of the Metropolitan District Commission for two years, from 1979 to 1980. He also served on the Noise By-Law Review Committee in 2002.

He is best known for committing to several quixotic runs for statewide office, campaigning as a Republican in a very blue state. He ran – and lost – three times for the Republican nomination for Attorney General, was barely defeated by Jonathan Raymond in the Massachusetts’s 5th congressional district Republican primary in 1996 (Raymond later was dispatched by Barney Frank), and lost 75 percent to 25 percent in the 1998 Middlesex and Suffolk Massachusetts Senate district general election to Steven Tolman.

Residents Give Good Tidings (and Coffee) to Town Crews Working Christmas

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Photo: Brighton Street on Christmas Eve.

It was already a cold and dank Christmas Eve afternoon as the sun was setting on two crews from Belmont Water Department’s Distribution and Maintenance services.

After spending hours digging up Brighton Street next to the Hill Estates seeking a major water main leak, the workers discovered the break was not in the 10-inch main but a six-inch pipe – bearing the date “1888” – on the other side of the street.

“It occasionally happens that our best guess is wrong,” said Mike Bishop, the Department of Public Works’ Water Division manager on Tuesday, Dec. 27. It would mean filling in the first trench and dig a new one in the dark hours before Christmas.

Around the same time, homeowners on Washington Street called the town to report a “geyser” of water was gushing out of a manhole cover directly across from the entry of the Chenery Middle School.

‘That turned out to be an eight-foot long slit in a 10-inch main,” said Bishop, likely caused by air in the system introduced into the pipe from recent work along Common Street.

“That pocket of air was just looking for a weak point in the system,” said Bishop.

Two major breaks at the same time which just happened to be on Dec. 24th.

“Unfortunately we can’t predict when these will happen. We just have to send the crews out and get the job done,” said Bishop.

As the employees began breaking up the street for the second time, word got out among those living on Pond Street, Hill Road and Brighton Street of those workers preparing for a long night to provide town services.

First one, then another and still more came by to drop off coffee, pastries, food and a “thank you” to the half-dozen or so digging for a pipe in the dark. The Brighton Street work was completed just before St. Nick flew into Belmont around midnight.

When the crews came to make the repairs on Washington in the late morning of Christmas Day, residents from around the site stopped to wish them Merry Christmas and leave off gifts of food and drinks.

For Bishop, the response of residents was gratifying.

“It was phenomenal,” he said of the gestures of good will.

“It’s the little things that go a long way for the crews,” said Bishop, who used social media to thank the town folks.

“Sometimes [the employees] don’t see how appreciated their work is. But this one time that [residents] just coming by did a lot of good.”

Selectmen Considering Feb Special Town Meeting To Tackle Transfer Loophole

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Photo: Alcohol transfer on the agenda.

The Belmont Board of Selectmen is considering calling a February Special Town Meeting to resolve the controversal inability of the town to control the transfer of alcohol and liquor licenses.

“We want to tackle the non-transferability of [alcohol] licenses sooner than later,” Mark Paolillo, selectmen chair told the Belmontonian at the end of the board’s meeting on Monday, Dec. 19.

“There’s a lot of folks in town that are concerned about … these licenses,” he said. “And there is unanimity on the board to follow that recommendation,” said Paolillo.

When asked when the meeting could be held, Paolillo said: “it would be in the February time frame.”

The proposed action comes on the heels of a controversial 2-1 vote by the Selectmen approving the transfer in October of a full-retail alcohol license from the Loading Dock to Star Market for a $400,000 fee. It was discovered during the public hearings that legislation from 2013 increasing the number of liquor licenses in town did not have the same limiting language on transferring licenses as in the first retail liquor licenses approved in 2006. 

Paolillo said a memo to the board from Town Counsel George Hall recommended moving forward with a special home rule petition that would request the Massachusetts legislature to approve a Town Meeting article creating “an umbrella” bylaw covering regulations including transfer limitation overall alcohol licenses including full, pour, retail, and wine and beer.

A home rule petition would be required as the town is taking action that will effect liquor licenses which are granted by the state to municipalities.

The Selectmen can call a Special Town Meeting at any of its public meetings with the agenda posted with minimum 48 hours notice to the public.

Selectmen must then sign and or post the warrant with at least 14 calendar days notice to the public before the Special Town Meeting. For instance, if it signs the order on a Monday, Tuesday is day 1 of 14. There is no requirement that the warrant stays open for any amount of time – it can open it and close it right away – and it does not have to accept another article a resident or Town Meeting member may want to add to the warrant.

The estimated cost of a three hour, one night Special Town Meeting would cost approximately $2,776, according to the Town Clerk’s Office.

Paolillo acknowledged the expense of holding a meeting but deemed the issue important enough to push for an early resolution.

“We certainly appreciate the cost of having a Special Town Meeting, and we will take that into consideration,” said Paolillo. “We have to weigh that against the expense of a possibility of another transfer happening before the [annual Town Meeting which begins in May 2017].”

“Lots of folks have expressed concern that legislation in 2013 didn’t have a non-transferability provision within it and they want to see that reinstated,” said Paolillo.

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.