Letter to the Editor: Why Belmont Should Vote for Kim O’Mahony

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To the editor:

Belmont voters should head to the polls on April 5, 2016 and remember to vote for Kim O’Mahony for School Committee. 

Kim is qualified to serve on the School Committee for several reasons. First, as a mother of three students, she has a deep understanding and commitment to the schools. Second, running her own early childhood education business provides a genuine understanding of budgeting and expenses associated with education. Finally, she has been attending school committee meetings and understands the role of the school committee in overseeing the budget, superintendent and establishing policies for the schools.

I first met Kim when she was one of several candidates for an appointment to the School Committee in the fall of 2014. Kim answered the questions posed by the School Committee and Selectmen well and understood the role of the school committee in town government at that time.  During this election season Kim continues to provide thoughtful answers that truly show her understanding of the functions and role of the school committee. 

While I will gladly serve with any of the three candidates, the one who I believe will thrive as a member is Kim O’Mahony.  I hope you all head to the polls and vote for Kim O’Mahony. 

Susan Burgess-Cox

Radcliffe Road 

Why I’m Running: Paul Rickter for Housing Authority

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Photo: Paul Rickter
My name is Paul Rickter and I’m running for Belmont Housing Authority. I’m a Town Meeting member and I live with my wife on Cross Street. Professionally I’m a programmer and I work for a software company called MEDITECH in Westwood.
There are three reasons why I’m running for Housing Authority.
One is my commitment to safe clean affordable housing. Affordable housing is an important part of the fabric of our community.
Two is my depth of experience serving on non-profit boards. I’ve served for 25 years on various boards, including 10 years on the national board of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I’ve chaired boards; I’ve chaired finance committees; I’ve chaired staff search committees. My board experience has taught me several lessons about leadership. One is that, especially on a small board like the Housing Authority, every member can and needs to take a leadership role.
Three is that I can forge creative solutions that make a difference in people’s lives. Writing software is about assessing problems, breaking down the issues into their component parts, and devising solutions for them. Low-income families trying to make ends meet are not ones and zeros, but the discipline of working through a problem and finding a creative solution is a skill that is definitely applicable to the Housing Authority. 
I am sure that my commitment, experience, and ability to forge creative solutions make me an ideal candidate for Belmont Housing Authority. I ask you for your support on April 5.

School Committee Question of the Week: Should Schools Adopt A Naming Rights Policy

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Photo: from left, Murat Bicer, Kimberly O’Mahony, Andrea Prestwich

This week’s Question of the Week for the School Committee:

Many school districts have embracing naming rights on school district-owned property. Naming rights occur when a company or firm purchases the right to place its name and/or logo on a facility or event for a defined period of time. The TD Garden – the sports arena in Boston where the professional teams play – is a nearby example. School districts around the country are moving in this direction – recently Aspen, Colorado – with some agreements reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly to name athletic facilities (or ads on the side of school buses) after a local firm. The money from the namings is mostly targeted towards long-term financial goals. Q: Where do you stand on establishing a naming rights policy for Belmont and would you promote it?

Murat Bicer

The question of selling naming rights to companies to bring in revenue to our district deserves strong consideration. The Financial Task Force report published in early 2015 points to naming rights as a possible source of funds, and lays out a number of critical questions that need to be answered satisfactorily either in by-laws or in any contract with corporate sponsors. I agree that each of these questions is important. I also believe the process by which we develop by-laws and consider sponsors should be transparent and include community participation. The people of Belmont want a healthy school district.  The Committee and district need to have open, cordial, and continual discussions with residents on how to make that happen.  We’re lucky to have generous local businesses who already support our schools through partnerships with the Foundation for Belmont Education, through the performing arts, and on the athletic fields. I commend the FTF for thinking carefully about expanding these partnerships.

Kimberly O’Mahony

Establishing a naming rights policy for Belmont could be a creative way to increase revenue for the District. That being said, specific rules would need to apply to ensure the sponsor’s message agrees with the message of the schools. There are certain categories of companies that would not be suitable such as alcohol or tobacco. Belmont would need to recognize the incredible value it would be providing the sponsor by offering exposure to a new generation of consumers, and realize the proper compensation for that exposure. There would be many other considerations to take into account when creating such a policy, but I would not be against investigating it as an option for Belmont.

Andrea Prestwich

Belmont schools face significant financial challenges in the next few years, including construction of a new High School. Given this reality, I think we should be open to “name rights” deals on big-ticket items. However, before we go down this road the School Committee needs to craft careful policies pertaining to naming rights.  We obviously do not want to name a facility for a tobacco company or gun manufacturers. We also need to protect ourselves from so-called first amendment lawsuits if we reject a sponsor, for example, the Klu Klux Klan won the right to be included in an “Adopt a Highway” program in Missouri. We need to be able to withdraw from a deal if it turns sour. What if we named the new new High School gymnasium for a sports clothing manufacturer who later was discovered to be using child labor? 

One of the most significant downsides to commercial naming is that we lose a sense of community ownership. Think of Joey’s Park or the pool. We could have “sold” the naming rights to these facilities.   Thanks to the vision of a few local leaders, they were rebuilt with the participation of the whole community, including local businesses. The impact of such “barn raising” efforts goes far beyond a new pool and playground. They contribute to a sense of pride in, and ownership of, our town. They encourage us all to be good citizens. My preference is to keep Belmont schools owned by a partnership of citizens and local  businesses rooted in our community.

Why I’m Running: Murat Bicer for School Committee

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Photo: Murat Bicer

Hello, I’m Murat Bicer and I’m running for School Committee. My family and I deeply value public school education and I’m grateful that my children will benefit from Belmont’s excellent schools.

Over the next term of office, the School Committee will be faced with a number of important challenges.

Primary among these challenges are:

  • The need to manage rapidly increasing enrollment
  • The opportunity to build a new high school and share the costs with the Commonwealth
  • Teacher contract negotiations

Some of these challenges are structural which means we need to find long-term, sustainable solutions, and not just short-term fixes. We need to stretch our override dollars as far as they will go and question all the assumptions in our budget.

As an experienced venture capitalist and a father of two, I believe I’m uniquely qualified to do just that. And that’s why I am running.

I have over a decade of professional experience in financial management, strategic planning, and contract negotiations. Specifically, I have served on the boards of over a dozen companies. I routinely review and approve financial and operational plans. I have negotiated numerous employment contracts, as well as investment deals. And finally, I’ve served as the Treasurer of my children’s preschool for the last five years.

It is this range of experience that I can bring to the School Committee to make a difference for the future of Belmont’s schools.

I appreciate your support and, if elected, look forward to working hard for Belmont.

Letter to the Editor: In His Work On Override, Paolillo Deserves Our Vote

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Correction: In my letter, I mistakenly attributed statements from supporters who are campaigning for Ruban to “the Ruban campaign.” Ms. Ruban did not make these claims. 

To the editor:

I care deeply about the Belmont schools. I rely on our town services. I feel strongly that we need to fix our crumbling infrastructure; roads, sidewalks, buildings, playgrounds, etc. 

The 2015 successful override advanced all of these priorities and provided greater financial security for our town.

We owe that to Mark Paolillo.

For me, it is a clear choice:

  • Choose a selectman with 22 years of experience on the Board of Selectmen, Warrant Committee, and Town Meeting.
  • Or choose a selectman in Alexandra Ruban whose only Belmont experience is voting in one town election.

This institutional knowledge that Paolillo brings to the Board of Selectmen is irreplaceable. 

Let’s take the override as an example of Mark’s knowledge and leadership. Most people only saw the seven-week campaign. We celebrated and congratulated each other for making it happen.

But I know, it wouldn’t have happened without Mark’s multi-year preparation, advocacy, and leadership.

How did the override come to be?

  • Mark did his homework. He determined that a key reason for the failure of the 2010 override was that we didn’t adequately show the voters why we were asking for more money.
  • He laid the groundwork. He and the selectmen upgraded the town’s administrative and financial staff so we could properly do the analysis.
  • He made the case. He created and led the financial task force which exhaustively evaluated all avenues to address the town’s financial challenges. 
  • He got it on the ballot. Many obstacles could have prevented putting the override on the April ballot, but Mark made it happen.
  • He advocated for the override. Mark made presentation after presentation explaining why the town needed an infusion of new revenue.
  • And in the last seven weeks, we – the community as a whole – launched a vigorous campaign. I don’t underestimate the importance of the campaign. But I won’t overestimate it either.

Passing an override is hard work. No one wants to pay more taxes. Residents will not pass an override without believing that everything else has been tried. And that requires hard work, experience, knowledge and leadership.

Experience means you know how to get things done. You know who has the skills to solve complex problems. You know what has been tried in the past, why it worked, or why it failed. You are ready to act. In other words, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

It is not enough for our leaders to vote for our priorities. They need the experience to do the hard work that makes the vote possible.

I have only had one meeting with Ruban. I believe that she is smart and well-intentioned. But I also believe that she needs experience in Belmont town government before she is qualified to serve as a selectman.

I began my learning curve five years ago. After two years on the Warrant Committee, five years on Town Meeting, three years on the Underwood Pool Building Committee, and numerous other Belmont leadership roles (YES for Belmont, Joey’s Park, Winn Brook PTA, Belmont KidSpace), I am still on a learning curve. I do not believe it is possible to be the kind of selectman that Belmont deserves without prior experience.

Belmont has important challenges ahead: the high school project, continued enrollment growth, budgetary pressures, and quality of life projects that require Mark’s collaborative approach to complete. 

The future of Belmont’s children and seniors and everyone in between will be better served by retaining Mark Paolillo’s institutional knowledge, leadership and experience on the Board of Selectmen.

It is a clear choice.

Please join me in voting for Mark Paolillo on April 5.

Ellen Schreiber

Sandrick Road

PHOTOS: Unregistered Voters Get The Word Out For Their Candidates

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Photo: Getting out the vote.

Below is evidence that unregistered residents are supporting certain candidates for town-wide office in the upcoming Belmont Town Election on April 5. It should be noted that three are too young to vote and the other is a dog, but still … . Wait until Donald Trump learns about this!

image1-7duplicate 2 duplicates

It should be noted that Kimberly O’Mahony not only has three girls, each has different hair colors – from left to right; Claire, redhead; Sheila, blonde and Maeve, brunette. What are the odds?

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Why I’m Running: Ellen O’Brien Cushman for Town Clerk

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Photo: At work with Ellen Cushman.

I am proud to be Belmont ‘s Town Clerk for the last six years and look forward to serving for another three years, following in the footsteps of some extraordinarily dedicated women and men.  April 5 I run unopposed for re-election but I want to provide a quick summary of some of accomplishments and changes in the Town Clerk’s office over the past couple of years to let you know how we’re doing. The two main goals for the Town Clerk’s office are simplifying transactions so we can continue to handle  growing demands  and accessibility of records and: 

Here are some transaction statistics that may startle you. During the calendar year 2015:   

  • 15, 029 people entered the Town Clerk’s office per our electronic door counters.  No, that’s not a typo, it’s 15,029 people who came into the office looking for information, help, documents!
  • The Town Clerk’s staff of four sent and received more than 31,800 emails
  • There is no system to record the number of incoming phone calls but that’s one of the most popular modes of communication so we can only guess at that number.
  • Daily, we issue residency verification for Belmont families to register children in our schools, that’s every single day we’re open, in 2015 totaling  814 children from  521 families.
  • Licensed 2400 pets, more than 20 percent renewed their pet licenses by paying online.
  • Posted 634 separate meetings from 53 separate governmental bodies, all compliant with the Commonwealth’s Open Meeting Law, and received the related minutes. 
  • Our revenues for Town Clerk activities totaled $100,500 in FY15, up 4 percent from FY14, and the average fee we collect is just $20;  so the total number of fee-based  transactions 5611. 
  • Introduced electronic voting at Town Meeting, getting accurate, fast results and high levels of satisfaction.
  • We issued 195 free Yard Sale Permits online using our self-serve software, up from 13 in its inception year 2014.
  • We distribute materials to Town Meeting Members via email and the Town’s website; at this point, all but six of the 294 Town Meeting Members receive  their documents by email, cutting cost and getting documents in the hands of Town Meeting Members sooner.
  • In FY15, we issued 1774 absentee ballots to qualified Belmont voters and processed 7,650 individual family census forms. 
  • Have had 105 fully trained election workers in 2015, and have just recruited and trained an additional 48, ready to deploy in 2016, an exceedingly busy election year. We’ve standardized our training, provided election worker manuals and re-educated our long-term workers.
  • During the school year, we benefited from 300 volunteer hours from Belmont High School students and another 380 hours over the summer of 2015 to help us with filing and organizing.  We love our volunteers and count on them.

Accessibility of Records: 

  • Pet Licensing System: We maintain all records electronically, in real-time and allow online payments for renewals. We make our data system available to the Animal Control Officer and Belmont Police.
  • Business licensing System: For licenses issued by the Board of Selectmen, we created an online licensing system that allows departments to review, share information and approve or deny a license online, cutting significantly the time from application to approval. In fall 2016 we will allow businesses to apply and pay online and the application processing fee will be waived for businesses do so.
  • Town Meeting Votes: The Town Clerk’s office is daily asked for information about votes by Town Meeting on an array of topics, often from decades ago. We have created an electronic index of the Town Meeting votes to show the result and allow us to locate the transcript of the specific Town Meeting article. At this time, the index covers 3,200 votes from 1955 to 2016; we continue to add votes every chance we get with the goal to have ALL votes back to 1859 indexed and available.
  • Public Records Requests: Under the Massachusetts Public Records law, we receive hundreds of these requests each year, some requiring quick responses, some require extensive research. We’ve formalized the process to keep track of the requests and responses with the goal of never missing a deadline. 
  • Archiving: One way to make records more accessible is to know what you have and where it is before you’re asked to produce it. We have created an online data system to help us keep track of all of our archive items.
  • Our project under the Community Preservation Act has allowed us to digitize Belmont’s more than 70,000 vital records of birth, death and marriage to preserve them, index them and allow us to issue images of these records upon demand. In addition, we are preserving the bound books of these original documents to assure they’ll be around for future generations of Belmontians.

I hope you’re happy with the service the Town Clerk’s office provides for Belmont. Feel free to send me your comments, good and bad. That’s how improvement happens. I would appreciate your vote on Tuesday, April 5. 

Ellen O’Brien Cushman, Town Clerk

Scott Road

Water/Sewer Rates Going Up Nearly 5 Percent in Fiscal 2017

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Photo: Water and sewage bills are going up.

Residential and commercial rate payers will see their combined water and sewer bill increase by nearly five percent in the coming fiscal year, as the as the Belmont Board of Selectmen approved the recommendations from the Belmont Department of Public Works for a rate increase on Monday, March 28.

The average Belmont homeowner who uses 3,000 cubic feet of water will see their quarterly bill jump by $19 – from the current $400 to $419 – pushing $1,700 for fiscal 2017 that begins July 1, 2016, according to Jay Marcotte, Belmont’s DPW director.

Those households and businesses the DPW dubbed as “heavy users” will see their bill increase by $38 per quarter.

The fiscal 2017 increase of 4.7 percent is nearly double last year’s 2.6 percent 

Marcotte said “the largest chunk” of Belmont’s rate increases is from the annual assessment from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which supplies the town with water and takes its sewage. And a significant percentage of the MWRA pricing – 57.7 percent in fiscal 2017 – is influenced by “the large amount of debt it holds.” 

And it is those large increases in scheduled debt payments is causing Belmont’s assessment to spike higher this coming fiscal year. 

The rate increases come as Belmont residents have steadily reduced their consumption of water usage over the past two decades. From a high of 1.05 billion gallons consumed in 1995, households and businesses have decreased their water usage to 767 million gallons in 2015.

But while households’ have become more efficient and consumption trends point downward, rates will need to increase to maintain and serve the public, said Marcotte as fixed costs of capital projects and operation costs continued to rise. 

A part of consumer’s bills is also directed towards Belmont’s largest capital reinvestment program – which began in 1995 – of replacing every water main installed before 1928 (which are unlined cast iron pipes) or about 38 miles. As of today, 25.6 miles – or 66 percent – of the work is complete. 

Learn the Social Host Laws at BHS Presentation Wednesday Night

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Photo: Know the law.

Prom, graduation and warm spring nights are just around the corner. And with them will come requests from many teens to host a party. It is up to parents to know what’s legal and what isn’t when it comes to having a social event at your house.

Middlesex District Attorney (and Belmont resident) Marian Ryan, in conjunction with the Belmont Police Department and the Belmont Public Schools, is hosting a presentation for parents on the state’s strict Social Host Law on Wednesday, March 30. 

The goal of the presentation is to educate parents on the laws related to furnishing alcohol to minors as well as the effects that drugs and alcohol have on underage children. The event will take place in the Little Theatre at Belmont High School beginning at 6:30 p.m.

League of Women Voters’ Candidate’s Night Starts at 6:30PM Wednesday

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Photo: Belmont League of Women Voters’ is sponsoring Candidate’s Night.

The Belmont League of Women Voters’ annual Candidates’ Night – being held tonight, Wednesday, March 30, at 6:30 p.m. in the Chenery Middle School auditorium – will give residents the opportunity to hear directly from the candidates seeking seats on the Belmont Board of Selectmen, School Committee and the contested seat on the Housing Authority.

Tonight’s schedule is:

  • 6:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.: Meet incumbent and new Town Meeting candidates in the lobby of the auditorium. 
  • 7 p.m.: Town Meeting Members will introduce themselves in order of precinct number. No speeches just a quick greeting.
  • 7:45  p.m.: Candidates for town-wide office will speak and answer questions from a moderator on the stage.
  • Selectmen: Incumbent Mark Paolillo and challenger Alexandra Ruban.
  • School Committee: Each are first-time candidates for two seats; Sabri Murat Bicer, Kimberly O’Mahony and Andrea Prestwich.
  • Housing Authority: Tomi Olson and Paul Rickter are vying for the one three-year seat.

The night’s events will be broadcast by the Belmont Media Center.