Vaccine Clinic/Booster Shots For Students, Young Adults on Dec. 28; Covid Surge Testing Jan. 8-9

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Photo: Belmont will be providing booster shots and testing in the coming weeks for the youngest residents in town. (credit: Spencerbdavis, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0)

“Booster shots help,” said Adam Dash, chair of the Belmont Select Board at its Monday, Dec. 20 meeting. And along with Covid testing can mitigate the surge of the coronavirus’ Omicron variant.

But as Dash noted, “Getting the booster shot has been difficult” as people clamber for the chance to get their third dose of the vaccine. As for testing, home Covid kits have all but sold out in most stores while state health officials said daily testing sites have handled between 75,000 to 135,00 people for the past week with waits typically running two hours and more. The line at a free testing site in the Cambridgeside Galleria in Cambridge extended up and around the three mezzanine levels.

So here is some welcome news: Belmont will be providing booster shots and testing in the coming weeks for some of the youngest town residents.

The Health Department is holding a pediatric vaccine clinic on Tuesday, Dec. 28 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Beth El Temple Center at 2 Concord Ave. “This clinic is going to be geared primarily towards 16- and 17-year-old who are recently eligible for booster shots,” said Wesley Chin, Belmont’s health director.

  • Individuals 5-11 can sign up to receive their first or second dose of the pediatric Pfizer vaccine
  • Individuals 12+ can sign up to receive their first or second dose of the adult Pfizer vaccine, or Moderna if they are 18+
  • Individuals 16-17 can also sign up to receive a Pfizer booster shot*
  • Individuals 18+ can also sign up to receive either a Pfizer or Moderna booster shot*

Register for a vaccine appointment here: https://www.appointmentquest.com/scheduler/2180061935?schedule=belmontvaccineclinic

For the second time after a holiday, Belmont and Lexington will be holding joint Covid testing clinics for their residents.

The testing in Belmont will be held on Jan. 8 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Chenery Middle School; Lexington will hold its on Jan. 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Lexington public school administration building gymnasium, 146 Maple St. Residents of either town can

Call the Health Department with any questions at 617-993-2720.

Restrictions On Side Streets To Control HS Student Parking Start Jan. 3

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Photo: Concord Avenue adjacent to the new Belmont Middle and High School

The Belmont Select Board on Monday, Dec. 20, approved a four-week trial plan to force the majority of high school students who drive to the new Belmont Middle and High School off of side streets and back to parking on the main thoroughfare that runs by the facility.

The proposal will take place from Monday, Jan. 3 to Friday, Jan. 28 afterwards the plan will be reviewed and extended, ended or revamped.

Advanced by the Traffic Working Group – Middle and High School, it comes after town officials heard an earful from local residents concerning throngs of high school pupils who found the best parking spaces to the building was right off the main road.

“One of the purposes of the proposal is to restore the status quo of students not parking on side streets,” said Martin November, a task force member who led the effort.

The high school’s parking plan for seniors and juniors is a temporary one itself as there will be no student parking on site until the middle school wing is built. One hundred spaces along the north side of Concord Avenue was allocated to students by the school through a lottery. The spaces are in two sections along Concord Avenue from Underwood Road to the Belmont Public Library with another 90 off-street parking spaces linked to a new skating rink that would be built on the west side of Harris Field.

But soon after the September opening of the new high school wing complaints from homeowners started that their streets were teeming with cars during school hours; parking close to driveways and intersections, creating pinch points where traffic can travel and making deliveries and trash collection much more difficult. When they did call to complain, police response was slow due to current staffing levels.

An October survey conducted by residents on behalf of the working group found approximately 120 student cars coming daily to the school with 56 parking on Concord, six on Goden Street, 12 on Oak Street, approximately 20 in the Orchard/Orchard Circle/Stone Road loop and 20 occupying the jug handle site opposite the library.

November told the Select Board’s Mark Paolillo and Roy Epstein – Select Board Chair Adam Dash recused himself from the discussion and vote as he lives on Goden Street – that students, some who possess reserved passes for the coveted 100 lottery spaces, were parking along adjacent roadways such as lower Orchard Street for a simple reason: it’s less of a trek to the school than parking on Concord Avenue closer to Harris Field and the skating rink.

“We do want them back on Concord (Avenue),” said Paolillo.

The proposal will consist of four steps:

  • Identify the side streets to be targeted.
  • No parking from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. on school days unless the vehicle has a town-approved placard.
  • Commercial vehicles and those on public business will be exempt.
  • Residents will receive a placard that exempts them from the parking ban.

And the targeted streets are:

  • Goden Street below School
  • Oak Street
  • Orchard Street below School
  • Trowbridge Street
  • Underwood Street
  • Baker Street
  • Concord Street east bound (the southside of the roadway) from Cottage Street to Louise Road.

No parking signs will be placed on cones and on existing posts on the targeted streets.

MLK Community Breakfast Will Zoom To Belmont On Jan. 17

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Photo: Rahsaan Hall is the keynote speaker at the 2022 annual MLK Community Breakfast which will once again be a virtual event

Belmont’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Breakfast, historically intended to bring the Belmont and Boston communities together in a program of unity around Dr. King’s legacy, will once again take place via Zoom on Monday, Jan. 17, 2022 at 9 a.m.

This year’s keynote speaker, Rahsaan Hall, director of the Racial Justice Program at American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, has chosen this year’s theme to be “The Arc and the Pendulum: The Long Journey toward Racial Justice.”

In this role, Rahsaan helps develop the ACLU’s integrated advocacy approach to addressing issues of racial justice. Through legislative advocacy, litigation and community engagement, the program works on issues that impact communities of color and historically disenfranchised communities. Rahsaan also manages the ACLU’s What a Difference a DA makes to educate residents about the power and influence of distract attorneys.

Adam Dash, Belmont’s Select Board chair, looks forward to the annual Belmont MLK event. While he
misses the in-person breakfast where people can mingle and meet, he looks forward to the perspective
each speaker brings to the presently virtual event.

“We can’t talk about race too much” and how the speaker forces local candidates for office to confront issues. Dash recalls how “blown away” he was by the MLK breakfast where former METCO students returned to give their accounts of what a difference the METCO program had made in their lives.

The Belmont Human Rights Commission, in conjunction with Belmont Against Racism and Belmont Media Center, will be the lead sponsor and organizer. The Commission is dedicated to fighting discrimination in all forms; increasing awareness of issues regarding diversity and discrimination in our community; and responding to allegations of discrimination.

Advanced registration can be found at Eventbrite at: https://bit.ly/MLKBelmont2022 For more information about this event, please contact the Commission at belmont.hrc@gmail.com or call 617-993-2795.

Winter Arrives With The Solstice At 10:59AM, Dec. 21

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Photo: Winter is here

Winter will officially arrive to the northern hemisphere at a minute before 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 21, according to the Farmers’ Almanac.

Best known for the shortest day of sunlight during the year, the sun will rise at 7:09 a.m. and sets this afternoon at 4:16 p.m., a mere 9 hours and 5 minutes of daylight – although last light will occur at 4:47 p.m.

Still it’s more light than what the residents of Oslo as those Norwegians will have less than six hours of daylight with sunrise at 9:18 a.m. and sunset just after lunch at 3:12 p.m.

Garvin’s Sticking Around As Reading Goes Another Direction For Town Manager

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Photo: Town Administrator Patrice Garvin

Well, the Belmont Select Board dodged that one.

With its decision to select the DPW Commissioner of Chelsea as Town Manager, Reading has spared the three-member board from the excruciating practice of finding a replacement for its highly-effective Town Administrator Patrice Garvin, who was the other finalist for the job.

The Reading board voted unanimously to install Fidel Maltez as only its third-ever town manager. While not as experienced with the ins and outs of running municipal governance as Belmont , the town leaders voted unanimously for “someone who will look out for the community long-term,” said Reading Select Board’s Carlo Bacci.

The Belmont board can thank their Middlesex breadthen to allow the Town of Homes to have Garvin’s steady hand at the fiscal tiller while she constructs the critical annual budget and looking forward three years at the town’s financial condition. She will also attempt to attract a talented assistant since the departure of John Marshall. These are just two important areas that Garvin will have time to pursue as she will be sticking around.

Garvin will begin her fourth year as Town Administrator in January.

Town Kick-Starts Rink Project With Temporary Building Committee And $250K

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Photo: A conceptional design of the new Belmont Skating Rink by the architectural firm Perkins+Will

With new predictions the current skating rink is on its last legs and with $250,000 of state funds to facilitate building a replacement facility, the Belmont Select Board appointed members of a temporary committee – dubbed the Preliminary Rink Design Committee – to jump start the planning and design of a new rink a good half-a-year before a permanent committee would be named at Town Meeting in May.

The idea behind the interim panel “is to get started on preliminary rink design … and start to execute on the $250,000 that was provided to us by the state,” said Mark Paolillo of the Select Board who sits on the Skating Rink Financing Committee which is formulating a plan to pay for a single sheet of ice that will come with a $20 million price tag which was the estimate from a concept design from Perkins+Will.

The last month has seen the rink project spring to life. That wasn’t the case this past May when town officials convinced resident Alex Corbett to remove a citizen’s petition amendment at Town Meeting to begin the
formal building process by establishing a committee as it was putting the cart before the horse as the town did not have the available money.

But with a committee up and running to derive areas of founding the project and $250,000 on the table, the town has decided to push and push hard on getting the design process underway.

The major move in the comes after Town Facilities Director David Blazon reaffirmed what has been known for more than a decade; the nearly half century old building is within a couple of years from seeing its mechanicals and infrastructure collapse for a final time.

The goal of the temporary committee is to hire an architect to produce a 30 percent design document which defines the major design elements of the project and refine the project’s scope, schedule and budget that the project
design team can commit to delivering to the building committee.

Since a full-time building committee can not be formulated until the town moderator Michael Widmer appoints the members at the annual Town Meeting, the town was facing a six month delay before using the funds earmarked two weeks ago.

“It’s a committee to move this forward with the money we have so it stays on track,” said Select Board Chair Adam Dash. “So rather than lose time between December and May that we can get this [process] moving.”

And the Select Board is striving to have at least a 30 percent design plan completed to present to Town Meeting as a report.

The temporary committee is made up of four members of the Rink Financing Committee and three from the Permanent Building Committee with Pat Brusch as chair. The group includes former Select Board Chair Tom Caputo, youth hockey supporter Frank French, Jr., the School Committee’s Meghan Moriarty, former Belmont High Boys’ Hockey Coach Dante Muzzioli, current Boys’ assistant coach Bill Shea, Steve Sala and former Belmont High Girls coach Mark Haley.

The first meeting of the new temporary committee will take place at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 16 on Zoom.

Don’t Be Left On The Curb: Sign Up For Cardboard Drop Off On Saturday, Dec. 18

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Photo: Cardboard should be flattened before driving it over to the Town Yard

The Belmont Department of Public Works cardboard drop off event – which is occurring this week – is for you to get rid of excess cardboard … and only cardboard.

There is a $5 fee for all the cardboard you can stuff in your vehicle; the drop off will occur on Saturday, Dec. 18 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the DPW Yard, 37 C St., off of Waverley Street.

But before you can participate, you have to first register here.

And there are some rules:

  • Please remain in your car
  • All cardboard should be in the trunk or rear of the car 
  • All cardboard should be flattened prior to drop off

Booster Monday At Beth El: Free Covid-19 Shots From 4 PM to 7 PM

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Photo: Getting your card filled with a booster shot

The Belmont Health Department is offering a limited number of Moderna Covid-19 booster shots to eligible residents 18 and up. Massachusetts has expanded the eligibility criteria for booster shots, and the new criteria can be found below.

Belmont’s booster dose clinic will be held on Monday Dec. 13 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Beth El Temple Center, 2 Concord Ave.

Register for a booster dose appointment here:
https://home.color.com/vaccine/register/belmont
If you have difficulty with registration, call 617-993-2720 or email Lsharp@belmont-ma.gov for assistance.

Please present insurance cards, photo ID, and vaccination cards at appointment.

  • If you are 18+, and received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, you can get a booster dose once two months have passed since your original dose.
  • If you are 18+, and received either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, you can get a booster dose once six months have passed since your second dose.

*Booster shots can be any of the approved COVID-19 vaccines, regardless of your original dose; at this clinic the Moderna vaccine will be provided.

Belmont Secures $1.1 Million In State American Rescue Plan Funds For Something Extra

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Photo: Monies to help plan for a new library is part of the recently received $1.1 million in state funds.

With thanks to state legislators and town officials, Belmont has received $1.1 million from the state of Massachusetts to fund some of the town’s “extra” expenses that would have been waiting until the next budget cycle.

The source of the funding is from the $5.3 billion the state was allocated from President Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion funding package to promote recovery from the economic and health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the related recession. The $1.1 million is coming from a separate pot of funds than the $7.6 million in ARPA monies distributed as part of the bill’s Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund.

“This is funding that the town of Belmont has been able to secure thanks to state Rep. Dave Rogers and state Sen. Will Brownsberger,” Town Administrator Patrice Garvin told the Select Board at its first meeting in December. “This is great news for the town.”

Select Board member Mark Paolillo also thanked Garvin as she started the conversation to find state funds to pay for aspects of the skating rink’s planning and design, leading to this larger allocation.

The funding will be spent on several projects in town outside of the budget:

  • $250,000, the new Belmont Public Library
  • $250,000, the new Belmont skating rink
  • $100,000, economic development
  • $500,000 public housing

The public housing portion includes:

  • $250,000, water and sewer infrastructure improvements at Belmont Village
  • $150,000, improvements at Waverley Oaks
  • $100,000, redevelopment of Sherman Gardens

Interim Regs Places A Wet Blanket On Belmont’s Use Of Fed Covid Rescue Funds

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Photo: Belmont Middle and High School is now considered the source of revenue generating debt, according to the state.

When the details were released of the Biden Administration’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan – dubbed the American Rescue Plan Act – signed into law this past March that Belmont would be receiving upwards of $8 million for the town and schools, there was a segment of the population in the Town of Homes that cheered the news, not so much as a fiscal salve to a battered budget but as a political accoutrement.

“We definitely don’t need an override now!” came the clarion call on the No Override Now Facebook page of March 16, as the austerity-based group viewed the community-based bail out as a, albeit, short term solution to the worrying structural deficit facing the town.

The news became a game changer in the override battle, making it easier for many voters sitting on the fence on the proposed $6.4 million override to check the “no” box on the ballot less than a month later.

While town executives and elected officials cautioned at the time it was far too premature to assume the funds were heading into town coffers until there was more clarity of the rules, others were eager to champion – and begin spending – the windfall.

“This money can, in part, be used to offset revenue shortfalls and operating expenses,” proclaimed the No Override Now campaign in ads and opinion articles.

Well, it turns out, maybe not.

Under recently released interim final rules written by the state for allocating ARPA funds by cities and towns, Belmont is facing the prospect of have little to no leeway to use any of the $7.8 million to offset the substantial lost public revenue the town incurred since March 2020.

“What we found was a little troubling … because what we’re showing is no revenue loss based on the state guidelines,” said Town Administrator Patrice Garvin at the Monday, Dec. 6 meeting of the Select Board.

And the reason the state has pulled the ARPA rug from under the town’s feet is located at 221 Concord Ave.

After a careful reading of the rules and regulations, the town’s auditing firm determined that during the tight 18 month window the state is using to calculate lost revenue, the 2018 voter-approved debt exclusion used to finance the building of Belmont’s new Middle and High School, as well as the state’s partial reimbursement of expenses constructing the building is seen by Beacon Hill as a revenue “gain” for the town.

So in the ultimate example of bad timing, while Belmont has shown where revenues had fallen off a cliff, in the eyes of the state which dictates the funding, Belmont was awash in dough during that year-and-a-half reporting period because it borrowed funds to pay for a new school.

As Homer Simpson would put it: “D’uh!”

“We’ve had the issue of a … short-term budget distortion from the high school because it’s such a large number just as Covid hits … seems totally unjust to be counting that as revenue because that’s not what it is,” said Adam Dash, chair of the Select Board.

As the town seeks to have its state and federal legislators attempt a hail Mary to convince the state to reconsider its regulations, the prospect of a revenue shortfall for the upcoming fiscal 2022 budget has become only all too real.

Under the provisions of the ARPA, Belmont’s $7.8 million allocation can be used in one of four ways; pay for Covid-related expenses, make premium payments to essential workers, and invest in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. It was the fourth “bucket,” the replacement of “lost public sector revenue” caused by the pandemic, which austerity groups and town officials saw as getting plugged into the budget. Just how much of the town’s share can be used in an unrestricted manner is based on a formula provided by the state’s Division of Local Services.

It was this rule making from the state – dictated in the federal law – is when Garvin said she and other municipalities began “hearing rumblings” as state officials began writing the regulations.

“I had been concerned from the beginning … [that] sometimes the state does like to get involved in defining how the money can be expended,” said Garvin. One such red flag from as far back as the first days of summer was how the rule makers first defined as revenue.

Is a debt exclusion a revenue windfall? The state thinks so

“At that point, I decided it was important to get the auditors involvement” and allow them to do a “deep dive” into the town’s revenue figures in regards to the state regulations, said Garvin.

Craig Peacock, a partner with the town’s auditing firm of Powers and Sullivan, told the board that since the summer what the state has deemed eligible for reimbursement “has been a moving target” resulting in attempting to make calculations “a little confusing.”

What Peacock first had to determine the revenues in fiscal 2019 which the feds was using as the base year and compare it to losses in calendar 2020. While the town did show a decrease in its general funds of $1.6 million, there were two unexpected line items which offset that lost revenue.

One is the on-going cost reimbursements building the new school from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which is paying nearly $85 million of the $295 million project, a significant amount – $24 million – being received in calendar 2020. Even with the MSBA reimbursement figure removed, said Peacock, the state also views the $213 million debt exclusion the town is using to pay for its portion of the building’s cost as yet another source of revenue, with Belmont “collecting” an additional $11.7 million in calendar 2020. Without these items, Peacock said the town by the state’s reckoning did suffer a revenue shortfall during the 18 months.

The end result is while Belmont can use the funds for the three of the four buckets, ARPA funds will not be going into the one ARPA bucket the town most needs to fill. While the town will have $7.6 million to spend – in two $3.8 million segments with the second available next fall – “it has made it much more difficult for us to use it,” said Garvin.

The news didn’t go down well as Select Board Vice Chair Roy Epstein calling the state’s rules an accounting exercise that “frankly makes no sense to me,” pointing out that the reason the town undertook the debt exclusion was to pay for a school which can hardly be seen as a revenue windfall for Belmont.

“I think the treatment of a debt exclusion that are earmarked for particular capital projects to just really seems nonsensical,” said Epstein as Dash questioned whether the federal government understands the New England-concept of debt exclusion which could have been exempted in the ARPA law.

The Select Board’s Mark Paolillo asked Peacock who in state government can the town question how they rationalize school debt and reimbursement of expenses as “revenue.” The answer was less than encouraging.

“We are not aware of any caveat in the interim final rules that would allow us to remove the debt exclusion and we are not aware of any agency that would be willing to review and discuss that because currently it is in the rules”, said Peacock.

As it currently stands, without the ability to replenish the lost public revenue and if there are no big ticket infrastructure projects ready to go into the ground, Peacock said there is a chance Belmont will return a portion of the ARPA funds back to the US Treasury.

If there is a glimmer of hope, the guidance is being written by the state and there are several communities feeling the same pinch by the state’s rules writers, said Peacock.

“As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease so I don’t think it ever hurts to try to contact” state legislators, advised Peacock. “I do know other communities that are contacting their state reps who have very similar attributes” that are preventing them from reporting revenue losses and are “trying to change the rules before the final rules become final.”