Dear Select Board members, Town Meeting members, and Concerned Citizens:

The state-funded Collins Center’s (Collins) financial assessment is Belmont town leaders’ second report card here.  Will they ignore the warnings, misconstrue the recommendations, and downplay the situation once again?   

The 2018 Collins Center review and the SB override votes:

If you recall, Collins conducted a finance review in April 2018 and warned that Belmont would be falling off a fiscal cliff in two years if significant cost-saving measures weren’t implemented here.  Instead of addressing the need to control spending, our town leaders approved putting a $295M school project on the ballot.

So was Collins’ prediction accurate?

• 07/20/2020, after a lengthy process, the FTF2 model showed a significant deficit — the town will need a $12.5M PERMANENT override to get the town through the next 3 years and only cover Minimal Level Services.  The SB subsequently voted to put a $12.5M override on the ballot here, only to rescind it within days due to a $3.2M state aid projection error. 
• 10/02/2020, the town “found” even more money — an unusually high free cash balance of $11.2M for the year ended 06/30/20 – the Town Administrator (TA) delayed sharing this crucial information despite her FTF2 teammates, Mark Paolillo and the Town Treasurer, pleading repeatedly so that the FTF2 could prepare for a more accurate financial projection to avoid another embarrassment.  
• 01/22/2021, I’m sure we all remember the rest of the story — the SB voted to put a $6.4M override on the April ballot; however, with the huge reduction of about half of the original one, the SB still failed to convince the voters.  The lack of trust in our town leadership was quite evident. 

2022 Collins Center review:

How serious is the warning?  Collins stated that they rarely provide transmittal letters for their reports.  However, they believe the challenges facing Belmont are so significant that they go beyond the nominal scope of their work.

So, what did our town leaders do this time around to address the critical warning that could lead the town to receivership? 

• 07/18/2022, a month after receiving the possibly final warning from Collins, the SB rushed to put a $40M library project on the ballot, that’s 1.4 times larger than the current library without any state grants, even knowing there’s a 22% decrease in library visitors, and the trend continues to decline in the digital age.  
• 07/25/2022, only one week later, the SB also put a $35M ice rink project on the ballot without asking any questions about the rapid cost estimate increase in the millions with reduced project size, i.e. west of Harris Field currently estimated at around $5.3M.  

Did the SB exercise proper due diligence prior to putting these massive building projects on the ballot?  The answer is a big “NO”.  They don’t even care to find out the financial impact on the taxpayers.  When asked, the SB impatiently said that the town will provide tax information when they have it before the election.  How irresponsible is that? The FINANCIAL feasibility study should always be the first stage of the planning before making any major financial decisions. Then again, can we rely on the projections the town provided to the concerned taxpayers?  Let’s use the School Project as an example here, see appendix B on page 11, the Tax Bill Impact for the first two debt exclusions total was $1,508 (741+767), however, the actual average tax bill increase for the two years (2020 & 2021) was $2,586 here.  That’s $1,078 (or 72%) higher.  

Sadly, most of our small-town voters believe the SB did the necessary homework as they promised they would here p.6 left column, Paolillo’s answer to the question regarding the $100M high school renovation/reconstruction.  He said back in 2016 that the SB will work with the relevant committees and make sure the school project is the right size and addresses the educational needs of our students. So the right size is based on inflated student enrollment of 5k (646 or 15% higher than current enrollment) that’s 3 times ($200M) more than the original budget.  And the SB believes the educational needs of students are a highly toxic photo darkroom and expensive heated sidewalks with exorbitant operating costs that are still not working properly.  If the SB kept their promise, the town could have renovated and expanded our deeply flawed building and still have solved the overcrowding issue like Winchester did here that only cost their taxpayers $87.5M ($132M-$44.5M MSBA) as opposed to Belmont’s $213M+ ($295M-$80M MSBA).  

Needless to say, the $295M school project is bankrupting our small town and devastating many longtime residents who no longer can afford to stay in the town they love and cherish.  Most smaller properties in town are already assessed way above their value.  The Collins report states – “The Town’s flexibility in responding to an economic downturn, particularly one which impacts housing prices, is very limited.”  It’s incomprehensible that our town leaders continue to overburden its taxpayers and blame them relentlessly for not supporting another permanent override that could cost them another arm and a leg. Had the town built a modest high school project that adequately fit our small-town needs and didn’t max out the taxpayers, we would have more than enough money to support other needs of the town. Clearly, Belmont town leaders have no one to blame but themselves.  Enough is enough.

Here are the questions — the town leaders kept claiming not enough funding to maintain and upgrade town-owned buildings and not enough funding to fix the roads and sidewalks.  If that’s true, why do they believe we can afford a $295M school project with many luxurious features; a $40M new library, and an ice rink at around $35M?  In addition to all that, the town continues to spend frivolously thousands of dollars for repeat feasibility studies on their pet projects knowing these expensive studies will be obsolete when/if they are approved. 

Speaking of NO funding, the taxpayers were promised to use the $4.5M operating override that passed in 2015 to SUPPLEMENT the town budget for additional road and sidewalk repairs and maintain town-owned buildings. To date, the town has collected a minimum of $40M just from the 2015 permanent override.  However, Belmont roads & sidewalks are in deplorable condition and the town is letting its buildings deteriorate to the point that the town officials can ‘proudly’ claim – come see our buildings that are failing, tear them down and build new ones, the bigger the better. That’s what’s wrong with our town.  Without a centralized town government, no one is taking responsibility for the mess they put us in.  The problem?  The town keeps hiring or appointing the wrong people for the wrong positions.  People without any proper financial training are in charge of our town budget and other town finances. People with no construction and/or finance background are reviewing and approving building change orders in the millions. 

Time for Change!

Belmontians for Better Belmont