Belmont Select Board Awards $431,000 Homer Building Restoration Contract Unanimously

BELMONT — May 6, 2026 — Belmont Select Board unanimously awarded a $431,000 exterior restoration contract for the historic Homer Building and recommended raising Town Clerk Ellen Cushman's salary to $114,773 for fiscal year 2027 at its May 6 pre-Town Meeting session. Director of Public Works Facility Dave Glazon told the board that Greenwood Industries submitted the low bid of $344,000 plus two alternates totaling $87,000, well below rival bids of $491,000 and $691,000; the project is funded through a $550,396 Community Preservation Committee allocation approved at a prior town meeting. On the clerk salary, the board stripped the word "merit" and a funding-source citation from petitioner Kathy Cohen's amendment language before voting to recommend the figure, with Vice Chair Taylor Yates saying he would have abstained had "merit" remained because no formal performance review process exists for the elected official. The board also indefinitely postponed three articles related to building committee disbanding and a borrowing deauthorization, and heard a skeptical exchange with Article 11 petitioner Paul Joy, whose substitute motion to refer a fiscal-impact-statement requirement to a special study committee drew pointed questions from Chair Matt Taylor: "I don't think you have demonstrated that enough homework has been done to justify the use of an entire committee's time to study this issue."