Shakespeare called it “the winter of our discontent. ” Winters of discontent are periods that are generally described as bleak. In Belmont, the winter of our discontent has lasted a lot longer than a single season.

In one of the most dramatic exhibitions of the discord characteristic of Belmont today, residents overwhelmingly rejected an override in April, 2021; town officials, confident that their financial projections would take the day, had not given sufficient credence to the opposition many citizens had voiced in a variety of venues. The dissatisfaction that was expressed then has not gone away.

Last year’s June Town Meeting season was dominated by a passionate debate over when and how to replace Belmont’s Fuel Tanks as well as over the process that would be used for this. Following Town Meeting, it was agreed that Glenn Clancy, the Department of Community Development Director, would analyze fuel tank usage and investigate a wide variety of methods through which fuel could be supplied to town vehicles including the use of RFI’s to obtain usage and cost data from other entities; RFIs are Requests for Information for which no appropriation is needed.