 Okay, so now we're open. Okay, thank you. I will get trained on this. Okay. Good morning, everyone. This is the elementary school building committee meeting of November 4th. And we are conducting this virtually by zoom for the governor's orders. So my first order of business. Is to make sure we have a forum and to make sure every quorum and to make sure everyone can see. Here and be heard. So I am just going to call out names to have people confirm that they're here and can be heard. Paul. Jonathan. Here. Ben. For isn't. Sean. Yeah. Rupert. I'm here. Mike. I'm here. And Steve. Here. And we as, as you know, we are also joined by Margaret Wood and Bob Stevens from answer. And. I, we are waiting for a few more people, but we're going to start the meeting. Because Mike has to leave early. He's going to be with us for about 45 minutes. So I would like to get going. Thank you. The first thing on the agenda is to tell you what happened at the MSBA panel on Tuesday. It was my first time participating in such a panel. And I actually logged on a bit early to listen to interviews. To watch how that process works, which was also. An interesting process. We ended up with. A group of three, which was the goal. And those were Dinesco. LPAA and JCJ. Moody Nolan. And I don't, both Mike and. And Ben were there and we were. Three voting members out of 16 people. So our, our vote ends up mattering a lot. The way they do the process is they go around the room on each other. They gather up information from people and what they saw or anything missing. Then they asked the three from the town. Okay. If you're going to go for three, tell us about that and why. And the rest of them go around the room and say. What their three would be. Then we stop and we vote. You know, so it was a lot of vetting before we voted. So, you know, Mike and Ben, I don't want to be the only one speaking. I want to go back to. Mike, can you at all what came up on each of these starting with maybe Denesco on what people said, I took notes so I can. Say what others said as well. Mike. Or Ben. Yeah, I think there was a lot of favorable reaction to the NISCO. You know what I was recalling, I did not take notes. So Kathy you'll, you'll be better than mine, but. true firm done a lot of MSPA projects and I think they indicated once towns had went to Denisco they they continue to work with them which is generally I think the best piece of feedback you can get is uh so that that's some of the details I remember on Denisco. Kathy or Ben you can certainly add. A few more they both a lots of experience including with elementary one of the MSPA commenters said they particularly like the educational focus and the way they the application was put together and the the discussion of sites with a lot on wastewater and net zero and they have three net zero schools they're working on one so those were all really strong positives and Mike you know I had the one comment from an MSPA person once a district has worked with them they can't say enough about them you know it was like they they rave about them and then the other was they they did give us cost information on each of the applicants and where they how their averages were compared to other average and they're on the low side of costs um so they bring their they bring their schools in um with cost targets. Good morning Allison glad you could join us so we're just wait the three finalists just as you're coming on are Denisco LPAA and JCJ Moody Nolan. So Ben anything to add on Denisco on what we heard? No I also didn't take notes but that was that was pretty much the the gist of what I recall from that conversation. So on LPAA again um they came up as having lots of not lots of schools that they only come in once in a while when they really want another project and they they are returned they the cities that have worked with them and I actually drove out to two of their schools the only thing I could see was the outside of them but um the way they were situated and the the surrounding area was these are newer newer schools and both of them were featured in our write-ups and one of them was in just a gorgeous setting so they use the outdoors a lot for the programs and um so any other insights on LPAA because they all the comments were really positive on them. So I would say one thing that MSBA noted that and it was particularly on this proposal is they are going to ask them and they're going to ask all three of them tell us how you meet the women and minority standards um and this project in particular looked on the minority side of sort of there was a question mark um had they really hit it and um so that that is one of actually the MSBA questions that they're going to be asking of all of all of them in the interviews. So JCJ, Moody Nolan, Mike or Ben do you want to jump in first? Yeah I can I can start I think this was uh it was interesting because there was both lots of excitement and lots of questions is the way I would describe it um there's a lot of excitement about Moody Nolan being involved and the reputation Moody Nolan has some of their work they felt like it was a it was a good application uh the questions around how they are going to work similar to ours frankly mirror our conversation how are they going to work together what's the model we see a little chart with what the model is that needs a lot more explanation I think two people said explicitly uh something along the lines of you know if they short if they get shortlisted we want to have a lot of questions and dialogue about who does what um but also genuine excitement about the application and potential work with both firms um that's sort of what I recall. And the one other um you know the MSBA on the panel is great you know clearly there there are a big spender on this but one other on the question of who does what is they said the architect that Moody Nolan has proposed as a team member is not registered in Massachusetts so you're just really wondering whether there's duplicative effort or not and um one of the schools they did I got to get inside I didn't expect to um the Barack Obama school in New Haven I drove down to take a look at it and we were invited inside and then later I looked on it's a gorgeous school you know everything about it would make it's an elementary school up through grade four with little kids in a pre-k but the they had a sub architect they were the lead JCJ and they had a Connecticut firm and the Connecticut firm features a lot of what went into the building and why it was done and JCJ didn't do as much so I was just wondering which who did what on that project and so it was a question. So we also ended up with the five questions that we're going to ask and Margaret you've probably got it on your screen but we that we were limited to three and this is for the interviews yeah Mike. Can I just make one or two more comments that might be for the for the team sorry so one was I think JCJ was at or slightly below the average cost maybe you said that maybe I missed it yeah but I think the other thing to note is those three were significantly above in terms of the vote count the others but there were four votes for TSKP and one person Steve you'll be happy to hear loved Jonathan Levy or Levy Architects and voted them as top firm and acknowledged that they felt like the work wasn't reflected in the application that the quality of the work didn't didn't match that so there were five total firms that received votes the top three were all over 20 votes TSKP had four votes and Jonathan Levy Architects had three votes but I just wanted because there was people on the team that were advocating or feeling strongly about the other ones and then the last three firms I think Tecton T2 and DRA did not receive a vote by anyone on the on the panel just to round out the the experience for everybody. Thanks thanks Mike yeah and and Steve the the advocate for Levy also picked the three firms it was the three firms that person picked were all because of the high level of design you know and this was an architect so JCJ or TSKP and Levy were that person's choice of three you know zoned in right now yeah so I think one other thing just very briefly one of the things that was interesting uh the three of us did not have this identical rankings right so I actually think that's a good thing right you know it was like there wasn't a team approach uh on the front end and and I think MSBA recognized that and complimented that that it wasn't a pre-arranged thing we clearly had done our homework um I think one person said they'd watched our meeting the this meeting you know where we talked about it and they're really impressed with the level of dialogue that uh this team had on there and I think that was reflected in our ability to participate effectively so I just want to thank everyone for their feedback because it certainly made me better and I think I can speak for Kathy and Ben that it made us better when we're actually on the panel because of the depth of dialogue we had at this meeting the two meetings prior absolutely you know we we didn't even have the the same three firms um I was one of the TSKP votes but the other thing they they said about us um and it is again because of the discussion we came in with is we knew a lot and they they they said this town came in with a lot more insights and having very closely read the the proposals and I don't know what the norm is um with this amount of money at stake but they they were very praiseworthy of what we'd done and they did also note that we had um made public all of the applications after they came in and it wasn't so much a criticism but as to let everyone know that we had done that on the panel so it was an interesting experience and we have the we'll send you all in writing the five questions um the MSBA is going to do the one on minority and women and they also have a fairly complicated question but it worked when I watched the interviews they want to know um in this one you will love Rupert um they want to know how complicated the systems are that are being put in place um and how much effort both costs to run them later and and what do you do because they've been watching more and more sophisticated with net zero but other kinds of features that aren't always that easy to run and do you have manuals so that's one of their stand that will be one of their questions on it and we have market why don't you um give the three that we ended up with we had we had eight questions or nine when we came out of our meeting last time but they would only take three from us so right so I'll just I'll read them and I'll put them in the meeting notes um the I I'm not sure which order that the architects will take these on but they're provided to the architects they've already been provided to the architects and they're asked to address them in their formal presentation so they get you know about 25 30 minutes to make a formal presentation and then there's about 20 minutes for Q&A um so there will be an opportunity to ask other questions so some of the questions that you had um generated I recommended to Kathy be used during the Q&A session if it was appropriate or hadn't otherwise been addressed but the ones that would they will be asked to formally address are how will you approach designing a building which will meet our net zero by law to get the greenest building possible and still stay within budget uh question number two if Amherst were to require the highest level of daylighting provision contained in either chips or lead guidelines which are sustainability guidelines what would be your approach to daylighting for an elementary school project of this type and the third one is Amherst lacks sufficient swing space to relocate elementary students during construction please comment on how this will affect your design approach if possible provide examples of how you have handled this in other cities and towns so those are the five that they they need to speak to directly which does not mean there couldn't be more conversation than Q&A but it gives a certain level of grounding so that they're all kind of touching on the same five issues and during the interviews that I watched there were follow-up questions specific to to the applicants that weren't necessarily in these five and I'll note Allison one of the ones you suggested when I went to visit this one school that I liked a lot I there was an art school teacher who was willing to talk to us and I said how's the building worked and she said it's generally great but involve end users early because there's not enough storage space in the classroom and he would you know and she was she then showed us this pile of stuff along the wall because there wasn't a closet for it so they were so I think there are you know the approach and a few of these applicants actually talked about storage space so I think that's it are there any other questions there are questions for the people who weren't able to be one of us three on what we heard during the MSBA they don't record these or put it up so okay then I think we'll move to number two on the agenda which is I think our next piece Margaret was to return to the discussion of the webpage yeah and I don't have oh Mike go ahead Mike so just because my time may get truncated would the committee and Kathy would it be okay if I just did a 90 second update on sixth grade and school committee votes because I was on the agenda absolutely yeah I think I could do this really really quickly and Ben jump in if you'd like but uh last week the regional school committee voted to uh accept seven in favor one uh posed and one abstention uh to allow towns to send their sixth grade students if they so choose one of the member towns to the middle school so at this point the gamer school committee has voted to send their sixth grade students to the middle school the regional school committee has voted to accept those students in the regional middle school there are logistics to work out in terms of rental agreement and bunch of items like that but the two key votes that were needed have now taken place and they are done so I do think that that will be relevant for the committee especially if the designer gets on because we um with my regional hot on we'll be expecting amour sixth grade students to start attending in the fall of 2023 well ahead of where this project would be completed it actually has implications I believe for one of the questions about swing space doesn't provide swing space but you know we're going to change our space usage in the elementary school starting in 2023 as well with the sixth grade leaving so those two decisions and votes have taken place and uh I think there really aren't any other formal votes other than you know working against space rental agreement some of the logistical details um but that that certainly gives this committee and then the architect and Margaret and Bob some direction in terms of which way we're headed on this project thank you Mike and I we brought this up at the MSBA meeting but it wasn't clear to me how they then adjust because they've given us these two study populations um so I think Margaret at some point just clarifying with them as we making sure they understand that that vote has been taken and yes and when the architects comes on thank you um for that so are we ready to move to the next item then and let me just say because Mike has to leave early um we we will have a representative from Fort River she's not on tonight um so um we will have a new member once she's appointed Tamara Sullivan daily and for the next meeting two weeks from now what we talked about doing so I do want want to catch you while you're on is um having a discussion of how we have a sort of parallel or working group and to involve a larger group of people so I want to make sure that is still an agreed on two weeks from now I mean we'll be able to report on what happened with the shortlist as well but but have a and people should come with ideas to that so we it's it's a starting off okay so web page Margaret so Kathy Caroline was actually not able to join this morning so I'm I can't ask her to give us a visual update but she and I are working on um several pieces that are going to be featured on the opening page and the goal we should be able to send out some screenshots uh next week so that people can see what that's going to look like okay so that that's the extent of this so Margaret then you want to move to if they're the one that I listed as if we have time um you wanted to brief us on the reimbursement formula yeah um so we can I know that Mike's time Mike you have another 10 minutes if if 1015 a little more than 10 okay um I think um I'd like Mike to be um here for this conversation so I'm I'm just going to summarize that um I do want to have a conversation with the committee um about uh how the reimbursement rates work because we've experienced and we've seen in other communities even projects we're not working on a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about the reimbursement rates and and how it works and you know I I want to say um start off by saying I think and I I think we touched on this briefly before that the mescal building authority is is a relatively new invention be it had a predecessor the school building authority and um the school building authority process uh was not particularly equitable rather political um and um when the state kind of closed that organization down and then created the MSBA it really was very much focused on equity um however they the MSBA the authority works within the guidelines of legislation which is you know they were not participants and they were sort of give they are given as their they're operating guidelines and I would say the the biggest confusion I mean basically they put caps on certain costs um which is again to kind of equalize the playing field and and the you know the big ones are um they they cap they don't cap what any community can spend but they do cap what they reimburse on so some good examples um for good reason are they cap what they will reimburse on for designer and project manager fees they cap um one sort of big uh category that is related to site design and that is site work so they won't reimburse more than uh site work that a cost that's more than eight percent of the of the construction total construction costs and you know I could think you can imagine that that is because um what they don't want is for people to be folding in things that were more logically uh municipal costs and not directly related to the school however eight percent is a very low number for a large site we have we have done projects where we were able to say under the eight percent but it's been on very very tight urban sites where the amount of actual physical site was very small so this is the utility work the grading the sidewalks the you know paving all of the stuff that sort of is the setting for the school um and then um the thing that is having the biggest impact at this point is that the again the legislation caps um the cost per square foot that uh the msba will reimburse on and the way the legislation is written it is described as uh eligible they reimburse eligible costs and and this is this is confusing to people because most people say well clearly we wouldn't do anything that's not eligible right I mean that's the whole point is to make us as just eligible as possible but eligible also includes this cap on construction cost per square the foot and and over the you know last decade or so the cost per square foot the actual what's actually happening in the market and cost per square foot um has really kind of started to outpace the msba's cap the msba does adjust it periodically um and it's been recently adjusted and it may be although I would be surprised adjusted again before we set the project cost for this project but it right now I would say it's approximately let me say two thirds of the average actual cost per square foot so the way that works in the funding formula is it means that about a third of the cost of the building is ineligible because of the cap it's not because it's been over designed it's not because the spaces are too big it's not because there's been some you know extraordinary profligacy it's just it's the market versus the legislation and so I think that's really important because um when and I because I didn't participate in the conversations the last time around for your earlier project I don't know what was said in the community about this but I wanted to see you know particularly interested um Mike um and anybody else who remembers the conversation what was said and what might be understood because I think um we want to make sure and it's probably it's a feature for for anyone in the community but I think it's probably particularly important for uh town council um and anyone who would need to take um you know be considered leaders on the project to understand this so I'd like to get some feedback from all of you about what has been what folks have heard before and understand and how we um who is important to wrap into that conversation early Mike. So you know I think it was talked about significantly last time that our official reimbursement rate as I was remembering Sean I'm sure remembers but it was like 68 percent or something like that but then the real you know in terms of the real reimbursement rate was closer to half and it's exactly because of the reason you describe um it'd be interesting for other people to weigh in I actually think that was we didn't get a lot of I don't recall that being a wedge issue last time that there was this gap between what MSBA said our rate was and what it actually is I think the community really understood that pretty well and I think there were other things that were less clear or more controversial um last time but Sean has his hand up and I'm sure he'll he will remember it well. Sean? Mike it was actually 67.3 percent no I think Mike's right I think we were just clear from the beginning that there's a stated reimbursement rate and then there's an effective reimbursement rate and we sort of broke it down into those two categories so um people knew that from the beginning and all the estimates were sort of based on that effective reimbursement rate so yeah I don't remember being an issue we just wanted to be clear from the beginning now whatever our stated rate is this is necessarily what we're going to get reversed for the full project. Okay that's great and last time around solar and the net zero weren't part of our bylaw so um I think that will affect the effective rate this time around unless the state steps up or ARPA money or other money become available for this literally putting in the solar panels because it but correct me on whether MSBA now includes them as part of an allowable cost I think the answer was Jonathan saying no right no yeah not not today not today John Jonathan's hands up I just wanted to say I mean my I am not an expert on this but my understanding and it's kind of confirmed by the way uh Margaret said it is that um in a way it almost doesn't what doesn't doesn't matter quite whether something's allowed to you know to be a part of the project or not because of that cap anything that's in it that's over the cap is our responsibility as a community and I think as long as we can you know be clear and consistent and concise about talking about numbers all along you know so that that information's in the public um you know that that will that'll be one of the best things we can do to keep confusion from from occurring and you know it's it's it's going to be a tough time to be looking at numbers because right now costs are are going up at a rate that's higher than typical and that will also be difficult for for you know the committee I'm sure and and members of the community to wrap their heads around on the previous project was there um a kind of cost calculator created or provided at all that people could go and sort of and you know enter their property assessment and get feedback on what the cost per household is yeah there's yeah we've done that it's actually there's one on our website right now where you can plug in um the cost of the school project and the the value of your home and get get a rough impact of what the debt exclusion um the additional tax impact would be from the project if we go the debt exclusion route so we have that on our website now but we'll probably want to update it because every year with the taxes changed we have to update it a little bit that's great that's good I think that's a really helpful tool you know I mean in general what I think it's it's it's better um it's it's a really good idea to talk about what you're getting rather than what you're not getting um and I think I think I'm accurately representing the MSBA on that you know that's their perspective as well like you don't have to take our money um but this is what we can give you with them within the guidelines that we have to operate on here so Margaret when do you think we will um do we when do you I know we have a stated reimbursement rate which is a little bit lower than it was last time when do you is it when the initial design is done that will have more of an idea of the effective rate so um great question the so there's sort of the the first marker for what the possible cost of the project is um at the end of the um the first submittal a PDP submittal um we typically uh we're required actually to provide the what the options that are going to be looked at in the next step so you do the program submittal and there's a couple of other pieces but it's mostly the program submittal the building evaluates building inside evaluations and then the the last big piece which points to next pieces and the committee has decided to look at this range of options so you know as you know you're required to look at three in this case we may have more I'm not encouraging this but I've seen submittals that head up to Tim um you know I think having been through the the Fort River study you know what that looks like pretty quickly when you have like lots and lots of iterations but the PDP you say this and and then you give a very high level it's a cost per square foot um range of what those are and it it's really what it's doing is it's stacking the options relative to each other the cost relative to each other I don't recommend relying on it and we try to be very conservative when we generate those numbers so that's the first point but I wouldn't do a cost calculator based on those numbers um then and when you get to the point of pointing to the preferred schematic so that's the next submittal so now you the next step is evaluate the options and pick the one you want then you're going to do a detailed estimate of that one which again is based on fairly conceptual design then you have something that starts to look like a real number and then the end then the the last stage is then to do the schematic design which is the first step in the design in the process of creating the what will be the construction documents then you do because now you've got rooms and room numbers and assemblies and all of the stuff then you do a more detailed design it's that last number which is usually the best number to use for the cost calculator and it is also the number that obviously goes in your your vote language and it's the number that the MSBA takes to review before the board for their vote okay and do you know if there are any I know they got rid of some of these are there any incentive points anymore for different things I know there was incentives last time around for if you built the lead school do those incentives still exist yes a number of them still exist and those aren't in our right right now right those because we haven't designed a school correct they get added on to the base rate the base reimbursement rate and the couple that I know will end up applying to you is there are points for you know green building which in the MSBA guidelines is mostly defined by lead or chips which is why it was mentioned in the MSBA's question about building information systems there are also points for building maintenance so they'll review and I'm sure they did this the last time around review your maintenance program and there's a couple of other assets but those are the ones that for a community like this typically generate the most points there's some other things that have fallen by the wayside at one point there was for projects before a certain date and I this would this one incorporated that there was a point for utilizing construction management at risk but that sort of timed out at this point so there's no point for that so those are the big ones sustainability energy particularly energy performance and maintenance program so I see two hands both Jonathan and Mike had their hands up Mike seems to have gone down but okay Jonathan here's one to ask that what what what is the stage that that that that last number you were talking about is at the end of the schematic design phase yes okay and that then becomes the target budget that the designers working to for the rest of the project or is there or is it more loose than that okay no no it's it's the target target budget and and so thank you for bringing this up Jonathan because this is a really important point which I think is going to come into play as well as the designer comes on board so um the schedule for this project was always like pretty fast to get to a vote a year from now a local vote um you know at the time we lost um with the error and the advertising it's become compressed um when the designer comes on board we will look really closely with them at how much time is needed for schematic design because their ability to generate an accurate set of bid documents for estimating that it be really something that we can depend on to capture the cost is critical because if once that budget is set that number becomes the basis of your funding agreement with the MSBA and if the project cost goes up that the funding agreement I think understandably basically says that is on you so you find contaminated soils you didn't find before that's on you you find out that there's you know some other costs that you didn't anticipate that's on you so that number like what comes out of the schematic design estimate is the number that you are tied to for the rest of the project and you it really you need to have the this this is why I'm not going to say what that duration should be it really has to be the designer looking at the project and their team and deciding whether uh you know how much time they need to do it Mike no no more yeah I actually have to run uh to the dentist rather stay with you all but not what Dr. Perry would uh would agree to so um uh no really thanks everybody and I meant what I said earlier the conversations have been really uh influential and you know kind of my role yesterday and will continue to be as we go back to interviews um two weeks from yesterday so thanks again I hope everyone has a great day I have a question just on timing um Margaret has regularly said if we want to have it in a vote year from now but um Paul we in terms of a vote on the school we can do that anytime right it doesn't have to be I know money-wise if you're running an election it's easier to put a ballot question up but we can put a ballot question up a referendum anytime is that correct yeah that's correct and you know I think the goal would be to do it at a regularly scheduled election because you get a bigger turnout so you get a better sense of the community um but the council can choose to put it on choose any day at once uh we just have to follow all this normal protocols that come into place when you hold an election like registration and advance and all the kind of stuff that goes with it so we always you know I think it's always wise to continue to drive towards the November election in 2022 but recognize that that's a pretty challenging goal yeah and that's the only reason I asked it you know I realized it's challenging but if we end up needing two or three more months it doesn't mean that we have to wait till the next you know November 2023 and for those who don't closely follow the Amherst elections the turnout this time was about 30% so it was a lot lower than it was for the first council election but that election occurred with state elections at the same time and it was the first council but it was I might say a lot lower it's quite a bit lower um even though we're right in 2022 election will be a state election yeah so we'll be back on uh there'll be another election that we're tied to so any other questions on this um so the one other before I open it up for public comments that we can take comments on anything from the committee I did want to um on the what we agreed on for the two weeks from now so I will post that meeting is to come with ideas of a working group if we call it a it's not an ad hoc group so it's not just our committee but we bring other people on whether it's teachers other community members that would be helping with public forums with outreach but also as the designer comes on with content so come come with ideas of you know what kinds of people should be on it how big it should be um any experiences last time around with the Wildwood projects that people were part of um you know I've been asked a couple times do we have teachers on the building committee um and the answer is not yet but but that that would be the main topic and then we would also be reporting on we were going down from three to one um and we won't have negotiated a contract yet with them but we can be reporting on it Mike uh Paul yeah I'm just seeing your hands over yeah thank you um so I think we would look to Margaret for some guidance on you know what's the best practice for involving the community and setting up groups like this because we don't have to reinvent the wheel they've done you know dozens and dozens of buildings and there are probably communities that have done a really good job at doing this type of work so I think instead of us just sort of brainstorming randomly it'd be really good if we knew what other cities and towns have done to involve their their constituent groups their stakeholder groups okay and we can all look at it ourselves too I think you know so any go on go ahead do you want me to comment on that or you want to take it up when we talk about the committee next time who might be on this um you can you make a brief comment and then if you want to come in with any more detailed thoughts next time yeah so um I so I think there's a there's an important distinction that needs to be made here between communications and um let me call it I'm not sure advocacy is the right word so uh as I think everybody on this group knows you can't spend public money advocating for a project right and I want to have a separate discussion about what you can and cannot do because there's lots of things you can do like as individuals you can say I think everyone can support this project what you can't do is spend public money the kid this committee or any committee that is um sort of identified and kind of given a role formal role and this can't spend money so what I typically see is that there is a group that is doing advocacy which is independent of this but might be informed by um an ad hoc committee who were you know thinking about how to communicate if that makes sense it's I mean it's a little bit of a fine line but that's the way I would think about it Paul yeah so I don't think that's what Kathy's referring to that's an that is an advocacy group for a question that's on the ballot and you're right that's totally separate process I think Kathy you're talking more about how do we involve more people into the design considerations is that what you're thinking Kathy yeah and and and also just as we're confronting a decision that we know we're going to be making how do we do a public forum how do we do outreach in a way that enough people know that that decision's coming up and they can be are we using the the school apparatus at each school where we do a parent teacher organization so just trying to think through how um before we make the final decision on where we're building that people are invited in and get information and are there different voices that might reach more people so that Phoebe particularly raised this last time as uh it's a way of informing and it's way before advocacy it's just that people know people know where we're down to we're going to have to make a decision on this and what do we know and then yeah and then um we get input just on other people's um they they talked a couple of the proposals talked about this trying to feel about what is the town's been thinking about this for a while and we want to also hear from hear from the town like we can provide you with information so I think it's that kind of group Paul that without making this group enormous you know getting some more people to do that legwork thoughtwork um Ben is our school committee member but some of the school committee other members also are tied to the community in a way that they would have ideas about how to broaden the discussion before we make a decision not um yeah you know to not to be at the table making the decision yeah and you know I I'm just to be clear I'm clarifying clarifying this for anyone who may be listening because it is an important distinction right I think those of you who are already sort of working for the town in particular I think are aware of you know this this line but I want to make sure that anybody listening does not think we're forming an advocacy group we're forming a group to communicate yeah all right so seeing any other comments or questions um seeing none I will open it up to public comments and we have four attendees and one person has their name up either hand up um so Bruce I'm inviting you in I think you are now you should be able to talk if you unmute okay um two quick comments first is really quick um I don't know about others who are regularly attending these but I certainly would appreciate knowing who the attendees are to the extent this is a public meeting if it were a real regular old-fashioned public meeting I would come into the room I would know who was there and I would know who would I would I would know who was there so I think would it be possible perhaps at the beginning of the public comment section to just read the list of the attendees that's a question doesn't need to be answered right now it's just something that if it were possible I would appreciate it it would be more like a really regular public meeting secondly uh apropos of the uh this expanded uh this group that you were just discussing it seems to me that one uh useful uh and very pointed immediate focus would be I think Margaret you have on your um schedule somewhere around April or March or somewhere in this spring um the owner's project requirements or the design program there's a document that really is the seems to me one of the basic documents of any design process is being generated and and for filling that uh document out would be something that certain folks that are probably interested in this process would be very useful and could be quite constructively involved in uh in contributing to that thought process that accumulation I'm thinking particularly of teachers I was with Kathy when we went to these schools and we did go inside and it was clear that the the the design program could have been better and more accurately and more fulsomely constructed if teachers had have been involved this seems like a very good process for doing that some of Rupert's concerns which I share as well as an architect on building maintenance durability and complexities and so forth again could be plumbed a little bit through folks that were interested in this process had some time some experience and it could be let to focus on those kind of questions I think it's a very useful potential support group or however it's going wants to be named and and that design program is probably owner's project requirement document would seem to be a really constructive first focus for this kind of activity thank you thank you Bruce okay we have yes can I just say one thing um relative to the you know who's in the room um I I wanted to formally introduce Bob Stevens works with me because I know that those of you who participate who were part of our interviews or were able to listen to our interviews will have met Bob Stevens but Bob is actually my partner in crime on this um he lives in Westfield and um he's been in the background but I'm going to be asking him to join meetings more often and so I wanted to make sure everybody understood who he was on the screen and why he's a panelist and not a member of the public so thank you um you know I'll find out just on attendees that's been a question on other meetings on how we can do it there are three people right now and one I I'm not going to read out the names but we'll figure out whether we can make that more like who else is in the room we there is one other um hand up and I'm going to promote this person um to panelists please say who you are I think I promoted you Tony yes welcome Tony you can unmute hi uh yeah so my question is about the educational plan I believe that's one of the key steps coming up shortly and I haven't heard any discussion or very little discussion in this committee about it I realize it falls on the school committee and they have it on the agenda for December 14th as a first discussion the Amherst Elementary School Committee and then on January 11th as a vote so in between those dates we have the holidays um my concern is that the public has not yet been involved in this process and there's some big decisions that I think go into the educational plan maybe Margaret can clarify that for example we have three specialized programs as you know at um currently located at Fort River and at Wildwood will those three programs be offered at both this consolidated school and a crocker farm and what implications would that have for space needs at both buildings um if there's a shortage of space at crocker farm will the preschool have to move I realize that doesn't directly fall under the purview of this building committee but it is something that is of concern to me and the dual language program this could offer an opportunity to expand the program there's been a lot of interest and some people have not been able to get a spot in it um would we be looking at expanding the dual language program to be possibly three or four classes at this consolidated school would crocker farm students have equal opportunity to participate in it and all of these decisions have implications to the space summaries that that you will be drafting for the MSBA and the design of the building so I would love to hear more discussion about these topics and get them out into the public realm before they're decided because I think once that educational plan is voted and and I'm not sure you can you can crack me if I'm wrong on this Margaret but I'm not sure how easy it is to change it later um so there's some of my concerns and then also I just want to echo the desire to involve stakeholders early especially teachers and parents and also trying to reach the parents of zero to five year olds because they'll probably be the first cohort in this building and um there's many preschools in the area and daycares in the area that you could reach out to to get involved in this process thanks so much thank you um you know our practice is not normally not to respond to comments as they come in but um we will clearly um take these down and we can it will be a topic one of the issues that all the designer proposals have and it is an educational plan and we've gotten the same person basically on all three proposals who will be coming in and working on that so any other I know other hands are up on public um so we and so I want to take this moment for any other comments comments on upcoming meetings once the designer is selected we'll be able to probably put out a schedule of how often we're meeting but right now it will be two weeks from now and then we have talked about two weeks after that that first week in December will be when we're inviting hopefully we've negotiated the contract and we have a designer on board and that that meeting would focus on meeting that team hearing what they have to say about milestones etc so that is the current my best guess of the next two meetings and then we will have to be working with them on what can be done at each of the intervals we as everyone knows we're hitting Thanksgiving and we're hitting Christmas so we we're not going to try to have you give up other vacation plans um any other questions or comments I don't see any so I think we can adjourn the meeting and Kathy there is one more hand up in the um attendee list I don't know if you know another oh there was another okay thank you Sean okay so I am going to I don't know who this is I'm how do I allow to talk this is a person on the phone calling in can you please say who you are where you live and you are on unmute I hope I am unmuted you are unmuted am I okay hi this is Maria Kopicki from South Amherst so I want to comment about reimbursement you did mention that there's reimbursement points available for maintenance that's up to two percentage points at least it was historically there's also up to five percentage points for renovation and that wasn't mentioned and I think that's extraordinarily important to talk about because as you start to discuss different ways to approach this project that's going to be something that needs to be addressed and needs to be given very thoughtful consideration and fair consideration uh and I'd like you to comment on that and bring that into the discussion as you talk about reimbursement and as you talk about design options thank you thank you for your comment and Maria is correct and that was my oversight not to mention that so the MSBA does encourage the reuse of buildings through the use of reimbursement points so they if you as Maria says there's a total of five points and depending on how much of a building you reuse and how much you build new it's sort of prorated the percentage points are prorated okay now I think that's the only hand that's up I think is the same person who just spoke is that correct good thank you Sean for looking at hands they don't always appear on my screen so then I think we can adjourn today's meeting and hopefully get ready for the intensity that will happen once we have a designer on board thank I thank you everybody for joining early morning and the meeting I'm going to officially say this meeting is now adjourned thank you all see