 Okay, we just, we're just, I just didn't hear you're right. Kathy, I did not record. I apologize. I just did record now. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm so sorry. Would you like me to repeat any of that? Yeah. Yeah, that was a yes. Okay. Repeating. So the site, the Fort River site, we do know that it has high groundwater and poorly draining soils. So the goal for the buildings, if it's a new building or an addition at Renault would be to raise any of the new portions of the building foot to feed it changes depending on what will depend and pull put under drains in to pull water, pull the groundwater away from the building foundation. Then the storm water is this the water in general the the high groundwater is not necessarily part of the floodplain concern so there are two different elements. One is really heavy rain events. The Fort River would put over top and spread on to the playing field and so that's where the hundred year floodplain comes into play. The groundwater elevations and the poor soils are is a different component. I know with them slightly differently one is staying out of the floodplain which is what the proposed building the existing building outside the floodplain, but it our understanding is having issues with high groundwater. So we would try to manage that high groundwater by pulling the water putting sub drains in and pulling the water away from the building. We also raise up the building raise up the parking lots, raise up the playing fields potentially adding sub drains to pull the water for the high groundwater away storm water which is the water that's coming raining on to the site. Right now, there's a significant amount of impervious area which is the roof runoff as well as the parking lot runoff. That water we need to manage in some way before it gets to Fort River right now, it is flowing in that direction there is a large culvert on the site as well as the site is a lot of the site is graded towards Fort River. So we would capture that runoff in bioswales in the parking lot like narrow swales maybe in the parking aisles, capturing the runoff that's in the parking lot, directing the roof runoff so it's all going towards the south portion of the building of the site, and then closer to Fort River and at the very southern end, putting in something like a constructed wetland, or potentially a very shallow detention basin that depending on what the town would like to see there. We would manage that additional storm water we're not going to propose any exfiltration or infiltration on this site. We would detain it and provide water quality treatment with plants and vegetation. And then it would eventually discharge at the southern east corner towards Fort River. Later on in the presentation we have some photographs of those techniques so you can talk to those. And like to mention is because it is a single story 80,000 square foot building with significant paving either renovation addition or new construction would actually reduce the impervious area on the site so that certainly works in our favor. And then Mike I'm going to turn it over to you to talk about the soils and how that impacts the construction. Mike how but I'm a principal at OTO I'm a geotechnical engineer. The, I'll talk about Fort River and some of the concerns that regarding geotechnical issues. Like what rivers is a challenging site, but they're all challenges that can be dealt with during construction, they're all manageable in no way is the Fort River site unusual and Connecticut River Valley. So we have some sites, some slides slide on a project we just did in East Hampton that had many of the same issues and the same concerns and that that school has been around for 10 years and has has operated without any, any problems so, but a very similar site. So the issues at Fort River. One is, as Janet had said, we have high groundwater and the soils are poorly draining. The high groundwater impacts the engineering of the building and that the building tends to be damp and waste, and you have water concerns. And it also affects pavements and sidewalks and things like that around the building, you get frost action and stuff. So the high groundwater is something that would have to be dealt with in the design. We have some slides of potential solutions to that. And then in the further on, but so you have to think of the high groundwater table it's between one and four feet below ground surface so the water's pretty close to the surface. The other concern regarding Fort River is that the site's underlain by a soft clay, which is present throughout much of the Connecticut River Valley and other portions of the Amazon sure people have have seen at this soft clay. All the playing fields that you master and you see the, the, they all have similar soil conditions to this site. So, but the soft clay is a concern regarding building settlement. The parking lots, sub grades, things like that. So we would have to deal with that in the design. So, and also with the soft soils you have a relatively low bearing pressure for the foundations. So you have to take that into account. How do you deal with that. You know, for the groundwater, obviously for the renovation it's difficult to raise the building, but for a new building you would probably raise the slab elevation at least, at least two feet maybe more. To raise you out of the water table it leads to a dry basement building. It improves drainage around the building with all the sidewalks and stuff and includes all the drainage and parking lot. And it requires to bring in to fill into the site but that's something that can be done. You actually raise the building a little bit which solves a lot of your groundwater problems and your drainage problems. And also enables you to put your soils on your building on better soil so you get a higher bearing capacity, but one thing you do get settlement of the building due to the weight of the fill. So the soil below feels not only the weight of the new building, but it feels the weight of the fill that you're importing. So the building will tend to settle. So you have to manage that during construction and I, and I have an example of how we wouldn't manage that. You know, in East Hampton we used pre preloading we put the soil fill on early so that the soil settled under the fill that we were adding so that it didn't settle after construction. So that's a technique that's used commonly used and it's pretty commonly used in the Connecticut River Valley it's something that we do with the soft clays that are present in the valley. We would do that. And also you'll see at East Hampton we use what's called aggregate peers that basically stone columns that you drive into the ground that's sticking the soil. The way I envision that and I use an example if you think of a pin cushion, and you in with the sand if you if anyone remembers pin cushions, when you push it around, you know it's very pliable. But when you put the pins in it's stippens right up and the pin cushion will get nice and stiff and basically that's what you're doing you're putting these stone columns into the soil and stiffening up the soil. So it's and and that's basically what you're doing there so we do a combination of two things. So to address those problems, but for rivers I said has some challenges, but they are solvable and then not uncommon in the Connecticut River Valley so. Thank you Mike, and we have examples as well. So if we. Yes, I see Sean's hand is up. I'm sorry. And I want to know whether you want to take questions on each site as we do them before we go to the next site. So, we can do that and I apologize we kind of try to organize this in a way but let me just quickly just show some of the examples so. So this is what Janet was referring to as it relates to how we manage the storm water they actually tend to be you can see here's some of the retention by retention ponds that actually we end up being able to use as part of the educational component of the school. This is an opportunity with the red maple here that you can see that this is another way of draining the water slowly and throughout the site so. And even in the parking lots to the upper right hand corner Janet do you want to talk a little bit more about this. I'm only that these are good examples of areas that we could put in in different places the goal would be to have small areas like it within the parking lot and that could be used for educational opportunities to kind of show students the difference between if you have a vegetated area compared to a impervious covered area what that does to the run off and how much faster it flows over impervious compared to vegetated having small areas like maybe closer to the playgrounds or ever that show stones and plants and it can be an educational opportunity for pollinators or you know the habitat floor and fauna on the way. They can be various sizes they can be relatively small if that's what works they can be larger. As in the top left, it can be a good size area, maybe they're two feet deep, maybe they're deeper depending on what the grading is in the area but the goal being. The one further south would be the largest but the ones closer to the school and in the parking lot would be configured so that they fit within those areas so that they can be all different sizes and shapes and. But then they generally tend to be very shallow. Sean. Thanks Kathy so Mike you mentioned one I was just wondering maybe afterwards if. If you all could send us maybe two or three schools that have been built on similar sites and use some of these methods that are somewhere between 10 and 20 years in that we could reach out to and just talk to them and get their. Their thoughts and how things are have gone. I think that would be helpful. Yeah, I can definitely give you some some recommendations. So, thank you to see, you know, and I'll go over the one example here in a minute. And, you know, again, we thought we had this organized in a thoughtful manner but here's here's the Fort River structural analysis for a kind of or Mike if you want to talk through this. So what is Mike was saying on the renovation side. In Fort River because, because it has already shown that there are moisture concerns and the concern about with it sick building syndromes, and with the amount of the extensive renovation going on it. And on the site, the suggested would be the cutoff drain that that Janet mentioned the perforated pipe would be installed around the perimeter of the building to divert the water. That's the other way down it's at the toe of the foundation so that's a cutoff drain and excavating that one things that buildings didn't do in the 70s would really have vapor barriers either on foundations, or under slabs you install a foundation. Vapor barrier and insulation, and then at Fort River because of the close proximity of the water table to the existing floor slab. We take up the floor slab and install a foot of stone to form a capillary break and then put the air and vapor barrier and a new slab and then that foot of stone we would have drainage pipes that would also wick water away. You duplicate all that on the right and new construction. But in new construction you could also raise is, as everybody said raise a great pick pick the building up a foot or two or more depending on the site designs. And all the same elements there and play the vapor barriers continues vapor barriers stone wicking water way and drainage. And on the new construction. The crosshatch area underneath shows that that would be the soil improvements either remove or replace, or the Rambega get peers that Mike talked about. Did anyone have any other questions. We're moving to Wildwood, Donna. Yeah, so I just have one more and I don't really need a definitive answer but if I look at those two options on this site. It looks to me that the new building gives us a stronger solution to the issues of web because you can raise it. And post the renovation so just that's an observation. Then my other question on this is you've got the building going up. How much of the land around the building do you need to raise or to what extent, and I don't need like this many acres but because I think the goal is to get the water to move away from the building so it's just so there's some amount of land that also has to come up, whether the land is the parking lot, the playground, you know, some sense of what's outside the building that's got to come up so would you raise it by that same amount, I guess is my input new soil. So, as we've stated, there's high ground water throughout the site and the fields are also impacted by the high ground water. So our recommendation is to raise the fields as well as the building itself so that everything is agreed that would also be the parking and then do something similar to the fields where we would have this. Subdrain underneath the underneath the field layer to also act as a barrier for the high ground water coming up so we would also raise the fields to at the same level and that would improve the field drainage and usage of the fields. The other thing to consider is, is with accessibility, you need to have an accessible route from your parking lot into your front door out to your fields. So, so you try to do that without having to negotiate ramp systems to get you up into the building and then down back and on the fields. So it will be a blending of all the new grades to try to make it as natural as possible. Thank you. We're good. All right. So, at Wildwood, we actually, as everyone knows this is kind of sits in a ball the existing school and existing site sits in a ball we have an elevation of 40 from say from strong street. I'll say there's a 40 foot grade change from strong street down into the existing Wildwood site. We have a culvert which isn't identified here but there's a culvert coming from the pond on the opposite side of strong street that runs along the driveway and then heads east through the lower parking lot and then drains down into the middle school site. So we want to be mindful of that and we also understand there's lots of utilities that are running through the site that we have to be mindful of. The site as well has some challenges as as it relates to groundwater. I, you know, everyone has been, it's more obvious I think to everyone over at the Fort River site but at Wildwood, there's also high groundwater which is not as significant one to four feet but this is two to five feet below surface so the same similar techniques would also need to be provided at Wildwood and Janet, why don't you just, you can walk us through it. Yeah. Again, Janet Bernardo, civil engineer with the Horsley-Witton group. The primary difference between the two sites is that the Wildwood site has some steep slopes coming down into it and we would want to capture the runoff coming down those steep slopes in some type of a swell surface trench drain to show that it doesn't impact the rest of the site and then we would, similar to Fort River, add small bio retention areas around the building around the parking lot and on the bay areas. So the water will, again, it can exfiltrate or infiltrate whichever word you choose, basically the same. A little bit, but as Micah said, you know, the soils really are not very conducive to a lot of infiltration so we would capture the runoff in bio retention areas, bring it all the way down towards Tan Brook, and eventually we would be discharging it to the in a similar direction as what existing conditions do, but very contained in various stormwater practices so that they don't impact the school or the playing fields. So, but the biggest goal would be to redirect the runoff that's coming down the slopes so that it doesn't have the surface runoff into the building. Just to add, we had a great conversation with Guilford Warren and his team the other day and walking the site. The entire site, which also includes the middle school site is very wet and if anyone's been out there you'll see that they too have put kind of perimeter drains all around the middle school site, even along wherever wherever there's been improvements, for example at the tennis courts there's perimeter drains all around the tennis courts to manage the stormwater this site is maybe a little, it's different, it's certainly not flat and because you do have all of the gray changes, you know it starts up at Strong Street comes down to the Wildwood site and then slopes down another 15 feet down to the middle school site so this area as well is known for the wet soils and wet conditions. And then Mike, if you wanted to talk about how that impacts the site. You know what they were talking about wet soils, well, the way to think of these two sites, Fort River is kind of in the valley, so you get soft clays and stuff associated with the valley and you get water because you're down by the river and in the valley. Here, you're up in the hills at Wildwood, so you have a soil that's called glacial till, it's a very dense soil, very, you've seen it, it's hard, and you'll hear people refer to it, some of you might have it at your house it doesn't drain very well. And so the water tends to run around along the surface and the surface tends to get wet and very muddy, and you tend to get water around your buildings or in parking areas and playing fields it tends to collect because the water can infiltrate into the ground. So, we also have to manage groundwater here, or water, and, but the reason for that is the soils are just very tight, very impervious, the water doesn't want to drain on you and it tends to run in the surface so there'll be engineering features to the building to collect this water and to manage it, and that's what Janet was talking about so different soil type but basically the same problem, causing same issues being caused by just a different soil and different conditions so that's on groundwater so when you see water it'll be right at the surface and then they're trying to manage it, it just can't drain. So, one of the issues at Wildwood is that the site in the past was level, used to be a hill site, they moved soil to form the flat area adjacent to the existing school. So there's up to, I think up to 10 feet of fill on the site, so they just pushed into place that is highly variable is loose in some areas. So, it's not a suitable bearing material for a new building and we would have to treat that soil. Fortunately, there's a lot of technologies that are readily available. Rick and I are working on a couple sites with the same type of materials in Springfield, and we've treated those very successfully. The buildings are one of them they're just finishing up now or they're well along on construction and the other one is open, but basically you would, you have two options you can treat the soil with aggregate peers like we said to densify it in situ, or you can dig it up and then re-compact it and put it back in place in a dense state. Both solutions are reasonable and are viable. It's a matter of cost. So we would go through and cost that out in the, in the design on this. We would just need to treat the soil underneath the building. So, but we could make a dense bearing material and just how we create that. Rick, if you want to, you know, just kind of walk through its similar approach. You're on mute. Sorry. Immuted, Rick. Okay, same renovation and new construction slides here. The difference at Wildwood because the groundwater is not quite so proximate. Under renovation we wouldn't be removing the existing slab. I don't want to show up in the detail here, but we would be surface applying a vapor barrier to it to help fend off any latent moisture from rising up. We'd have the cutoff drains, as Janet said, to redirect that water that's coming down the hillside around the building, divert it. So it's not a construction. It's really the same would be the same situation as at Fort River, except we wouldn't be raising the overall grade. So it's adding drainage, adding good draining material underneath the slabs and handling it that way. And then Mike, here's here's the East Hampton High School. I wanted to ask an example and here's a slide. As you may be aware, East Hampton presently, well in the last 10 years, they've, they've undergone two large school projects. The first one, which I think was about 10 years ago was East Hampton High School that we worked on. And presently they're redoing their elementary and their middle schools. You know, I'm maple, I think it's, it's Park Street. They're redoing it's the Whitebrook Middle School and Maple Elementary Schools, they're doing, they have a large school projects. Both of them have similar conditions to Fort River. So they both have soft soils, high groundwater table and flat sites in a low line area. So a lot of the things we did there are applicable to Fort River we would do. They, there was some question on a job that was 10 years ago, the high school was built about 10 years ago East Hampton High School it's down by rubber thread pond, if you know in the center of East Hampton, very similar soil conditions. There's a geologic map and it's the schools and a little white dot. The lines are the, the limits of the soft valley clay, Connecticut River Valley barbed clay, these, these white lines, these swing around and they go through Amherst. They had an Amherst that'll run along the base of University Drive UMass and downtown Amherst on the upper till, which would be the white and then down in the valley going towards Hadley and then it wraps around where Fort River is so you get similar on towards to these. The map is similar, the soils are very, very similar at Fort River than they were at the East Hampton High School project. So we would look at a similar solution. So, and you can see there's something on the high school. What we did is we strengthened the soil with aggregate peers that allowed us to use a higher bearing pressure and support loads. This in the school there's often some pretty heavily heavy columns well around the library and the cafeteria and stuff. You get some concentrated loads of structural engineer has some issues with getting out it's pretty common for schools. We got out with aggregate peers so we could take these big building loads out and support these big loads in the building. And then we, we had the soft clay. First off we picked up the building about four feet to get it out of the low lying area in East Hampton they built it in the swampy area right behind the previous high school. There was a low lying area they built the new school in and they basically brought in four feet of fill up the four feet of fill and fill that area pick up the new school. So it would be dry and they had a nice dry site for the school without moisture. But that costs the same soil soft clay so that causes settlement issue. There we did was call the soil preload, you put the soil on and advance and you let the soil settle under the load. So a pre it's a preload because you add additional fill to mimic the weight of the building. So you kind of pre compressed the soil to feel the weight of the new fill and feel the weight of the building so the building. When you build it doesn't settle. So we also did some some techniques to expedite settlement for construction issues. When you do school projects, Rick will tell you and Donna will tell you there's usually a drop dead data right September 1st August 15 the school has to be open. So you have to make sure you meet that schedule. You can't let your construction schedule slide to August 15 right or Thanksgiving it just doesn't work it has to be open at a certain date. You have to set your finished date and work backward from there, and we expedited all this process to, to make sure that they met the schedule. It's worked out this East Hampton High School has no noticeable settlement, no water issues. And the project went on construction on budget, and everyone was pretty happy. So was a, it's a very similar site to Fort River and, and this slide is only to show you can be done. So, and this techniques. I think that's it any questions. Um, yeah, this is fantastic. I just want to say the amount of information so just on the preload. Do you, you said you preload and then you mimic the way. Is that a certain amount of time it has to sit there to be contract pressed it I'm just trying to understand what that is. What we do is we measure it, the settlement. So if I can actually send you or I could, if you ever interested I could do more at Fort River was selected and we had the, and we chose something like this I could show you those plots but you, you measure settlement with time and you wait for the settlement to end. So we're adding the WIC trains to make it go faster. So, so we make it and then we measure it and when the settlement ends, then we take the preload off. So, Phoebe has her hand up to Phoebe. Hi, I have a couple of questions. This has been really helpful because I think we've talked a lot about the site at Fort River but not quite as much a Wildwood and if I'm understanding correctly there's still a significant amount of site work that would need to happen at Wildwood as well. And a lot of it sounds very similar to what we'd be doing at Fort River. So my questions, the couple that I have at the moment and I'm sure I'll have more have to do specifically with Wildwood. How would if we're talking about the possibility of building into one of those hills. How does that impact capturing the runoff what would we need to do in that section if we're literally, you know, building into a hill. Yes, Donna. Sure. Thank you. So what I believe I'm looking at the potential of putting a retaining wall on one edge. And I think we would want to capture the toe of the slope for and maybe that would take like from the north, middle north west over down to the southeast. And where the retaining wall is we would capture above the retaining wall so there might be two lines almost in parallel, one taking the toe of slope for most of it, one at the top of the retaining wall, taking that runoff that's coming down the slope before it hits the retaining wall. Does that make sense. Yes, yeah it absolutely does. If I could also add something there has been discussions about quote building into the hell, taking advantage of it. And from a building standpoint, that's that changes the game of from moisture mitigation to actually hydraulic. So talking waterproofing instead of moisture now you're essentially whatever wall you've got into the into the hill is now a basement. And so that's a very active kind of more robust type of membrane that you have to protect that area for any perched water that's coming down the hill and hitting that wall. So, so we have all, if I can cut it. I just want to emphasize where Rick said it also adds to the cost of the structure because you have the weight of the soil against the building so the whole structure gets a little bit more expensive there's more concrete more steel in it. So it does add expense when you go into the side. You're muted. You're muted. At least that was muted. Sorry. I actually think that's very helpful is this. I have another question about the, the runoff and that kind of stuff, but because you just mentioned that is that something that we're working to put into our costs because we had talked about building into the hill. Is this something that we're going to be kind of assessing assessing and looking at further in cost and everything else. So, we've, and further along we start talking about the floor plans and how they relate to the site and the community access. We're finding that it's probably going to be very challenging to build into the hill in a meaningful manner because what we will be putting into the hill are the classrooms because the community wing wants to be the front of the building and the parking and access and the administration so that we can close off the, the classroom line, the academic line behind it. So, building into the hill probably won't work only because we need daylight we need natural light in the classrooms and other projects that we've, we have been able to successfully build into the hill. The topography and where the hill was in relationship to the rest of the site was was totally different and so it doesn't look like there'll be a beneficial design opportunity and to even do that and then you have the out of cost so I think at this point. I would recommend against building any further into the hill. You'll see some of our designs that are still not done, but, but we will incorporate the retaining wall, and all the stormwater management that is required to do that, but we're not going to go further deeper into the hill at this point. Yeah, just building off of Phoebe's comments so far. I mean, I know you're going to give us some of the site pictures later, you know where the classrooms in it but you've, you've shown a new building that is the same for either Fort River or Wildwood. And so one of my questions is on new to avoid the hill issue and avoid the retaining wall, could it not be straight back, could it be more of an L L shape so it's that's a question you know that we don't have to. It's easy on paper to say it's exactly the same. But then the second question, if you can go down to the ad reno, the ad reno looks really is a nice fit on Wildwood on the Wildwood site you don't have to go over into the hill at all. You've got room if we go for the groundwater wells, you've got room for the wells, and it looks like you get daylight so I just think when we when we come back to what you've talked about ground condition it also interacts with not just choice of site but choice of what seems to work well on each site just. And the other thing I saw on the, I hadn't really thought of this until I walked Wildwood again, and I walked it with another counselor who thinks about slope. So it takes advantage that Wildwood right now is on a nice flat place so that you, it's already taken advantage of the bowl. So the ad reno fits better that way to you know you don't bring it. I think Phoebe you were the one of asking how close to the hill are we, you know, down, you don't have to bring it. You don't have to bring the new wing as far south. So these are just things I was looking at as you were talking about ground and other conditions that I think must affect the cost of the building. So it interacts the price tag as well. Yeah, so so just a couple of things and it's fine this is interactive this is this is preferred than us just presenting. If absolutely, you know, there are ways to kink the building, you know, you know, in certain ways, our focus has been to maximize north south orientation systems to maximize and control the day lighting, but we certainly there are opportunities to perhaps reconfigure it so it's not in a straight line. The other conversation that we did have we call it kind of a wrap around conversation with some of the departments and Amherst and we had the fire department there and we did ask what the requirement was for a 360 degree access around the building and how important is that they stated that that's not a deal breaker, you know, we can get to the end of the building, to the end of the long portion of the north side and the south side of the building, they don't necessarily require access all the way around the building so you know we can certainly look at how to maximize the site and and take advantage of the site instead of building into the hill. And so we move forward, but for now, it's probably prudent to carry the high retaining wall for cost comparisons, and also managing the storm water on the site. So in terms of the, the runoff in the storm water. You said that there was already a culvert from sort of across the road back that sort of went into the onto the middle school site. I'm assuming that we would have to do. And I think it may have been mentioned something similar. My, my question is, does that bring yet another agreement with the regional with the region because it's. It would be onto the middle school site. Now, I'm Janet go ahead. Yeah, the existing culvert we would pretty much leave intact, we would probably video it to make sure that it was in structurally sound, but we would not impact it. The, but most of the site does already drain towards the middle school site so we would mimic the existing pattern and the storm water the message that storm water handbook basically says that you need to. You cannot increase your post development and runoff from your pre development off so we would just do the same thing that it is currently doing. On the culvert, it seems to be a lot of the runoff on Wildwood gets caught in catch basins and various drainage pipes and gets into that tan brook, which is maybe culverted underneath. That's low been towards the tennis courts, but I don't think that's an additional agreement if we're not increasing or not actually changing the structures. As long as we keep the existing structures. I don't see that as an another agreement. Yeah, our goal is not to disturb the culvert feeding Phoebe if that's your question and then and then the other just clarifying point Janet tell me if I'm incorrect. I think that we have to manage the water as it currently flows but we also cannot increase or decrease the rate in which it flows off the site so we don't want to accelerate right, Janet the. We cannot increase it, we can decrease it. It's okay to decrease the flow, the flow, the flow of it. We cannot increase it, which is why we would have some type of storm water practice like the bio retention areas gravel wetlands detention basin areas that would contain water for longer so it might have a continuous flow off site, but it would not increase the flow off site. Yeah, I guess I guess the only other thing to point out at both sites right. It, we will be. Most definitely I'll say most that will be reducing the impervious area again given the size of the existing building and all of the existing parking. So depending on the yeah depending on the final layout. I know what we leverage I looked at Fort Rivers site, it did seem to be reducing impervious the Wildwood site. When we did our analysis it was the larger building footprint and there was a little bit of an increase, but I think with the smaller footprint. It won't increase so therefore will be it will be the storm waters I'll be a little easier. You know I'm curious Tammy's on people who live in these schools. Whether there are any comments on a, in terms of structural or Rupert been just making sure we get any questions comments thoughts on. I don't live in either school. Tammy. For, you know, having lived in Fort River, so to speak, for 18 years. I have to say I am concerned because I, I see the effects of the rainwater on the roof. The amount of effort we have to put in when the ground is so saturated that the water comes up through the ground so I just want to ensure that the build the accommodations that are being made to either site are forward thinking that in 30 to 50 years were to the best of our ability and to our most current knowledge accounting for potential water table increases. Because it's stressful for teachers for administrators for students to have to live with water. So right now when there's heavy rains we have to put plastic drop coverings over books. So it, you know, it, it, it does sort of cast a wide, a wide web when we have to worry about drainage and and water affecting our schools and ability to learn. So just on that note when you're saying you have to put plastic to cover your books are you saying the books are on the ground or you're getting water infiltrated from the ceiling or getting yeah we're getting water infiltrated from the ceiling and I know right now we're we're considering sort of the water that's coming underneath the high water table but it's still a consideration. Yeah, of course any new constructions going to have the appropriate roof drainage and and everything else and I don't, I should know but I offhand I don't when the last time the roof has been replaced and if if there's leaks that may be occurring which really have when it rains it rains right so I know that that that hopefully will be managed obviously will have roof drains and and of course a warrantied roof that will be 25 to 30 years. I don't see any other hands. Phoebe's hand is up. Yep. Please do that tea Kathy sorry. Now that's okay it's just it's it's your for whatever reason your hand is in a place on your wall is harder to see. So my question is. All of these all of the site work, I think they were, you know when we were talking about the not realistic costs before when we had that very preliminary sort of sketch of them. We had included a lot of these site costs into Fort River. When we when this is handed to the cost estimators kind of this time around in the next month. Will all of this information go to them I'm trying to figure out if we'll end up with a more apples to apples cost site costs on the next round of potential cost. Yes. Go ahead. I don't want to use a term apples to apples but for each, each scheme, the cost estimator will be figuring into his cost, the appropriate basis of design for each site. There would be raising the grade where Wildwood does not include raising the grade so it's not a pure apples to apples but it will be a more detailed take off of the engineer designed responses to the individual conditions at each site. Maybe the really short answer is everything that the engineers and architects understand about these two sites will be incorporated which isn't to say that there isn't a lot more development so they're making educated guesses about some things, but everything that's being discussed today will be incorporated. And again just going back to the initial conversations of why is the site at Fort River so much larger or so much more expensive than the Wildwood site. We still have a much larger area that we will be managing and reconstructing or replacing. So that, you know, won't go away, right that that won't change. So I think it will still demonstrate that the Fort River site will probably be more expensive than the Wildwood. So, Paul's hand is up Paul. I see Tammy's hand up to Kathy. I mean I wasn't sure whether Tammy just hadn't lowered it. Yeah, thank you. You said that you had talked with the fire department and the public works, you know, and I wondered if there were any insights that our town engineers had brought to you in terms of their sort of on the ground consideration of the of the two sites. Just to clarify Paul, are you asking what what their opinions are. If there was anything, anything that you know you sort of do a, you know, a sort of a scientific review of the site based on soils and things like that but then they they're out there every day walk in the sites and managing their observations. Yeah. And this I think we sort of asked this of Rupert and Ben as well because they're in the same situation. Thank you. It was a great meeting with DPW. Again, Guilford and his team, and they just reiterated that the Fort River site is wet. There, there's no question. No one ever everyone is acknowledging so the good news is we know how to manage that site. They also acknowledge that there are significant issues at the Wildwood site as it relates to stormwater and drainage. And so when we started talking about the mitigation measures, you know, we just received a lot of nods understanding that yes those those are the appropriate measures to manage and improve both sites. These would be improvements to to either site and it was actually Guilford and Jason that elaborated on how what the middle school site is and how challenging it is to manage the water on that site. And we'll get into traffic at the next meeting but they also had a lot of insight as to the traffic at both locations. Paul, the discussion with the fire prevention officer had to do with access and expectations and they basically said they were going to be reasonable. There are times when the building code requires you to have 360 degree fire truck access all around the building depending on how you try to build the building. So they tried to avoid that requirement. Sometimes they ask for simply being able to get an ambulance on a pay play service to get to a kid. And what we're showing here is not the road for a ladder truck but they said they will they will work with us to be pragmatic on the type of access for emergency bill vehicles we can give, give them. Good. I just want to make sure their thoughts are being considered. Thank you. Yes, thank you. And, and there'll be many more conversations with them. Donna just did you, I didn't on conservation commission I think you met with them to in this group meeting were there any. I'm assuming that's floodplain conservancy were there any issues in terms of either site on the concom review. No, I believe it was the agent that we met with and or she was present and they pretty much just confirmed everything that we said as far as the floodplain being pulled back on the Fort Rivers site and that that is anticipated to occur. They said later in the year I think it was, it's in the works but it won't officially be done till I think August or September, Rick or Margaret. Yeah. Yeah. But they understand as well and agree that the floodplain conservancy kind of trumps everything else when you look at the slide this is the, the most extreme into the site into the school. And did so in, in, in, when Janet was talking about moving wet, moving, creating new wetlands, removing some wetlands that would that does that all go through conservation commission to, you know with a set of, you know, you can do this and you can just on. I'm just looking for what when you build part of your home in Amherst what it's noted for is how many hurdles you hit with her. We hit them all. We hit them all here. Any, any work within the 100 foot buffer of any wetland resource area requires meeting with the conservation commission and obtaining an order of conditions so I believe both of these sites would definitely require meeting at originally the Fort River, I mean the Fort Rivers site was very a wildwood site. The wetlands were not as obvious but they did bring attention to 10 Brooke which is covered it but all but but in their mind is still a resource area so we would meet with them to discuss the 10 Brooke. I believe some of the intersection work that might be considered which was a traffic circle or something up at the entrance gets close to the pond on the north side of the road and that, and that gets to be jurisdictional. Just just for everyone else's benefit when we were speaking with the DPW they were suggesting a way to mitigate some of the traffic at Wildwood would be to create a very small roundabout up here at the intersection. And so again, recognizing here's the 10 brook or the pond, I guess is up here that we have to be mindful of that. PB. Thanks. Um, so, because we're just, you know, still talking about the wetness. I'm wondering if the middle school field site for the, for the, has there been a while. Yeah, yeah, has there been an evaluation of that field there specifically and does anything have to happen to that in order to make all of the other things work at Wildwood that we need it to. Does it have to come up any of those sorts of things. No, so, like at Fort River. There's a way to mitigate the high groundwater for the geothermal fields. And it's our understanding that it is a nominal increase in the construction, but the wells can be constructed in these conditions. So that that is in a consideration the consideration more so as we evaluate the ground. So if it's ground source heat pumps, and we need a geothermal field, if we do locate it down in the middle school field down here. Conversations need to occur one is what kind of number memorandum of agreement, would we have what needs to be done in order to satisfy MSBA that we have control of the site we're thinking maybe it's just an easement right just like any other utility that that that might work. The other consideration is if this field, the intent of the field is to be used by the Wildwood school during school. We now have to make this accessible and it's a 15 foot slope. So we would have to create an accessible ramp system to get down to the bottom of the field. One of the things that Guilford and Jason expounded on when they were working on the safe walk project that there was once accessible access considered from upper to lower field. And it basically stretched from the tennis courts to the preschool traffic circle the length that you needed to get it to work. And so that that's a big challenge. So another opportunity here would be to thank the middle school for allowing us to put the geothermal wells under here improve the conditions because it is wet. So that the community has better access and use of the site and then just connect the wells to where the where the new building or renovated building would go and just not claim the use of that space for the Wildwood students during school. Did your hand go back up or did it just not come down. Okay. Can I expand on that just for one minute. As far as the storm water goes as we said, for the Fort Rivers site we could not increase the runoff going from the Wildwood site to the middle school site. So for, I believe that the town engineer and the W superintendent would want the culvert that's basically containing Tambrook to be videoed to be sure that it's actually sound. That we would be tying into. So if the culvert is the is the store is the wetness concern. We won't be increasing what is to the actual fields so that would be a separate issue if the town is concerned about the fields on the Wildwood site that we're not actually touching, but the culvert would be something that we would probably be tying into and they would want to make sure that it's actually sound all the way through. Janet, they suggested that also for Fort River, right. The one out by the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah, because they said it for Fort River. I'm kind of guessing that they would. The difference for the two sites is that we would be day lighting and improving the culvert at the Fort River site and kind of creating an opening it up making it more of an educational or, or site feature where here, we just need to carry the water through the calvert. I'm looking to see, I don't see any other hands up so we could, if it's okay with everyone we can conclude the questions. We have Mike and Janet here. If there are other questions after that come up, we will, we will send them through Dinesco to them to get answers for everybody. So if things occur to you after the fact, or as a result of thinking through this will just do them through so so Janet, do you. I mean, Donna, do you want to. I'm thinking, Janet. I mean, you guys are happy to stay and, and, and I know you guys there. Our team really works collaboratively together, Kathy and having them understand the nuances of what's important the building and what goes where sometimes helps inform their work. They're free to go. It's 947. So, if you guys have to run or if you'd like to hang out. I leave it to you. So, so what we wanted to do is we want to just touch base on where we are with the layout of the building. And I want to say thank you to the school department, we had a great meeting Thursday before Good Friday so these, the staff was great to stick around. And the special ed teams, they were great to stick around and really provide some thoughtful inputs as far as the locations of the district wide spread programs and the adjacencies and how different layouts of the school impact the integration of these programs with, with their peers. And that's a really important consideration. As we know these spaces and, and needs for the special ed, which is in kind of the darker purple here is not insignificant. And we want to make sure that they're integrated when it's appropriate. What kind of accommodations do they need, etc. So it was a great conversation. And, in addition to that, I don't. Yes, I think I think we reported back last time that Mike and, and some of his team actually came out to Springfield to the Brightwood school and, and toward the school as it related to what is the three story building feel like. And also, they have a few low incidence programs or, or district wide spread programs and their schools and so they just wanted to get a feel of the incidence of the integration and how that functions, especially in a multi story building. So everyone is seeing the spatial relationship organization and again as we were saying earlier, how the layout of the building impacts the site and what you can and can't do with the site. So we're understanding that the cafeteria in the gymnasium are to be zoned in a way that are for community access, and then the media center isn't as great of a community resource as it is for the school so our goal is to have the cafeteria in the gymnasium. There's a stage and we have art music, also sort of attached to kind of a stem like grouping over here that at least the music and the practice rooms utilizing the stage for overflow needs for music, but also maybe acting as a green room or something for the stage and cafeteria for community use and performances. And then what's in purple are all of the academic spaces and the green is for the administration and support. And I think everyone has it for the just being mindful of time today we had three different layouts for a three story new school option and working with the team, it was decided that a simple layout such as this works best, it is the most efficient, it has the smallest footprint, and it allows for the maximum integration of special ed, but also for collaboration among the teams and grades, as well as vertical collaboration so just to walk through here would be the main entry this is the first floor where we're working on taking the music and the practice and incorporating it down on the first floor to be connected with the cafeteria and then stage, the gymnasium would be at the front of the school. There's an elevator at the entrance as well. And we could, you know, block off the rest of the school going, going west or left to the purple from community access. What what was what people liked about this option is that there are classrooms on across the hall from each other with built in with the project area so there is cross collaboration for the grade so everyone can can be be seen and be heard. And then, and then there's another grade associated with it so typically you would have kindergarten and first grade. So there's a vertical collaboration that occurs between the two grades and that was very attractive there was one scheme that actually had grades on opposite sides of the community wing and while that was attractive making a small school feel they felt that these grades would actually become more isolated, and instead of being a collaborative feature. And then, again, we talked about the locations of the special ed programs the aims, the. It's a Friday the intensive needs or the ILC as well as help me out the behavioral program. So we spent a lot of time talking about that organization. And what we're doing is, you know, the X's are where they're double height, so you'll see we're going to actually for the gym and we're going to try to get some extra height on the cafeteria, but those two spaces would be on the first floor, and then on the second floor as we have the media center the library, a stem and art room if we can move the music downstairs. And again very simple, as far as construction costs are concerned always being mindful, where we can have consistent construction occurring at every level that it's the simplified construction method that is going to minimize the cost of construction. So everyone believe that that this concept right it's the separation of community and academic. It's the collaboration the integration, and it also provides program flexibility so these are for the most part all full size classrooms. And, you know, the aims program could be located in a different location, if it deemed appropriate, going forward right will be designed exactly the same as a general classroom. It also has the smallest footprint, so it increases time on learning, going vertically actually is less time than having to walk 300 feet to one end of the building or another. Alyssa. Thank you I just have a quick question so when you say everyone like this option, who are you referring to. So I'm sorry the teams that that were at the meeting yeah. So this was Mike Morris the superintendent and the special ed teachers. And I'm referring to the low incidents or or the sped programs as well as Joanne who is works with that group. So, from Wildwood and Fort River. Yes. And Tammy's here nodding her head to thank you Tammy. So, and again, you know these are diagrammatic and as Kathy was saying well can we just kink the buildings can we can we move them a little bit the answer is yes, we can try to make them more dynamic or fit the site. And as you can see we have the academic on the west and the community on the east, you know we flip them as it related to the sites and then, instead of maybe one long linear building, we could, you know, kink it a little bit or or make it fit the site will certainly do that but this is for organizational purposes. And we both, Angela, and take, take, and Angelica. Sorry, Angelica. Dona so I wanted to ask you about a movement between the different floors. And so it's hard to see on my computer on my laptop, where students would say mobility issues and how they would access the different floors. If it's just going to be stairways or if there's other mechanisms for access. Yeah, thank you. We do have stairways, and that actually is important as far as circulation goes with managing students, 575 students but for those that have mobility issues we have an elevator, and the elevator is actually, you need a key to access it. So not all students can just decide they were tired on a Friday and just want to take the elevator right so they would have to be accompanied by a teacher and adult but we have the elevator located near the main entry, and they could take it up will be an exact same location on every floor. And we did have a long conversation about the benefits of that. And the goal because, for example, the ILC there are three classrooms that it was determined it would be preferred to have the students in those classrooms, along with their peers. So instead of having all three ILC classrooms on the first floor, you have one that that meets the needs of kindergarten first and then second third and fourth fifth. I understand the students might shift from year to year but this also gives you the most flexibility. Kathy. Yeah, building. When Alicia said who, who was in the room, looking at these. Timing I know we need a preferred solution so which site is it add Renault or new. And if we went new and said it's going to be three story. This design still is in movement isn't it after June, you know in terms of, you know, other teachers community. You need the footprint of the building the volume of the building but so it's, let me frame as a question you know this is whatever is the concept. Some of the rooms could change around as more of us because I haven't focused a lot and I wouldn't probably know enough to figure out where anything should be other than a decision, Jim on the first floor cafeteria in terms of what is community. Is that correct that this when we go into the next stage is where there's still room for movement on the floor layouts. There is to a certain extent, I think it's going to be important. And, and I think, you know we were talking about this meeting or two meetings ago what was important for community access, because we really need to consider where those spaces go and and how we design those and incorporate that into the cost right. So, so it was our understanding that it that the cafeteria and the gym will be used for community use and then for the most part, the rest of the building would be for academic use only and so the input more so it's more important to make sure from the academic perspective that it functions it gets all of the natural light. But even even Rupert with you know where does the receiving go where how how do we manage recycling all of that. So the inner workings of it really come down to what works best for the for the school department. Yes, we, we are not done. This is, if we have a direction this will be great that we can move forward. And, and we can still manipulate, I guess that the spaces and the locations but it's a very simple plan. So what you can see, and what's important to the school department is that each grade remains clustered and they do want to have a collaboration with the grade above or below. So, and then, and then the integration of spec. So we'll see there's probably not a lot of opportunity for redesign per se. And again, we have to be mindful that we cannot exceed the program area that's been approved, as well as the 1.5 gross in factor. So taking all of that into consideration as we start moving some of the pieces around is what we all need to be mindful of. So there's Phoebe and then Alicia. So, kind of a two part question, as usual, when you went through this last week or the week before. Was it just based on this three story layout did they have the opportunity to look at the two story layout. And then second part of that. Have the general education teachers taken a look at this and, and, you know, at both two and three as well. So thank you. We did go through the with with more than just the special ed staff, the concepts of the different two story and three story buildings, and I'm going to just share with you I did have them. So what we'll see here is, let me just, we did go through these and we've gone through and I've talked about the benefits and perhaps negative considerations for each of the options, and we can continue to refine them. But, but from, you know, the administrators, administrative perspective that these have benefits but yet at the same time they don't allow for the collaboration and the integration of the special ed programs which is really important so so just as an example on this. We have what's in purple right so it's two fold one is you want to have, we have five classrooms per grade. So we need to have five classrooms cluster together. So you can see here's one grade and then on the opposite side of the core. So we have components we have another grade. What's important is the integration of the special ed programs. And so when you start putting those together. You have, let's just say this a building blocks. Got it. Okay, so when you start pulling these together, for example, if you have the ILC programs say in the kindergarten wing, just as an example to be first grade. The other component is that it serves for the first grade actually have quite a long distance to go and they're not as integrated as they are with with their peers. And that was sort of the resounding feeling as it related to special ed programs the other components are there are other services that are not just for these low incidence programs but they also serve a greater population. They also are not as convenient and easily accessible for all students. The other consideration, what one of the benefits they like is this is a really great small school feel every grade has its own pod every grade gets to, you know, kind of celebrate itself. What it does is it also isolates them. And so the educators felt that the isolation trumps the small school feel so that you don't have the collaboration between grades and they even went as far as saying you know isn't it great, you know to have the first through and the kindergarten and say oh wow next year I'm going to be your first grader in the collaboration and also with the staff. I know Tammy's on the call I don't know if you want to jump in Tammy. Thank you. You know I agree with everything that Donna said I think she you captured every other remarks, both the positive and the concerns that the teams that you've met with. I think there's been a lot of careful consideration about what the level of collaboration both vertically and horizontally that we want for all of our students as well as our staff. I think the concept number one, while sort of met all of our criteria, the best in terms of our low incidence population but then also in terms of our collaboration that we hope to be able to continue into the future. I want to quickly share with you, we started to look at a different way to take advantage of your beautiful sites and create light and natural daylight and the project areas but we're still going to continue to explore how we can maximize and so as we started laying this out, you can see it becomes a challenge as far as the collaboration of the grades, and it also made the building much larger, and we have to be careful that a the spaces function, but that we don't have to be the grossing factor. So, and utilizing some of these areas by putting some of the small group spaces or other special ed requirements. I felt that they don't want the students to be walking through a project area to access those as those kids would then be looked at and saying oh they're going into the speech and language pathologist room or they need extra help so some of it is also protecting those students. And so we sort of want to combine concept three with concept one in a way that we can bring in more natural light so there's a better connection to the outdoors but we also have to be mindful of the 1.5 grossing factor. And that the spaces need to function we could say okay well let's let's make these project areas smaller but that that in reality ends up not being able to provide all of the lockers or cubbies, and they would be so narrow that they wouldn't be functional. So, their implications. Donna, I think Phoebe asked about two story. Oh, and the two story. Yeah, we did have that too. Donna, did they get to weigh in on? Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. So the two story was also similar. Thank you. As you can see, all of this taking into consideration that we have to meet the 1.5 grossing factor. Right. So, so that's a really important component when you start laying out the buildings and making sure that there isn't a lot of excess when we say the grossing factor that includes toilets but the corridors take up a large part of that. And so the longer the buildings, you'll see this really started creating larger areas. So the way to consolidate and not make this a very long linear building, which wouldn't even fit at either site, we looked at creating these pods. So the hub and the core is the gym and the cafeteria with the music upstairs would be the library and a stem area or a steam area upstairs. But again, similar to one of those other options, we showed you that the footprint is quite large. So it's great that everyone would have a short distance to the core. But this even feels a little more isolating when you have students perhaps say in the West West Wing, and they need to obtain services in another way. And so, there really wasn't much of a benefit from time on learning, it actually can decrease some of the time on learning if you have to go from a special ed service from one one pod to another. And it is the shortest to get to the core spaces but it also is the smallest footprint. I mean, it max it takes up the most footprint, and you can see it's pretty tight to fit on the sites. So for those benefits again, the collaboration among grades, the vertical collaboration and somewhat isolation of each of the grades was a reason why they really felt a three story building function much better academically. Do you have the last bullet says 10% more expensive do you have hard numbers behind that. So, hard number, hard numbers, hard numbers. Well, we have numbers. So, so you know some of the costs really relate to increase in the foundations. There's extra costs there's more foundations, as well as the exterior enclosure. There's a little bit more of that the roof area is larger. And we, you know, other things such as the interior there's not much difference the stairs we need more stairs here. So we needed an additional stair for this so that adds some additional costs. And then you know the mechanical equipment all of that pretty much remains the same so it's the structure it's the roof, it's the stairs, those types of things that will really add to it and then you also have all of the implications that we need to do at both sites right there's going to be more area so there's more site work that needs to be done. Rick, I don't know if there's if I missed anything. I guess that's pretty much at the. There are lines of. And just at the estimator says that single stories buildings are more expensive, even more expensive right. So there's an inherent compactness and efficiency in a three story building that doesn't exist on one and two story buildings and I think people are tuned into thinking that while a column is holding up more weight for a three story building than it would be for one and two, but it's actually more efficient to have a foundation under that column for multiple stories that it is just to have more smaller ones. And that pretty much carries through everything. I see Alicia's hand is up and so I don't want to take her time I just so but that 10% the preliminary design program if we took 10% and multiplied it times the numbers we've seen already we're talking about that kind of increase in price. That would be 10% for the, well, just the building the building that yeah you can see the building there's you know a little more site that that of course we have to manage the site a little bit more but. Okay. Thank you. Alicia. So my question is just like slightly similar to CVs, but I'm interested in, in knowing like who all we have considered input from. Because, like I understand and don't disagree that it's important to hear from the school department, but to me because we're being presented this as this is their favorite option. Like it seems to me that we are putting them above all other people who we would be considering input from. And so I'm wondering, will we hear from other teachers. I personally think it's very important to hear from students because while we will have the teachers teaching in the building and the staff working in the building. This building is for our students and that is who will benefit most from it and we need their input. So I don't think we should have other community members and I don't see how we're taking those things into consideration here, which is very problematic for me. And so I also think that while I'm, I'm happy to hear that this is the preferred option of some staff and I don't even know which staff weighed into that. I don't think that that, I don't think that should have been presented to us in that way. And I think we should be able to see all of the concept options and more for the two stories. So we have like all of these different concepts for a three story and different arrangements and placements for the classrooms and we don't have that for the two story option. So I think that that's important to have and also I'm wondering how we will take other people's input into consideration in this process and like what our plan is for that. So, Alicia, can I respond, you know, I think that's exactly why the community forum is sort of the next public meeting. You know, obviously, this information is something that the building committee looks at first because it's a chance to comment about, but that is, that is the purpose of the community forum. And, but I think what you're saying, Alicia, is take the word preferred off of this and show several correct. Yes, I have a problem with the preferred because we haven't taken like maybe we could call it preferred if we have all of these different streams of input and we're taking all of them into consideration. But to me this is a very biased way to present it and we're favoring the view of the school department which I'm not saying we shouldn't take that into consideration because it is very important but it is not the only important voice or stakeholders in this very important decision that we're making and so I think we need to take all of those into consideration before we call it a preferred layout. Because again, I still don't even know who all we got input from to make this decision. And then also just because we've, I understand we have community forums and I think those are very important. But in the beginning we also talked about like extensive community outreach and all of these ideas that we have not done anything, none of them. And also we've had community forums previously prior to this, and we haven't used any of that input and so I want to know like what is our plan moving forward, after that we get the input from the community forum, how are we going to be incorporating those things into the decisions we make because right now it feels like to me we have the forums and then we just keep moving. So, so a few things just just to respond to who the all are the school department and Tammy's on the call can we have had and several opportunities for staff to join these conversations that the challenge that we're faced with is their staff and they have to teach during the day and they they their day ends I think at 330 Tammy so so it's been offered and shared with everyone to please attend. And we did not have majority of staff attend any of the visioning sessions, we did not have a majority of the staff attend a couple of these other conversations that we've had. So they are asked to attend, and we have also, you know, stay late for them. So I think right now, the challenge is finding time in their day so that they can come and provide additional input. I know that they've, they've seen and have have seen these concepts and I believe we've asked for input and Tammy's nodding her head. So, we're doing the outreach that we can, and it's people's choices to come and be heard or provide the information that they feels important to them. So, but you know, I also would like to say it would be great. I think we have not dismissed communities input. We have heard from the community. We have incorporated a lot of their thoughts and ideas, a lot of them are were automatically included in our designs not a lot of natural minim, you know, maximize the site make sure that it doesn't that it's not wet. So, I take a little exception to the say that we have not listened and have not incorporated the communities input into this. What we can do to make that a little more transparent going forward would be to say, this is what we've heard, and this is where it is in the, in the project, but we absolutely take what the community says seriously, and we do incorporate what they say, if there is something that they can't be done. We, we explain that now we explain it maybe in this forum, as opposed to in a community forum, but a lot of the conversations that we've heard are are the same. And so what what is being brought up here has also been brought up at the community forums. Thank you. And I just wanted to say I thank you for that, Donna, because I do see some of the things but also to me some of the things are like a given like of course we're not going to we're going to ensure that the site is not extra wet because if we're building a school I feel like some of those things are given natural light like maximizing natural light I feel like that's another thing that generally like who is going to say they don't want that. And so other things and just how we're incorporating those things I think those are decisions we could have made without the community input. And so in what ways are we making sure that the things we're hearing in the forum that we may not have thought of before are being taken into consideration moving forward because I don't see that we have a process for that so I'm not saying like, this is something we haven't done but like what is our process for ensuring so I do like the idea of saying like these are the things we heard. And this is how it is displaying in the building I think that's a very helpful way to set it up, because that would be more of like a process that we can set up to sort of track these kinds of things. And also I think it's like very unfair to say that people have a choice to contribute when meetings are being put at a time where they cannot participate. And so we talked about doing other things like having surveys or having written feedback or what other ways we could reach out to people and that's what I meant by like we are not doing the things because we talked about how in effective it could be to have meetings at certain times when people are parents also and not just educators is not their only identity, and also just different abilities people have. And that doesn't mean that they're choosing not, they don't want to be a part of this and that they're actively making that choice but sometimes it's really just not possible. And so what avenues other avenues are we creating for people to be able to have input is more what I meant by that. So, so for the staff, we totally recognize that's a challenge right they teach until 245, and then, and then, you know, the their day ends at 330. And so we have tried to have these and try to have these meetings occur, you know, at the end of the school day until 330 some have chosen to stay longer. Some others have said they had to leave. I also believe the school department has reached out to to staff, and I can confirm with Mike that that did occur to also request any input that people may have. As far as reaching out to the community. If you know we're doing these evening community forums and we did actually have a have a morning visioning session, and that unfortunately, I think we had less people attend that one than we did the evening forums but we're available at any time if if there are other times or ways to reach out to folks were certainly available to do that and maybe some input from you all as to when it would make sense that would be great. I'm conscious of time Donna and we have three more people with their hands up and I do want to leave time for public comment. I don't have to take your hand down. So, Angelica, then Phoebe and Tammy had her hand up also so it sounds like we're at the start of a longer discussion and we need to think of some strategies but Angelica. I'll try to make my comments brief but it's also to just continue the conversation and about community outreach, I think it's important to contextualize that it's not just an issue about timing and people's accessibility. As an educator myself, it's, there's a lot of burnout right now and we have to contextualize so we've gone through several coven like waves, including at the beginning of the semester or the year, the Omicron wave so it's about the timing of when things are being asked, which is that people are already super strained. I think now with spring coming and better weather there's a great opportunity to like retake some of these conversations when the timing before was really hard because we need so much being asked of people to just hold it together so we can just keep going. I think this is a perfect time. I also like the idea I'm new to the committee and I would like to see, you know, some of these ideas that it looks like they've been put forward in the past like surveys. I know we have a farmers market that could be a great outreach mechanism, and I know that accessibility and a variety of languages will be important so if there's a possibility of getting an FAQ or some kind of simple handout that can be given to people and and like say the farmers market translated also in Spanish, that would really really help benefit, increasing like the transparency and communication on these issues and building more community input and community consensus on the project. BB. Yeah, I'm going to follow Alicia and Angelica pretty quickly. I want to also recommend I mean, all of these things are on paper already theoretically I mean on our screens on paper. So it might be worth sending to and I don't know how it works sending to staff on paper for written feedback they can see the options they can think about it they can do it at their own time. And, you know, ask them for for some feedback about these options by a certain date. It seems you know even if it's an email to them. We, I think we not only really need to go back and start talking about the process for for getting information out to our community but also the process for answering public comment. Public comment at every meeting and then we also get these emails and thoughtful, you know, thoughtful questions and comments in between by way of email. And I don't see a place where we go back and we say, you know, so and so ask this really important question and so we weave some of the things into our, you know, bi weekly discussions but I don't know that there's a place or a time where we say, this has been answered and I think that we need a process for that as well. And then I know that when we did community forums before I had asked if we had any demographic information on who attends these things who are we hearing from. Are they the parents of the kids that are, you know that in our school system now are they retirees are that you know, who are we reaching I think we need to understand who we're reaching, because we don't know who we're reaching if we don't know who we are reaching. And that that seems to be really important and not something that we have really gotten a great handle on. That's it thank you. My only comment, Phoebe to that is the forums. There is a lot of anonymity going on there only because people don't necessarily have to. We had we get emails. So without. We could ask people to disclose who they are but then sometimes feel like they don't want to have to register so that's a it's a little bit of a double edged sword and you know I know you've been awesome in the community outreach and maybe we can have a conversation and we can track these people better so we know where people are who were reaching and who else and how else can we reach others. I need to do a time check it's 1027. We were scheduled to end by 1030 I definitely want to take public comments so we clearly don't have time to get into another discussion on the evaluation criteria so that will move yet again. Can people stay 15 minutes extra so that we can do a vote on the invoice and then take public comments does that work for everyone. And it may be that we are our two guests. Jennifer Nardo may want to say so is that's okay so. So I'm just going to go right to invoices. We, Sean said we have an invoice for answer and then I need to do a roll call vote on. The invoice can everyone see it. Margaret do you want to walk through this invoice. Yeah, what might be helpful, Sean is that you can just scroll to the. I mean, just in a nutshell, I really saw the numbers there there is detail behind this that as always sort of described what we're doing. Last month, there was quite a bit of, there was not as we do not have anywhere near as much work on the PDP submission as Dinesco does but we here we're doing work on that on the website and, you know, preparing the meeting effort and Phoebe just to sort of respond a little bit to your comment we are making an effort to make sure in the meeting minutes, particularly with the net zero which we've gotten a lot of written comments about that the questions and the answers are incorporated so. So that's, I think that's all I have to say about this there's some time in here for Shelley Pato who's our net zero guru who has been attending the net zero meetings but not the bill and committee meetings. I move to approve the invoice. You have a second. Second. I will do a roll call vote. And as I call out your name, indicate how you vote. Ben. Yes. Rupert. Roy Clark I Tammy. Yes. Paul. Yes. Sean. Yes. Angelica. Yes. Phoebe. Yep. Alicia. Yes. Simone. Yes. So that's unanimous with two absent. Margaret by my count. Got it. So if everyone's agreed, I want to open it up for public comments. And Sean, I think will help me with a show of hands of who wants to speak. So anyone who would like to speak, please raise your hand. Okay, so I see one, two, three, three people, four people. Four people so far. So Sean, Sean has brought in first been hollow. You're in. And if you unmute, we will be able to hear you. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. First, I'd just like to thank this committee very much. And then I'll just get to the point because we're limited time. I'd like to comment in response to the last meeting where access to public transportation was thought, or at least discussed to not be important or critical. My words and not theirs, but that was what I was left feeling. And admittedly I'm the outlier when a divorce caused my child to have parents in different school district zones. So three days a week. I'm not going to get her to school and back. But the times when I would see many more families on the bus would be when a class was presenting or a science fair and assembly performance. So yes, the school bus can get our students there, but when the families are invited or the caregivers are invited to support them pre-pandemic, I'm not sure what's going to happen or going forward, but that would, that felt important to me during the school days and evenings. And another time, if we're thinking about this building being used, I would say that one of the most important part of this, I'm sure that many families is not part of the education program, but definitely part of the whole child experience getting to schools for soccer games, basketball games. And two of the schools at the time were more conveniently located on the bus line, but there was one that was really problematic to get to, but we do it, we'd walk through school just to save the extra time on the sidewalks. I mean to the snow. I just want, of us into school is when the families would be able to come support their students and or extracurricular sports and performing arts. Thank you very much. Thank you, Hala. So Maria Kopecki. And can you hear me? Yes. So first, I want to thank the folks that came in to talk about geotechnical. I thought that was a extraordinarily good presentation and good information that we got there. I have a question that I have asked several times, but we don't still seem to have the answer to which is where is the response from the MSBA for the PDP? It's been a very long time. And I'm wondering if anybody from the town or the building committee has communicated with the MSBA and asked what the delay is about when we can expect the response and whether this delayed response is going to impact any other the proposed timeline that you guys are working on. Another question I had was to again see any of the communications that went between the designers and the cost estimators so far to produce the preliminary information. I still think that it would it is important for the school building committee to see any design basis documents, pricing narrative, whatever it is going to be called that will be sent from the designers to AM Fogarty before that gets sent so that you can proofread it. Make sure it includes everything that we've been talking about at these meetings. I do want to also talk about the two-story alternative. As was pointed out, there was only one design for a two-story building and three alternatives for a three-story building. And I didn't see any attempt in there to solve some of the problems that were noted in some of the three-story designs in a two-story design. I did not see any attempt to talk about the pros and cons of these two approaches relative to one another. There was no discussion of having an increased roof means you have increased PV that you can put on the roof as opposed to on canopies or in ground-mounted solar. There's a lot to talk about and it does not feel like that's getting thorough analysis, a two-story alternative. And while there have been some opinions put forth about different energy efficiency and cost and a quote of 10%, I am going to ask that those numbers be thoroughly vetted. And what is the difference? If it is a difference, and you need to document before you toss out a number, especially when I keep getting told that we don't have cost estimates and we don't. You don't have the information. So to throw out numbers without that information is putting the cart before the horse. That's all I'll comment on for today. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. Bruce called them. To some extent, I'll disagree with what Maria just said. I just wanted to call in to speak to the process briefly. Kathy, Donna, Margaret, I don't have as strong a concern as Alicia does over the process or Maria. My sense is that the concepts that have been developed and shown seem to my mind to have been so far systematically and appropriately evaluated. And I can see why the design team would come up with, from their point of view, a preferred scheme. Maybe it shouldn't be represented as the committee's preferred scheme. But I think it's important and helpful for the design team to tell us where they are in their thinking. So far as the process, in terms of acknowledging public comments and so forth, I don't feel, and I'm one that's made a lot of public comments both in this fashion and through emails. And I'm not feeling that the committee or the processes and blides to formally acknowledge those. I trust that my comments are being recorded and are being taken into account in whatever way they feel is appropriate by the committee and by the design team. There is a design budget here. There is a time budget here, too, as well. And we can, of course, ask our consultants to investigate all of these options thoroughly in the way which Maria just did. But there are going to be times a year from now when we're also going to want to be able to investigate things thoroughly. And this level of investment has to be managed because there's a budget and it has to be expanded wisely. So doing more than what the design team have already done with these concepts would seem to me to be pushing the limits of common sense and wisdom when it comes to expending the time and fiscal budgets that everybody is working on that. So I want to say that from my point of view, and I've been watching all but now two of these meetings for the past year and a half, that I think the process is sound. I am trusting it. I know that people will have complaints and so forth at the end that they weren't properly listened to or represented. I've been on this game for 50 years and I've never heard anything other than that in these types of processes. We try to minimize it, but we don't have to be enthralled to the fact that to somebody who feels misrepresented, misunderstood or ignored, we're going to try and make that number zero, but we're not going to be able to. So just to notice support for the process, I think as I've been witnessing it, it seems to be in good hands. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Pam, you've joined us. If you unmute, we'll be able to hear you. Thank you. Yes, Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. I was, thank you very much for the extensive geotechnical review. That was very, very helpful. And I think I am coming away with understanding that there really are essentially as many site problems at Wildwood as there are at Fort River. Fort River is more obvious to many. I think given struck by the amount of site work at Wildwood, I'm hoping that in the cost estimates that occur that somebody looked pretty carefully at the cost of replacing the existing infrastructure. Someone mentioned that there's extensive infrastructure on that site. And we know that there's the Tanbrook pipe. There's also a large storm drain, catch basin at the edge of the steep hill, and all of that kind of stormwater management infrastructure certainly will need some attention. So in terms of cost estimates, that's something to consider. I was also struck by the fact that the, in the ad reno conversation that it became clear that the Wildwood site really does not require the extensive addition of fill, which is a good thing. And that even the modification of the existing building would not require demolition of the floor slab and addition of fill on the interior of the building, which I imagine could cause a lot of problems just with ceiling heights and utilities and all of that. So in terms of the ad reno opportunity, it looked like on the Wildwood site that that would be a preferred option for Wildwood to have an ad reno configuration. If I look at the site with a building placement on it, it's the ad reno opportunity at Wildwood appears to be a very, very conducive location for a future building rather than perching something out at the edge of the property on the edge of a fairly steep slope. So I hope that's all taken into consideration when you're actually selecting the preferred alternative. Thank you very much. Thank you, Pam. Tony, you are with us if you unmute. Hi, thank you. Tony Cunningham on drive. So this I agree with the other comments about the geotechnical discussion being extremely helpful today. Some of the takeaways I got from it is that you're no longer thinking of building into the hill. You're no longer thinking of using the middle school field for play for Wildwood and that the challenges are similar at both sites as relates to groundwater and stormwater. The one difference is raising Fort River by one to two feet. And then Kathy noted that the addition renovation option at Wildwood offers a better layout for use of the site. So they were for new takeaways that I had from today. I would like to add on to the ask of having additional two story concepts. I think the two story offers a lot of advantages. As far as I'm aware, I think the licensure for teachers in Massachusetts is a K through two for early childhood licensure. I know that came up with the last project when second grade was going to be at one site and K through one at the other. So the advantage of keeping K through two together on one floor might be appealing to the teachers in those grades and then having three through three through five on the second floor. Also the Donna mentioned about a linear plan, two story plan not fitting on both sites. I would like to check if you actually think that a building of that shape wouldn't fit at Fort River because there seems to be a lot of room at Fort River and perhaps at Wildwood it wouldn't fit, but it seems like Fort River it would fit. The geothermal, have you given up on the idea of geothermal on the Wildwood site? I noticed it's no longer in the drawings, the test fit drawings. And then with discarding the use of the middle school field for play, what is the comparison of green space if you're just left with the Wildwood site after you put in the parking lot in the building? How does it compare to Fort River as far as green space per child? Like if there's a square footage per student? Because it seems like there'll be very little green space at the Wildwood site if you were to put a school there. And I think that's everything. Oh, one last thing. So with the middle school field being wet according to Jason Skills and Guilford Mooring, presumably even if you put the geothermal there and you wanted to replace it in kind so that the regional students could use it, would you also have to increase it by one to two feet just like you're proposing at the Fort River site to make that field more usable? Thank you. Thank you, Tony. I think, am I right, Sean, that I think that is we, everyone who did public comment. So we are meeting again in two weeks, but we also have the community forum and the community forum. I think everyone has seen that it's scheduled. There is a brochure that I think was just finished yesterday and I'll make sure people have it. It does have the site information and the potential designs. So I think to the extent, Donna, you're going to be showing any other layouts or, you know, I had a question, for example, on ad reno. We've never discussed where the rooms are, but you had at least in one of the pictures, the gym was on the second floor rather than the first floor. So just thinking even on a, if we want that to be a community resource would need to be on the first floor. But so the community forum will be providing information, but also getting a lot of input. So we would like to get as many people there. We will send the brochure to everyone and I'm going to show it for the council. Alicia and I will be at the council on Monday night and we'll try to get it out to the various newsletters and try to feature it in our district meetings. There's at least a couple happening this weekend to get people to come in because it will be a way to get input both on choices of the two sites, choices of new versus ad reno, new three-story, two-story. So we have, I sent the brochure around to the committee last night. Okay. So everyone got the brochure last night. So that will be posted. It's also going out to all the news outlets we have. So I want to thank everyone for patience and being willing to go longer. The evaluation criteria metric we did receive a thoughtful public comment. Anyone on the committee who has any comments on the potential, if you can send them in to me, I will collect all of them so we can make it a really efficient discussion. And I did forget to put in the edit, building flexibility, flexibility for growth was in more than once and I forgot to move it to one place and it disappeared. So that is, I will send out a potential revision. But in any case, that will be important for us to start doing some of these comparisons. So trying to put a period on it, as my mother-in-law used to say, on finishing what I'm writing, it would be nice to have time next time. So I think that's it. And just on MSVA, we are expecting comments. There has been a request on a weekly basis on where is it, where is it? We haven't forgotten. So that will likely be on the next agenda. So we will be getting a document with their comments on it and we are expecting it to be on the basics agenda, unless something falls through the cracks. So with that, I am going to say that the meeting is adjourned at 10.48. And again, I thank everyone, especially those of you who was your school vacation week and you're here anyway. So thank you very much for being here. Bye.