 Voting on the voting on the approval of the minutes. Sharon. Yes. Christine. Yes. Thank you. Alex. Yes. Thank you. Sean. Yes. And Austin votes. Yes. So we have no update from the town manager because the town manager is unable to be at this meeting. Next item on the agenda, item four is a finance update from Sean Mangano. All right. So a couple of things and again, sorry, I'm in a different space. So Tim, are you going to give, I'm going to go through a couple of things in voices and update on commissioning. Are you guys prepared to go through a budget update? Yes, we are. Okay. So I'll go through those two things first and I'll turn it over to you to do the budget update. Okay. Sure. So yeah, we'll do a budget update in a minute. Commissioning. So we explicit some commissioning proposals back in January. We received only one proposal and that commissioning process was based on the existing energy code. Now that we know we're going to be operating under the new energy code, we're going to be re-soliciting proposals that we've updated. We're updating the document now. We're going to go out next week to get some new applications for that service. So we'll keep this committee abreast of that process, but the new commissioning RFP will be based on the new code and incorporate any requirements for new code. Any questions on that? Go on again. When will it go out and when will the proposals be, you know, when will they be returned or expected to be returned? Yeah. So we're working with FAA and colliers to update the draft that we except for the, what we said that last time to reflect the new code and the new timeline. So hopefully if they get their comments back to me tomorrow, if any, it'll go out next week. And we would expect to have proposals back mid to late August and have a contract short answer now. Great. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions about commissioning, the commissioning process? Okay. Sean, do you want to now ask Tim to give the budget update? Sure. Why don't you do the budget update first, Tim, and then I'll do it by endless, because we have quite a few. Okay. I can share that. I've got it up if you'd like. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks, Will. Okay, great. Did everybody see the budget summary? So, you'll remember after our last meeting, we went through and talked about where the estimates came in and that we were still targeting to be on budget on the newer budget based on the $46 million plus budget number. And so we've been working against that and paying various expenses against that budget, primarily in the design fees, OPM fees and that sort of thing. So, today, we've told a contract of $3.9 of the $46 million budget. We're planning $42.2 million going forward. We are going to be bringing on some additional consultants, hazardous materials, consultants. We're doing design work and then we're also doing some verification of testing, of potential contaminants within the building. So, that's something that's going to be coming up shortly. And then, as we go through the permitting process with the town, if anything comes up, we'll be addressing those. But overall, we're still tracking to be on budget. We do have an estimate coming up again shortly and we'll be again double checking and verifying that things are still tracking to be within our budget. And Tim, could you just remind us when the next estimate is going to happen? Well, I don't know if you have our schedule but our 75%, we are targeting early October. Early October. Thank you. Starting October 9th, finishing at the end of October. Where we have it right now. Great. Okay. Any questions on the budget that we've just seen? Sean. Two things. Sharon, could you mute the other me? I thought there was a little feedback there. It might be because I have it on my office because I wasn't sure if it would kind of work here. Great. Great. So, maybe mute the other me. That might be why there's feedback. And then the other two things related to this. So, we are meeting weekly. Sharon and I would be open at FAA to stay on top of the budget and the timeline. So, it's going to happen weekly and it's going to be really helpful. And we'll meet this committee informed of any you know, anything changes that comes out of those meetings. But they're mostly just process and sort of administration type meetings. And yeah. And so, I think I'm ready to go with the invoice because there's no other questions on the budget. Great. Any other questions on the budget? Okay, Sean. Let's look at invoices. All right. So, we do have quite a few. Can you stick out? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, I think Austin, it probably makes sense to maybe approve these by vendor because again, there's quite a few. Okay. So, for collars, we just have one invoice. It's for June services. It's at the regular rate of 79.84. For the month, for most of June, they have sort of a split service period, but it's the regular monthly billing. So, it's on the schedule that we've been following. So, if you remember, we the latest schedule, we had worked through some contractualish contracts and made sure to align with the new schedule. And this is the version that does now align with the schedule. Okay. We're a little bit longer than any phase. So, this is the new billing schedule. Okay. Sean, do you want to move the approval of that invoice? Yeah, I move that the committee approve the June invoice from collars. Second. Thank you very much. Is there any question or discussion of the payment of that invoice? Okay. Indicating your approval, Sharon? Yes. Christine? Yes. Thank you. Alex? Yes. Sean? Yes. And Austin? Yes. The next one is from RLD, who is our cost estimator. And this is for, when we've been out of our cost estimating services, there was a fee for each of the three cost estimates that would be on the owner side. And so, this is the seconds, the second cost estimate that was done in design development at the rate that they've been. Invoice is not yet visible. Uh, hold on a second. Still not visible? Not visible. All right. So, what I might do, Austin, is go back to my other computer. It'll take me a minute, but I'll pull it up on the computer. I think it must be something to do with this account. Maybe 30 seconds, I'll go through that. Okay. While Sean is rushing to his other computer, Ellen, do you just want to make sure you want to just invite your colleagues and team to introduce themselves? Sure. So, I'm Ellen Anseloni, principal with Fine Gold Alexander Architects. Do you want to call on the others? We only have one other. Josephine? Um, Fine Gold Alexander, Josephine Penta, um, project manager. Right. We also have a Workshare Design Group with us. Yeah, that's what I was just going to ask. I'm sorry. Right. That's okay. That's what we mean. Rachel, you want to introduce yourself? Jess, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. Rachel Loeffler, principal at Workshare Design Group. Jess Schoendorf, a landscape designer at Workshare Design Group. Thanks. Thanks very much. And as usual, we are joined by our two good colleagues from Collier's Will and Tim. Okay, Sean. All right. Sharon, can you enable screen sharing for the other Sean? Sean, number two. Yeah. All right. Now, can you see the screen? Yes. Okay. So, this is the ROB invoice for the second cost estimate for $14,000 that was done in May. And I take it with all these invoices. This is what the expected cost was. This is what we're paying. There's no deviation from the expected cost. Yeah. So, all of the invoices get reviewed and approved by Collier's first. Great. And this one in particular is there was a invitation for bid that we did or a quote that we did for rebids. Yep. Or three cost estimates. Sean, do you want to move approval? I move to approve the invoice from RLB. Second. Thanks. Any questions or discussion about that invoice? It's okay voting to approve, Sharon? Yes. Christine. Yes. Thank you, Alex. Yes. Thank you, John. Yes. And Austin votes yes. All right. Back to me. Sure. All right. So, now we're getting into FAA. And this is where we get a little confusing and I had everything queued up on the other computer. All right. So, the first the first invoice here, hopefully what you see on your screen is for the month of April. This is from FAA and it is for design development. And so it's $81,750 for their services and design development in April. And the second one is sorry, this one here is for the month of May for design development. So these two invoices combined finish out the design development phase and we at the last meeting we moved to construction documents. Anything else from FAA, Sean? I think it'll be cleaner if we just do it by service because again there's going to be a bunch of other invoices that I'm going to kind of group by what they're for. So these are the two invoices for April and May for FAA for design development and for basic services. Okay. And you move approval? I move approval for the May, April and May invoices to FAA for design development. Thank you. Second. Okay. Any questions or discussion of those two FAA invoices? Okay. To approve, Sharon? Yes. Christine? Yes. Alex? Yes. Sean? Yes. And Austin votes yes. All right. The next one is also FAA and this is for renderings. So way back when this group authorized FAA to do a number of renderings we got the cost down quite a bit down to $9,000 to do the renderings that they worked out with Sharon and the rest of the group. So this is that bill for those renderings. Sean? I move to approve the rendering invoice. Thank you. Second. Okay. Any discussion or question about this invoice? All right, Sharon? Yes. Christine? Yes. Alex? Yes. Sean? Yes. And Austin? Yes. Okay. So these next two are for the FF&E consultant. This is a service coordinated through Fingal to Alexander, but it is a separate, it is a service that isn't covered in their base contract. You may remember we had a presentation a little bit while ago with, I'll say the name, I'll pronounce it wrong, but Staphora? Is that how we say it, Ellen? Okay. So this is for April and May services to the furniture consultant. So the April invoice is for $7,506 and the May invoice is for $692. Okay. Sean? I move to approve the April and May invoices for furniture consulting. Great. Second. Any questions or discussion of these two invoices? Okay. Sharon? Yes. Christine? Yes. Alex? Yes. Sean? Yes. And Austin? Yes. All right. And there's one more group that I just got to find because it's three invoice. All right. Last screen share. So the next batch of three invoices is for permitting services. So FAA has started meeting with the various boards and committees to go through the permitting process. Again, that was not included in their base contract. So there's a fee for every meeting that they go to to move this through, which is again one of the reasons why we've worked with them to try to streamline these meetings as much as possible where it is possible. So the first one is for $2,000 for Disability Access Advisory Committee. That's for April services. For May, there is for the Amherst Historic Commission, or is that what it is? AHEC Historic Commission. And then that's for May. And for June is the second half of the, I think the two meetings. Ellen, is that correct with the Disability Access Committee? Yep. So total $6,000 for these three months for the work they've started to do for permitting. And the total estimate for permitting process is $20,000. So they're billing us as they move through. And do you just want to remind everybody who's attending the meeting? DRB is Design Review. Design Review Board. PRB, I assume that's Planning Board. Design Review? Oh, P, sorry. Yeah. And then the Zoning Board of Rules, if needed. So this is part, again, one of the reasons why we've been meeting weekly is to coordinate this permitting process, because every one of these boards, we have to get on their meeting schedule and FAA has to get all the materials to them in advance by so many weeks. And there's numerous sort of channels that have to be worked through simultaneously. So that's one of the reasons why we're doing those coordination meetings. Great. So I move approval of the April, May, and June invoices for permitting. Second. Discussion of those invoices. Okay. Sharon? Yes. Christine? Yes. Alex? Yes. Sean? Yes. Austin, vote yes. Sean, do you have anything else? That is it. Thank you. So before we move on, I just want to say how grateful I am for the work that Sean Mangano does every day for this town. I want to express special gratitude for all the work that he has put in to help with the Jones Library project. What we are doing, I think we could not have done and gotten to this point without Sean's commitment, expert guidance, and occasional but only occasional good humor. We are extraordinarily grateful to have had Sean's work with us. And I just wanted to take a moment to say that and to celebrate Sean. Thank you. So I appreciate it. We'll work through on our side to make sure there's no, you know, gap in service where we have everything kind of lined up. So when it's not me, it'll be somebody else that will step in and do that role. So I appreciate it though. Well, we're grateful. Okay. Next is Colliers. Tim? Will? So Will, I don't know if we have anything to share on the screen or if you just want to think about some of the things we've been going through with the permitting process. I do. I have got two, one second. I can quickly talk big picture. Is that showing correct the schedule? So quickly milestone picture schedule. This should look almost identical to last month. None of our milestone dates have changed. We're still progressing through the construction documents as planned to meet that mid-November deadline set by the MBLC. The only change you'll see down at the bottom are temporary space. That secure space period has been pushed out a bit. And I believe Sharon, correct me if I'm wrong, Paul Aquaman has taken the lead on securing hopefully one space for the library to use as a temporary location. Correct. But besides that, as we mentioned earlier, we have our cost estimate happening in October of this year. And getting started to bid the documents and get the contractor on board at the end of 2023. Any questions? Okay. And then I wanted to touch on that permitting process. Sean just alluded to, and this is something we touch on weekly. Hopefully this is large enough for everyone to get the idea. But we're right here on this red line and we have three major groups. We'll call them to meet with the historic commission, the design review board and the planning board. We're currently FAA along with Berkshire design is in the process of preparing the two packages that have to go to the historic commission and the design review board. Both the historic commission asked for three weeks to review the documents before we meet. So we're targeting to be on their 9-5 or 9-12 if they haven't determined which meeting will be on or which date they'll be having the meeting. So we'll be submitting our package to them here in early August or we're targeting the eighth design review board. Don't need quite as much lead time to review the documents. So we're preparing the package to submit to them for review by the 14th of August with our meeting on the 28th of August at 5 p.m. with the design review board. And this will then carry into the next phase, which is the planning board and the zoning board of approval appeals rather. So that is where we are at right now with... Just hold on one sec. Any questions about this permitting process? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, that is all Colliers has. I will turn it over to Fine Gold Alexander to either, I believe, I don't know which was first on the agenda, the landscape or the energy code update, but... Landscaping is first on the... It's just above on the agenda if you want to start with that. That would be great. We'll let Rachel and Jess take it over. Sharon, do you want to talk first? Yeah. So I just wanted to do a little intro about how we've gotten to this point. Last week, George, Hicks Richards and I, we invited some members of our gardens advisory committee to meet with the landscaping team so that we could hear their thoughts, their feedback. So much goes into a good landscape plan. And so we talked about all sorts of different things. So I just want to rattle off some of the concepts that have gone into this plan, climate change. So we have to choose plants that can handle the heat and the rain, for example, today. Lots of discussion about where to put the trees versus the bushes versus ground cover. We want to eliminate plants that are prone to disease. We're looking for low maintenance plant material. We want to choose plants that establish easily and quickly so that it fills in. Being aware of the plant height and sight lines is really important. Seeding, we really want to create spaces where people can stop and pause. I thought that was lovely. Stormwater flow out back. That's a bit of a beast to deal with. And there's a difference between the front yard, the purpose, and the backyard, the purpose of. And we even talked about color palettes, which was a lot of fun. Anyway, so I thought all of that hours and hours and hours worth of work, I thought now I'll hand it over to Rachel to get to the specifics. Great, Sharon. Thank you. And by the way, before you start, Rachel, again, we want to express our gratitude to the garden advisory people who have been incredibly helpful for a long period of time. Okay, Rachel. Thank you. And Sharon, thanks for organizing that meeting. That was really helpful to get some of that feedback. As Sharon said, there were some plants on our plant list that folks on the committee had had personal experience with that changed our discussion. So what I'm going to do is kind of show you the big picture overview that we discussed with them and talk about our next steps with that. In addition, we have a design update for the north entry. That's the entry out back. That includes more seating area. So we'll go through that. So we started out talking about trees that we might use generally on the site, trees that could handle climate change impacts and that were in the category of shade or more ornamental. We heard that the paper bark maple, some folks had had difficulty getting those to establish quickly. So that's one that we eliminated from our list. Folks really loved the yellow meconolia. We're thinking about that one as two signature trees to be planted out front kind of like tokens to the library. And we also heard that some of the, another tree, amelain gear, which is, which is loved and local, shabu serviceberry tends to look a little scry late. It's on its own. So for thinking about that, we want to think about it as a mass planting, like several planted together. We touched on a lot about the shrubs at the front of the library. There was pushback that 100% evergreen was maybe not desired. And one of the members highlighted the fact that the library has a perception, the landscape as a garden. And how can we kind of keep the garden like feel without making a maintenance headache? So maybe there, maybe we're, we can find shrubs that flower and shrubs that maybe even look a little, little, little quiet or a lot more quiet in the winter that may lose their leaves in the winter, but have that seasonal change, maybe preferential than a 100% evergreen in the front areas especially. Boxwood was one that's a member had mentioned that they had had to experience with boxwood lights. So we're going to take that off the list. So we might be looking at, and then sight lines too in the parking lot areas. So these off the list also. So we're looking at things that are low, maybe in a four foot height, maybe something like the oak leaf hydrangea in the parking lot area. And then maybe some low rotted enters that max out at four foot high in the front that have that flowering quality and a little bit of evergreen, but again, wouldn't be, wouldn't require trimming by this by staff or volunteers. We also talked about kind of the character that we wanted the front and back being kind of separate character. So the front, we're going to keep a really limited color palette with a little bit of yellow for the Magnolia and purples and whites, and then the evergreen borders. So again, a restrained color palette for the front. And then in the back, so the front areas, these are where the two Magnolia trees would be proposed. The shrubs that would be less than four feet high or less are moving to more a shorter height shrub in this area. And then we heard feedback that also the there's a pagoda dogwood and Chinese dogwood back here that are really overgrown and kind of scraggly that was mentioned was like kind of makes this a, you know, block spews and it's not a great place to sit under. One of the trees, we're going to be removing the existing tree. And then quite then we're going to look at the other tree and see if maybe there's a tree that's more appropriate for use in that space. So these are some examples of that we talked through with also ground covers in the area. And then more seasonal color. Low growth sumac is a short, short ground cover that does have some seasonal color that might be interesting to incorporate. And again, the oak leaf find range and the parking area might be nice. And then in the back, we were thinking it is an area that in the stormwater assessment that whole area in the back now receives stormwater runoff from the historical society property, even though it's more raised up and has undulating terrain. That is where the stormwater goes from then from the neighborhood. In addition, we are going to be putting a stormwater structure in that area. So it's an area that tends to be a little bit more shaded tends to be a little bit more wet. And so we're thinking of a different kind of character back there inspired by a woodland edge garden using things like moss and ferns, some perennials, a lot of carracks, which looks the image here on the right. And there's 3000 species of carracks, but there are carracks as a sedge as a type of grass, but then you don't have to mow. So that plus some sedums, which is another type of ground cover, again, don't require mowing or maintenance to kind of fill out the ground. In that area, we had the slider color would be the low ground cover area. And then the slider green area is the area where we just made the most water from runoff to be. So that would be an area that would love the more rain garden type plants, but again, a low profile in that six to 12 inch range. And then we talked about proposed trees, there's some desire to add another shade tree in this area if we could. And we're looking right now to see if we can fit it in with the size of the stormwater system that's required. So some examples of different types of trees. So like the small white oak really does love what what feet, so does the will of oak, those might be trees to again, continue that dialogue of shade in the back area long term, those will also handle warmer, warmer climbing temperatures, some evergreen ferns. And then I would suggest that maybe we consider things like witch hazel and clethora also to this palette, some other natives in this area. And again, we also are looking at different types of mosses and sheet moss that we can get from industry to use instead of mulch in some of these areas, to kind of, again, trying to reduce the maintenance required for these areas. And then we've been looking at color palettes of bulbs and some native, native plants that again, that are in that shorter profile with a dispersing seasonal color from spring until fall. And some, some more examples of sedums and other, other perennials, and some of the rain garden plants that we would expect to thrive in that area. More examples of the carrot. So we'll be playing with the colors, the colors and texture. So our, our marching orders from the group was to really think about a garden, trying to maintain a garden kind of feel while balancing the need for open sight lines, while balancing the need for low maintenance and rapid, you know, rapid establishment. And then a call out to edges, the making sure to take care of how we, what plants we place at the edges so that it looks like it is well intentioned and loved throughout the garden. So I think that's, that's our next step is to take this feedback and put each plant and its place on the, on the plan back. And then the seeding, we, I think that's going to tie into what I'm going to talk about next. Does anyone have any questions about the planting discussion at this point? I have a question just to start. How do you go about thinking about when you say plants that will do better in warmth or rain or something like that? How do you do that anticipating that over a 40 or 50 year period, the climate is likely to get whatever it's likely to get? Or is that not something that one can do at this point? We can make our best guess. So it's almost like the way an arboretum is approached to, like you look at the, you look at where you're going to plant. And if you're, say if you're on the north side of a slope, it's going to be a little bit cooler on the south side of a slope. So then each plant has a zonal range that they thrive in. So we're in zone, right now we're in zone five. We may be zone seven in 20 years. So we're picking plants that thrive now from zone five to zone eight, rather than knowing that if we were to pick a plant that thrive from say zone three, further up north is zone five that really preferred that colder air, that colder climate, they would, they're going to really struggle in 20 years. So we're finding plants that work, that live well in the south right now, as well as the northeast, the southeast and the northeast. So if the plant can, can live and thrive in the southeast right now, we know that it'll do, we know it's a pretty good bet it'll be able to thrive in 20 or 30 years here as the climate changes. And then, you know, every, every tree, we have books and resources, websites, information to on each individual plant and its tolerance for moisture in the soil profile. There's some plants like red maple who, who really don't care, they can handle the drought, they can handle the wet soils. And other plants that like wrote, like wrote a Vendrum, which are great for the front where it's dry, really do not like wet feet. So that's a plant we would not be putting in the back, because it could really kind of handle those, the water, water situation. Okay. And then Alex, before I just got one other question, Rachel, as you narrow down these choices, you're going to come back to the committee, we're going to get a chance to look like we're going to look at this one rather than there are five different varieties of it. Right. Is that right? Right. Okay. Thank you. We wanted to start here, so that if there was a redirection needed that we could start here from the big view taking the final selections. Thank you. Alex. Thank you. It all looks lovely. And I really, really appreciate you working with our garden advisory committee and taking their feedback. And I guess two things, one, if we're replacing the pagoda, I just again want to be mindful of whatever trees we add that we're not looking at, you know, roots going into foundation and those kind of like, I know we're fine now, but I want to be thinking like 50 years down the road. So I'm sure you're doing that, but I would feel remiss if I didn't just set that reminder out there. And then I also, Austin, I don't know, but I just want to acknowledge that we do have some of our neighbors who were kind enough to join us from the historic museum, as well as I see some members of the garden advisory committee in our attendees. So I don't know if anyone in the committee is interested, but I just wanted to point out that they're there is we wanted to invite the men, I just wanted to open that opportunity to the group that people were there. Okay, that makes sense. So if anybody among our participants, our attendees rather would like to make a comment at this point, please raise your virtual hand. Okay, I see a couple of folks. So, Sharon, do you want to bring in Georgia first? Great. Okay, Georgia. Okay. I just want to say that it's very exciting to see the plant materials and hear the plants and see the palette. Looks lovely. I wish you'd come and do my yard. I also want to just throw out that the Historical Society will probably in the next couple of years think about redesigning our own garden. And I look forward to working with your landscape team, perhaps in the future to make sure that we don't have an unsightly backyard for you all to deal with, too. And we've been using our garden more and more for programming. We actually had an inquiry today from the Jones to use our yard in August. And I hope these collaborations will continue, you know, whether it's for musical events or poetry readings or what have you, I mean, the outside environment will be beautiful. And we should all make good use of it. But that's all I have to say. But thank you, Ms. Finn. No, thank you. And the collaborations that you talk about are, I think, very exciting to contemplate and certainly very exciting for the Jones Library. So, we look forward to collaborating as we go forward and to making sure that our garden choices don't clash. How's that for us? Excellent. Thank you. All right. Good. Thank you so much for attending. Charlie, Charlie, if you would unmute, Charlie has disappeared. No, Charlie's still there. Charlie's actually Melinda. Okay. Well, whether it's Charlie or Melinda, there we go. Thank you very, very much. Thanks. Yeah, I'm using my husband's computer because something went wrong with mine. So, I wanted to say, Rachel, I thought these plant choices were really lovely and appropriate for the conditions that you're discussing. I do feel like in that front area where the Pagoda Dogwood would likely be removed because that is a southern facing face of the library. And I agree with Alex. We don't want something where the roots are going to interfere. But I would just advocate anywhere where we can put a shade tree. We should. Because, you know, a shade tree, it gets tall. It doesn't necessarily, I mean, there are trees now that are like 30 feet tall. I mean, there's a lot of trees that work in a sort of an urban environment. And I just feel like they give a ceiling, they give some shade. And as we know, shade is just becoming a premium. So, I feel like that space with some shade would really provide a really wonderful kind of area for people to sit and cool off, et cetera. And so, I say that versus like an ornamental tree. Yeah, we heard a request to have places that people, someone could sit underneath the tree and make sure we have spaces for that. So, that would align with what you're talking about too. So, that was all I had to say on that. Well, again, thank you. Thanks so much for coming. And thanks for your help. Okay, Bob Pam. I appreciate. Can you hear me? Yes, Bob. Good. I appreciate what's being done, which is a naturalistic rear yard with respect to plantings and stone. And I will reiterate what I've said before, which is that the hardscape with respect to the bridges might be improved by having a small arch to the bridges so that it is congruent with all of the other work that is being done back there. Thank you. Thanks, Bob. Okay, Rachel, anything else? Yeah. I wanted to update you on the, I think even the rear entry. Where we last, the plan you last saw, this is an enlargement of where the plans that you've seen to date. So, this is the north side of the library. The CVS parking lot is up this way. This is the new north entry. And we had a patio area of working tables, stone benches, bike parking, an accessible walkway that goes up the side of the library. And then we have a site retaining wall that maintains the property line between the historical society and the library. So, previously there is a change in grade in this back corner. The entry is lower, about eight feet lower than the grades on this side of the building. And the way we had, and this is a cross section. So, now this would be a view as if you're looking at this back face of the library. This is the rear entry. This is the level area of lawn adjacent to that. And then we had a sloped, a little, like a four to one slope up to make the level. So, that's what that design looked like before. We heard feedback that there was desire to make this space more usable, that more seating areas and types of seating areas out back would be preferable. So, we started looking at what would happen if we actually extended this flat area further along the face of the library and introduced terrace steps. So, these are currently we're showing steps that are 21 inches high and two feet deep. So, this would be not traditional stairs, but these would be steps that you could lean against and sit with a book or with a friend at the end of the space. But then it'd be up to what you guys would recommend in terms of we could continue the railing across the top here to totally block off access and circulation, or we could leave the railing here. My code, it would not be needed. We could leave this open as if there was an issue, folks could walk out of the garden that way. But we were thinking, as we started looking at this, we realized there was an opportunity to sort of expand this patio area at the entry, expand it to about, it's about 10 feet wide, and then use crushed stone with a binder so it meets ADA requirements. So, have us like mix a sound when you walk on it. It's a different texture, it's different zone with movable chairs and a catenary lining, and I'll show you what I'm talking about. So, because the swallow is already high and the railing here is four feet above, already a three foot and a five foot high wall, it almost is the space of a, you know, it has that height of a room, like a canopy. And so we look at our thinking, we could actually kind of make it a really warm place to hang out in the day and the evening by introducing catenary lights, fancy word for like stream lights, above this space. So, above that level of that line on the building, and we can talk with, we can work as a team to figure out exactly where this needs to go and on the elevation. But we have poles that were integrated into the wall to suspend the lights on the side of the wall and then it would stream back and tie into the building, really kind of making this an outdoor room. We're thinking with the crushed stone and the movable chairs that then this could be configured in different ways for different groups, for different experiences, some precedents. And just mentioned our office, Kaley Park, and it has a small space, but it feels and with a tall wall that it, you know, having vines growing, introducing vines to this wall could also kind of make it green for that community room when you're looking out, looking out through the glow of the lights and then a green wall. We were thinking to the a vine that can grow on here, we're looking at some varieties of clonus that actually grow down, so we could plant that at the top of the wall and let that grow down or even like a climbing hydrangea that can handle, it's going to be more shady here. We're looking at varieties of vines that can handle the shady conditions, but again something that would start to create green and maybe some flowering interest on the wall and then we would still need a railing along the wall on this side of the space. So those are some thoughts of how to make this more of a usable space than what was there before. I just want to make sure I want to ask Sharon before you do anything of Sharon. Yeah, so some of this is new, we didn't get to see this last week. If you could actually make those steps usable to over, you know, to the strong house property that would be spectacular, that would be really great and I don't think the world has enough twinkle lights, I think that would be really really pretty a great place to do things, whether small or who knows and there was a third thing that I wanted to say, but thank you for that. Great. Alex. Thanks. So yeah, I just want to say thank you. I really appreciate the sort of pinch point where it's, you know, five feet across. It's the property lines, there's nothing we can do about it, but that space has always, me, been kind of the most uncomfortable entry point and so I appreciate this new design and, you know, after hearing DG talk about the collaborations that we're doing, having these steps, you know, again, if we can work with a strong house in a way where, you know, I keep foreseeing this entrance possibly becoming the main entrance for many people, especially as it's sort of the community space of the building and so I think to the extent that we can make passing back and forth between the two buildings make sense for the strong house as well as for us and the community, I think that's fabulous. So thank you. Great. Great. Christine. Yeah, I agree with everything that Sharon and Alex was saying. I think it would be a great space and I just, at one point I heard it mentioned, you could put a railing at the top. I want to encourage that it is an open space just rather than a dead-end space because if the library was closed or something, it could feel kind of not as secure as someone would like. So keeping it open, I think it's good. Thank you. Okay. Austin, can I say one thing? Sure. Just we will look at the idea of making those proper steps but I think it's not an easy task but we will look at it. You want to say, when you say it's not an easy task, just say it another couple of sentences. Well, I just think it's going to extend the length of the steps and we would have to investigate and Rachel would know this maybe quicker than I. Does it have to be accessible? Because if it does, that won't work but we will look at it. I think that would be an interesting idea. And then I don't know if this is a question for you, Ellen, or for Rachel. I'm thinking about money. Yeah. So does the design change that we're talking about, how does it affect the budget? This one we did talk about with Rachel and it's not huge but once you start getting stairs and then you're going to need railings on the stairs and then a pathway from the stairs, that does get expensive. I can't tell you the number but I think we'll do a little digging on our side, Austin, to give you guys a better sense of what we can do and just to guess on what a cost would be because we know that costs are critical. Good because we want to make sure that we're not saying, you see, this is really great and then we're going to have to look again and say but we can't afford it. Correct. So knowing what the cost implications are would be great. I'm seeing hands. I don't know whether Melinda or Charlie is still in the, is that a new hand or a leftover from the old hand? It looks like a new one. It just popped up. Okay. Melinda. Right. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Yes. I wanted to say that I think that this space itself has a lot of potential because of the fact that people are coming in and out and to you know really create a place where people can sit and be would be great. I also agree if those could be made into steps that would be ideal but if cost, if it's cost prohibitive, etc. I still think that this second solution versus just having earth, having these, what are we calling them? Terrace steps is a really good way to solve that problem and it just seems to me and I'm just going to throw this out there because and I know it's you know controversial but I'm just someone who's been observing this that if there was, if the Amherst History Museum in the Jones Library somehow wanted to integrate in some way it just seems like that wall would be the place to do that and instead of having this six and a half foot wall could this be a terraced wall that begins back a little further and terraces down and so suddenly these two, the Amherst History Museum up here and the Jones Library down here become integrated because it's terracing down from that point. So I just think it's something that I know it's there are many aspects that might throw that out but it's just something to really think about because it would get rid of this point and it could just create a really elegant integration of these two sites while still letting each site have their own integrity. Great. Thank you for that suggestion. Rachel, do you want to say anything about the terraced wall possibly? I think it's a lovely idea. I mean it expands. I think though it will feel, this point will feel really compressed and I think it also increases program space for both the library and the local society. It also reduces safety and it helps keep sight lines open to the backdoor from up here, from over here. Anytime you have that really big wall that it reduces visibility I think it just opens up the space in so many ways. So you'll give it some thought on how to accomplish it? Well we'd love to design it. How do we get permission to to consider it? It's a legal thing. Legal as in whose property it's on? Correct. Yes. So this line right here is the edge of the property line for the library and this white space is the historical society property. Right. Alex, oh I'm sorry Alex no if you just hold off Christine's been waiting Christine. It was related to this what we were just discussing not something new. If you just hold off just Christine has been waiting patiently Christine. Thanks. So still related I am concerned about it sounds great but we just brought up cost and to expand it even more and what kind of timeline would that entail and we don't even offer would the historical society even be interested in that kind of thing and could they contribute? That's a good question. Okay Alex. Yeah I was just going to say we have we have the chair of the historical society board in our in our attendee so yeah I mean I think probably one the question would be would they be interested too would be what kind of timeline would they need to make any decisions and then obviously they'd want to know what kind of cost but I see Gigi had her hand raised so she could speak for herself probably about it if she wants to but those were kind of my thoughts. Okay. Hi. So I can't I can't speak for of course the historical society without the board having to weigh in on it but you know our board is is small we meet monthly we can make decisions quickly. Do we have the financial resources to invest? Absolutely not but our our gardens the the two formal garden beds are managed by the Garden Club of Amherst and from time to time Denise Gagnon has said you know we we could you know the National Garden Club has grants and it could be that through through the Garden Club of Amherst we could find some money. So I think the proposal seems great to me. Yeah but I think the initiative is going to have to you all are going to have to take some initiative if you want to see this happen and we need to coordinate so that we're not held up or delayed by that kind of consideration. I see Sean Mangano. Sean? I think Alex was first. Alex? I don't see Alex. Sean? Sorry. Just along those lines we just said Austin, Rachel is that something that we didn't want to from a cost perspective and a time perspective it's not something we could do as part of this project it sounds like it may be something we could do in the future if we wanted to. Are we are we in that wall there is that anything are we building a new wall there or is that keeping the existing wall or building a new wall? Yeah it's a new wall. So it would be I think the the most cost effective for the town would be to have the new whatever new would be what you want your ultimate thing or ready for for it. So another option could be would be to slope to cut the cut the grades here and make a temporary slope to hold space for a future terrace wall. So instead of having this wall retain the earth straight up and down sloping back towards the historical property and having space for that terracing and stepping down but we'd be able to have the grades lower here and here and the grades higher here and here but have an in-between state. Another thing we might do is we could have this as a base bed actually we have the the grassy area as a base bed and have this as an alternate and then the terrace option as another alternate for pricing. I don't know Will what do you think about about that? I think including it as an alternate to not necessarily it gives us more flexibility costs estimating wise for sure which may you know come down to be a deciding factor. So I think including include what you want in the drawings and then we should carry an alternate if that does not work out. Well I think we need to explore this a little bit before we say just include what you want in the drawings. We just we want this is a fabulous idea great it would be so nice because we always were pinched right there. It may be a meeting that we have with Rachel and Jess figure out what we could do and then present it to the group because keep in mind when we do alternates you have to take the alternates like one two three four you can't take alternate four unless you take one two three so it's tricky and what our alternates are. So I think we can do a little strategizing and then come back to you guys with our thoughts on that. That makes a lot of sense and again we we are you know it is a great idea but as I'm just thinking about it I really want to make sure that we're not going to increase our design costs now because we've got to go back and do some significant redesign. So if you Ellen and Rachel and Jess if you could put your heads together let us know we'll share that with with our good colleagues and friends at Historical Society. If people in Historical Society want to explore it from there and realizing that we may not be able to accommodate it either time or cost-wise then that seems to me to be a reasonable process. Okay are we good with that? Yeah sounds good to me. Okay I've got another hand up here and again I don't know if this is a new hand or an old hand. So Melinda? That was an old hand. That's great thank you so much. So do you have anything else for us Rachel? No thank you. Okay so it may be Sharon if you could you know separate the the attendees from the participants here for a minute again that would be good. Okay so any other questions or thoughts about the landscaping? Again it looks great and really exciting to see the the developments and really imagine the beauty of the space on the outside. Okay so next is an energy code update. I think there's nothing going to be here. Ellen? Austin lots of them. Yeah yeah I'll just remind and we'll take this over. So we've met with our folks who are doing our teddy modeling. Great they are working diligently trying to wrap it up. We've got some good news today it doesn't look like it's significant changes but we'll know a little bit more next week. There may be some tweaking of a little bit of the insulation but we were so you know doing the EUIs as we were we were so ahead of the game it's helped us. So we would like to just not give you an exact right now but we'll we can report back to Sharon and Tim next week. We hope where we are but it's it's looking positive. That's great. And just to state what was stated the other day in the board meeting of the Jones Library as we've gone through the value engineering process our sustainability goal I just Ellen and Tim want to make sure that you agree with this characterization our energy and sustainability goals played a prominent role in the value engineering process. Is that an accurate description? Well if I wanted responses like this. That feels like a little bit of a trick question. It's not a trick question. No I know what is that. Some documents in the trustees meeting that when we went through the value engineering process we were looking at sustainability. Yes it wasn't like we just said forget the sustainability goals we go to value engineer. No okay I understand what you were asking. No sustainability is embedded in this project and was not I don't and just mean you can comment on this sustainability was not on the chopping block that is embedded in the project. It was and remains. Was and remains embedded in the project. And that's why we are so in such a good position with this new energy code because we were pushing it. We as a group were pushing it. Right and what remains to be seen is when you do your modeling how close to our targets are we going to end up being? Is that accurate? That's accurate so the Teddy model is is just one model that's required with the new energy code. Yep the um tally tally thank you is separate and will be done after the teddy but we're feeling good about that. So we're feeling good about all of this. Would you agree Josephine? Yeah yeah that's exact analysis tally will be done afterwards and once we get our numbers back for the Teddy modeling we can move on to the tally and continue on with the path that we were on but with the numbers looking good yeah we feel pretty confident right now so. Good that's great good that's good to hear. Okay any questions about the energy code update? Okay anything else from Colliers or FAA? No just well I was just going to say one thing that we didn't talk about and we'll talk about maybe at the next meeting but as we're getting closer to wrapping up design and going into the bidding process we'll start with a pre-qualification committee we'll be getting that together to start with pre-qualifying contractors we're going to be allowed to bid on the project so we'll give you an update at the next meeting with that kind of timeline and what the requirements are by DTM that we're going to need to follow to go through that process. Great great okay well again thanks to FAA and thanks to Berkshire and thanks to Colliers for your for your for your work. Design subcommittee Christy. Nothing to report. Thank you outreach Alex. Nothing on outreach but I did want to one of our members of our sustainability committee is actually in the participants and I think that they I don't know if they have a question or if they wanted to so what I was going to do is actually just go through the agenda and then invite public comment in the next in the next thing is that okay yep yep for me um nothing nothing from outreach okay thanks thanks so much so uh no correspondence to address no topics not anticipated by the cheer 48 hours in advance public comment Todd hello library committee it's been a while it's nice to see you thanks for coming it's very nice to see you and um as always uh Austin it's great to hear you compliment others on their involvement here but every time I've had the opportunity to appear in front of this group I've been grateful as a taxpayer in town to realize how competent the people working on this project are and I'm grateful to be a part of it thank you but that aside talking about some of the criticisms of the process by the engineering process and knowing that the sustainability goals um have been held and the EUI could I just say a few things about my experience building buildings in um in other places some very very green buildings um the EUI is the measure of an environmentally forward and climate friendly building here and the fact that that is still being talked about I mean 15 20 years ago when I mentioned the term EUI at me like I had two heads and to hear it brought forward and discussed and maintained in every meeting is truly a wonderful thing and it doesn't matter how you get there um whether you're using lead certification or living building challenge performance of the building is performance um and things like you know the sawtooth roof I'm a mechanical engineer so I don't have a big soft spot for putting a very low r value very expensive roofing material on something that's going to let ultraviolet light into the building that books don't like so I think that particularly was a very very smart trade-off because um you've taken a very low thermal performance material that is nice for people to be able to see the daylight and everything but that's that's a way to save money and increase the performance of the building so I think that was a good one and in evaluating the performance of the library against other buildings um I would just want to bring the committee's attention that a library according to the cbex database which is uh department of energy maintenance database of similar building types around the nation how much energy they use and they calculate the e y the e y of a library is almost 50 higher than that of a k to 12 school so fundamentally this is a different problem we're trying to solve you're trying to solve I get to just kind of help help you uh you know put the guidelines out there I won't take any credit for solving that problem but yeah so so you're trying to design a very efficient building that its baseline is 50 higher than other projects in town and those other projects also have a much larger land footprint on which you could put pv panels or other things to generate electricity whereas this is a very large building on a very small space and so that again is a fundamentally different problem you're trying to solve and then finally if I could just comment on geothermal or ground source versus the air source heat pumps that this building is moving forward um it's very expensive to drill holes in the ground yes every source will double their incentive for ground source on a per ton basis but it goes from 1200 tons 1200 a ton to 2400 a ton when drilling the hole in the ground is going to cost about 20 000 a ton so while it makes up for a little bit of that cost it makes up for maybe 10 less than 10 percent of that cost so it's a wonderful way to do it particularly if you have a building that has a balance between the heating and cooling side air source heat pump just does what you ask it to do a ground source heat pump you have to put as much heat into the ground as you take out of the ground on a yearly basis or you change the ground temperature and if you have a heating dominated load like you do with a library you are going to gradually cool off the ground until you run the risk of freezing your wells so geothermal would have been a very expensive and difficult solution for this building in my opinion Todd make you you mentioned lead certification yes um so at an early stage I think advised by the sustainability committee we decided not to pay a lot of attention to lead certification and I wonder if you could just remind us of the wisdom of that choice my background is in high-performance buildings at colleges mostly private colleges and lead certification tool lead certification has often been dictated by the people donating the money so they they they want that as a kind of a quality check on what they have but all of the private colleges that I've been involved with in the past are using a modified lead where they deliberately emphasize and slanted towards the performance end of it right and so by by fixing the goals of what you want in a project like this and not moving on them is is a different way to get that without the overhead and the fees associated with lead certification yeah it's a tool to get what you want but it's it's not a cheap tool I don't want to criticize it but it it's not inexpensive and it's a lot of bookkeeping yeah and guided by the sustainability committee and your advice and the good work of people on this zoom we have focused pretty directly on the performance of the building what we want to do is have a building that is as sustainable as it can be in its use and as well as in its construction yes and in construction that's a great point Austin because isn't this the first town building that has actually considered embodied carbon in the design part of it well I'm not going to represent I can't represent okay what what people have out there if somebody wants to tag me on you know just yeah I could be wrong but I think it is and this is um one thing you need to to and it's specific to high performance buildings because in the past a building's carbon footprint has far and away than its operational carbon every year the natural gas you buy to heat it and the electricity you buy to cool it and light it um that footprint adds over adds up over time to be a much bigger part of its lifetime carbon footprint but as you make more and more efficient buildings and you reduce that operational carbon and a lot of times you have to build that energy efficiency into the building so you're adding more carbon intensive and more materials think of like replacing double pane windows with triple pane windows you know that window assemble assembly is more expensive it's heavier it's got more stuff in it it took more carbon to make so you know it becomes more important to consider what the embodied carbon is in the construction process on a high performance building and I think this was kind of groundbreaking for the town to talk about it up front here yeah yeah well I want to just express my gratitude for everything you said except what you said about the sore tooth roof because I remain whatever but in any case that's very very helpful I also want to just say Todd before you go um and really just to call out yet again our library director and Alex that the board of trustees of the library did I think a kind of I don't know if courageous is the right thing to say but a kind of courageous thing which is we convene the group of people who are going to hold our feet to the proverbial fire about sustainability and um I think the project is gazoodles of time better for it and I just think um what you and the members of the committee did and continue to do has kept this project on the target that we have all been dedicated to so it's I'm really grateful to Sharon and Alex who kind of led us to this relationship and it was not an easy thing to do why do we need you people telling us you know like whether we're doing the right thing after all we don't know anything we could make that decision ourselves so it's been really great and I appreciate your your help okay thank you Todd so any other member of the public wish to make uh ask a question make a statement Ginny Hamilton I want to take a minute just to go from the the big picture to some of the the little celebratory details um and make sure that folks know about a concert series that's happening at the library this summer um the librarians were contacted by um Yunse Lee who's a high school student who lives in Amherst who loves the library and is organizing a chamber music concert series for the Jones library building project and capital campaign this summer so information I know Sharon emailed out the flyer it's on the main page of the library's website it will go in the email this week at the Jones this Saturday but I wanted to raise it here because we focused a lot in our fundraising on the million-dollar donors and the six figure donors and such and the fact that this team decided herself to recruit other young people to come play music which is one of her loves at the library which is another of her loves and do it for future generations of people at the library I just think it's an important thing to highlight of how broad the support is for this project in town so please look for the update on Tutti which is the name of the series if you happen to know any young people who play instruments she's actually still looking to make room for more solos or or small group ensembles and the first one happens a week from tomorrow Friday afternoon at two and in fact the the point that Gigi made earlier rather than having it under the tent out front they actually arranged today that this concert will be on the historical society's patio and benefiting so pretty awesome to see that happening so thanks for letting me highlight it here thank you Ginny thanks for the work that you do as well in support of the project okay any other public comment all right I see no no virtual hands again great thanks to FAA and Berkshire and Colliers for the work and the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone